The Royal Navy employs naval architects to design its ships and a number of establishments exist to advise the Director General, Ships, on various specialist subjects connected with warship design. The Admiralty Experiment Works at Haslar, near Gosport, (AEW) which was founded in 1872 by the father of modern naval architecture hydrodynamics, William Froude, advises the Director General on all aspects connected with hydrodynamics. Froude's activities and those of his son R. E. Froude, who succeeded him as Superintendent, covered a wide field but the study of resistance and propulsion in calm water occupied most of their energies. William Froude was indeed responsible for the first real understanding of the mechanism of ship resistance and was able to demonstrate that the resistance of a ship could be accurately predicted from model experiment results.