TY - JOUR
AU - Walton, Oliver C.
AB - Abstract This article, using engineers' diaries and Admiralty papers, discusses the status and integration of engineers into the Navy from 1847–60. With the birth of the steam fleet, they were recruited in large numbers as officers, to operate and maintain the engines. Their position as officers and engineers, nascent executive and technical, proved controversial. Literature on the introduction of steam has neglected the social dimension and coverage of naval engineers has not emphasized their challenge to the established ethos of the officer corps. This article seeks to remedy this by examining engineers' work and relationships with both officers and the Admiralty. Sailing warships were highly complex machines; the introduction of steam engines made them more complicated still, requiring new specialists to make them work. The creation of the steam navy in the middle of the nineteenth century was not possible without the recruitment of engineers to manage and repair the engines. They were an unfamiliar group for the Navy, not of naval background, and drawn from the labour aristocracy rather than the middle and upper classes from which the rest of the increasingly genteel officer corps was recruited. Engineers were needed in ever larger numbers, and so their integration into the naval hierarchy was essential. Their scarcity meant that they could command salaries comparable to those of military officers, and thus sharpened the tensions resulting from their unique position. They belonged to the civil branch, yet, unlike the other civil officers such as the chaplain or carpenter, they were in charge of a substantial portion of the ship's crew and made a direct contribution to the working of the ship, a contribution which increased in line with the reliability and power of steam propulsion. There was also a difference between the engineers' expectations of the privileges of being a naval officer, and the belief of executive officers and the Admiralty in the responsibilities of an officer. This article uses both Admiralty and personal source material to examine the nature and structures of engineers' work and the question of their status on board ship and within the wider naval institution. The story of the naval engineers has conventionally been told as one of the Establishment's social conservatism and its resistance to the unavoidable demands of technology. Throughout the nineteenth century, naval engineers were badly treated by military officers and had to struggle hard to attain a more equal status within the Navy. Their potential and responsibilities were overlooked and suppressed by military officers, who were keen to minimize the impact of the newcomers. The engineers felt aggrieved at this, but the rise in their status, bound as it was to the need for propulsion for ever larger ships, was inevitable.1 This interpretation of the naval engineers' history is one which gathered strength in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and has since passed into naval tradition. The strength of this account is undermined by several factors. First, it is largely anachronistic, growing out of the ‘Engineer Question’ of the late nineteenth century and the partial reversal in 1925 of the 1902 Selborne Scheme, which had promised to merge the engineering and executive officer branches.2 Second, many assumptions underpinning the understanding of the history of the nineteenth-century Navy have been revised in recent years, with implications which have yet to be applied to the social dimension.3 Sir John Briggs's allegations that the nineteenth-century Navy was both technophobic and incompetent have at last been laid to rest.4 Third, Penn, who has written the only substantial histories dealing exclusively with the engineers, concentrated only on their rank and the improvement in their official status without coming to terms with their significance in the creation of the steam navy,5 and his narrow conceptual framework and conclusions have determined almost all that has since been written about naval engineers.6 (McMurray's isolated revisionist piece does not look beyond this aspect of the history of the engineers.7) Finally, the naval engineers have long been ignored and undervalued, both by many contemporaries in their tracts8 and memoirs,9 and subsequently by historians whose work has largely rested upon these source materials. A broader perspective suggests that the integration of the engineers was not simply a matter of the status politics of the naval institution; it also offers a window onto the process by which the Navy made the transition to steam propulsion and assimilated new people and new knowledge within the institution. It was not only about social politics, but about practicalities, although these expediencies had their own political implications. It is thought that the early engineers were usually supplied with engines by the manufacturer, but little more is known about their career patterns. Having no status as such within the naval hierarchy, they were civilians employed afloat under the professional supervision of the dockyard engineers.10 This was no cause for concern in the eighteen-twenties, when steamers were employed almost exclusively as tugs, and there was little demand for engineers until the eighteen-thirties when Sir James Graham's administration saw the construction of several steam gunboats and paddle frigates.11 This expansion of the steam navy prompted Admiralty intervention to ensure the recruitment of increasing numbers of engineers. An engineering branch of warrant officer grade was formally established in 1837 and put under the auspices of the new Steam Department which was in charge of technical matters. The engineers were given a uniform as warrant officers, of whom they ranked lowest. There were three classes of engineer and four classes of apprentice, and a system of entrance examination was outlined.12 By 1847 this establishment was found to be inadequate. As engine technology improved, faster engines and higher boiler pressures demanded a greater degree of technical ability, while, at the same time, the number of engineers required increased dramatically, forcing the Admiralty to increase salaries.13 Successful trials with screw propulsion encouraged the Admiralty to push through rapid conversions to incorporate auxiliary steam plant across the fleet.14 Between 1849 and 1859 the size of the steam fleet expanded rapidly from 151 to 218 vessels,15 with the tonnage under steam increasing more rapidly, forty-six line-of-battle ships and twenty-one frigates and corvettes being converted to auxiliary screw propulsion between 1847 and 1860.16 The number of naval engineers almost doubled between 1850 and 1857, from 440 to 862.17 Dramatically increased demand for specialists like engineers would have caused recruitment bottlenecks at any time, but the problem was compounded by the fact that in these fourteen years the Royal Navy thoroughly outgrew the old symbiotic relationship between the Navy and the merchant fleet. In 1853 less than two per cent of the merchant fleet insured at Lloyds – only 187 ships – were steamers.18 The market for marine engineers was simply inadequate to supply the Navy's demand. Faced with the growing importance of steam propulsion and the difficulties of recruitment, the question of the engineers' status within the Navy was a critical issue for the Admiralty to resolve. On 27 February 1847 the new establishment for the engineers' branch was laid down in an order in council, which integrated the engineers more fully into the mainstream of the officer corps.19 This was carried further in 1850 when the Steam Department was abolished and the engineers were brought under Admiralty jurisdiction as naval officers. The Admiralty was, however, reliant upon the Surveyor's Steam Branch for technical expertise and evaluations of engineers' abilities.20 Nevertheless, the Admiralty did reserve its control over the careers and discipline of the engineers, asserting in 1850 that ‘the character of Engineers and their fitness for particular employments cannot be satisfactorily ascertained except from the records at the Admiralty, where alone also the general requirements of the Service are known’.21 It was not an inevitable change, as Penn suggested,22 but, in professionalizing the engineering branch, it was intended to overcome the limitations of the old establishment and to attract and retain a better quality of engineer than the ‘rude mechanicals’.23 Two new senior grades were created: inspectors of machinery afloat, the most senior engineers, could supervise repairs and engineering practice at home and on foreign stations; chief engineers were of commissioned rank and more highly paid than any engineer under the old establishment. The three classes of assistant engineer gave greater progression to junior ranks, and they now ranked after second masters. This restructuring not only raised the engineers' status from the lower end of the warrant ranks but also allowed greater differentiation by seniority within the branch. However, the engineers remained different from the more genteel military officers: their geographical origins were more dispersed across the country than the southern counties' dominance of the military branch, and their experience of life was far more urban;24 socially and culturally their roots were in the labour aristocracy; they were not from naval or even maritime families; and they brought a different set of values with them – self-improvement, individualism and professional ambition.25 The efforts to recruit and retain the engineers did not so much integrate them as reinforce the differences and, indeed, create new ones. Methods of recruitment were more market-oriented and bureaucratized than the entry system for military officers. The examination system was a generation ahead of similar developments elsewhere in the British establishment.26 Formal training was itself a new concept, but its purely professional focus made little contribution to the process of integration. When training did develop a social function, it reinforced the conservative and institutionalized differences between engineers and military officers.27 This was reflected in a radically different career structure, which was bureaucratized and meritocratic and in which the bonds of service loyalty were quite dissimilar. Thus, the assimilation of the increasing numbers of new specialists within the hierarchy of the Navy was a process which challenged the established order. For all the discussion about the construction and performance of the new engines and the new vessels, there has been no real attempt to explain how they were made to perform.28 It ought to be clear that such (literally) ‘nuts and bolts’ matters were fundamental to the position of the engineers in the Navy; it was after all the sole reason that they were employed. Moreover, the politics of the workplace were fundamental to the identities of engineers and officers and to the debates surrounding them.29 The relationship between man and machine, engineer and engine, had implications far beyond the engine room itself and was an important element in determining the nature of the engineer officers' role within the Navy. Fundamentally, the relationship between the engineer and the engine was becoming increasingly distanced. This was not only a naval phenomenon: contemporaries such as Dickens and Ruskin were acutely aware of the uneven and inexorable transition of production from craft to industry, from a matter of pride to one of profit.30 In contrast to domestic society, the Navy had long been a vast industrial corporation, whose dockyards were the largest and most complex production units in the pre-industrial world. The warships were themselves highly sophisticated machines. The engineers did not easily fit into this structure: the early engineers were supplied by the engine manufacturers and, even in mid century, engineers stayed on the same vessels for long periods of time; the engine was in some respects ‘theirs’. The establishment of a career and rank structure for naval engineers in 1837 incorporated them into the naval institution to a greater degree, but it was the period from 1847 to 1860 which witnessed an acceleration in the distancing of the relationship between man and machine. There were a number of reasons for the intensification of this process. The Navy of the eighteen-fifties used engines almost exclusively from either Penn's or Maudslay's, a de facto standardization which reduced the need to keep the same engineers on the same vessels.31 At the same time, the growth in the number of experienced engineers from the crisis point of the early eighteen-fifties allowed the Admiralty to be more confident in the ability of its engineers to cope with the machinery aboard. However, the single most important dynamic of the change in the relationship between the naval engineers and the engine was the sheer pressure on naval manpower resources. The mid-Victorian Navy never had enough engineers. The Admiralty was obliged to transfer engineers between vessels, not only at the end of a vessel's commission, but even during operations, as engineers deserted, fell ill, died, or were otherwise discharged.32 The Royal Navy simply could not afford to maintain the old, close relationship between man and machine. Despite these changes, the physical environment of the engine room remained much the same. The temperature in the engine room and stokehold was oppressively high, up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit,3333 and especially in the tropics and on long repair shifts these temperatures could prove exhausting and debilitating. Frederick Wheeler described one occasion when the H.M.S. Gladiator ran aground off the Mexican coast: ‘Trying all day to get us off – and nearly killed us all, the thermometer by starting gear 120 degrees, at 8am I was carried on deck completely used up – brought to with buckets of cold water’.34 As more powerful engines increased the temperatures, the Admiralty looked for ways of ventilating the engine room with special bulkheads and air shafts.35 Engine rooms were all too often ill-designed to fit with the dimensions of the engines. Some were cramped,36 while aboard H.M.S. Ariel the engine room was used to store rockets left over from the Crimean War.37 Noise levels were oppressive, as the Naval Lords found while attending trials of the H.M.S. Termagent in September 1848: ‘there can be no question that the noise made by the gearing is so great that it is impossible for the people in the engine room to endure it for any length of time’.38 The essential function of the engineer was to make the ship go. Steam had not in this period supplanted sail, but was an auxiliary propulsion system which conferred the flexibility to operate effectively despite adverse weather conditions and confined waterways. There was enormous variation in the engineers' work, between long periods under sail, when there was little to do but clean and maintain the engines, and periods of intense activity when under steam, or trying to repair breakages as rapidly as possible. Wheeler outlined the normal day's pattern on the H.M.S. Curlew: 4,0 am hands turned up or watch I should say.- the Holy Stone39 the Upper Deck. 5 Bells – Breakfast, then six Bells comes the wood and brass work pipe and watch below clean lower decks, clean, clean is the word, – clean guns and arms – Engineers report shot combings hatchways, gratings steam pipe, funnel casing, funnels square, clean – then 2 Bells – prayers – after prayers the plunger alias Beeswing alias Nicodemus [Captain Horton] comes and inspects Engine Room and lower deck – and hands to quarter with arms for inspection.40 After that sail drill etc. 12 Dinner. 1,0 Sweepers wood and brass work and more drill.- then pipe steerage and hammocks for the watch….41 When steam was up, the engineers' work was regulated by the standard system of ship's watches. Special tasks, which arose with some frequency, called for quite a different pattern, not least because of the time pressure. Coaling the ship could take up to three days of intense effort, and repairs could be even more exhausting, involving long and late hours. Most repairs were conducted at sea or, at best, in port.42 Only major repair works were undertaken in the dockyard factories, and in such cases the vessel's own engineers were directed to make use of the dockyard's facilities, but not to request the assistance of the dockyard engineering staff except in extreme cases.43 Fundamental changes in the workplace were afoot. The 1847 regulations began recruitment of experienced and trained engineers, and there arose a culture clash with engineers of the old school, like James Harwood on the H.M.S. Otter who ‘entered the navy as an “oil boy” or engine room boy [and was] consequently quite unacquainted with mechanical details’.44 The Admiralty had made a conscious effort to improve the quality of its engineers from the standards of the ‘rude mechanicals’.45 The new engineers were better equipped to deal with a variety of engines and their problems. They were not educated in engineering in a scientific manner, as was becoming established on the continent,46 but their training was more technical and with a greater, if limited, theoretical bias. The Surveyor advocated a more academic and theoretical training for chief engineers, and in 1852 recommended that they be permitted to attend the Royal Naval College when time allowed, whether or not they were attached to a ship at the time, in order to attend lectures on ‘mathematics and principles of theoretical mechanics’.47 They were less the human part of the engine than in control of it. The increase in the size of new engines was a separate process, but one which contributed greatly to the developing executive role of the engineer in the engine room: bigger engines required a larger engine room crew. The engine room complement of the H.M.S. Centaur was established in 1849 at one chief engineer, one first class assistant, two second class assistants and three third class assistant engineers, with six leading stokers and twenty-one other stokers; a significant share of the total ship's crew.48 The engineers had to expand their role in the management of the engine room, hitherto a relatively small aspect of their work. Although they were not officially military (executive) officers, they began gradually to assume an executive role in the running of the engine room. This process had its own problems. The scarcity of first and second class assistant engineers deprived the Navy of precisely those men who were allowed to take the watch in the engine room.49 Chief engineers could not work all the time, and the pressure to delegate to promising third class assistants was considerable. Commander Maxse complained that because ‘the subordinate engineers [were] too young and ignorant, [he] never had the alternative of being able to supersede’ his incompetent chief engineer, Thomas Woodfield.50 By the mid eighteen-fifties the balance between the ranks of engineers had improved, but the gap widened again with the rapid recruitment in the second half of the decade.51 However, the Navy was still short of engineer officers of all ranks, and individual ships found that their own solutions lay in employing some of the best stokers as auxiliary engineers to work under the supervision of the actual engineer officers. The Admiralty tolerated this as a necessary expedient, given the pressures on engineer numbers, and in 1855 issued a circular to the commanders-in-chief of the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets specifically addressing ‘substituting intelligent stokers for engineers at a monthly gratuity of £2’.52 Engine room artificers effectively existed fifteen years before their formal establishment in 1868.53 The emergence of an intermediate rank mechanic placed the engineer officer in the role of manager and technical director of the engine room from the mid eighteen-fifties. The engineer officers' responsibilities were beginning to look more and more like those of executive officers. As the engineer ceased to be viewed as merely a part of the engine, he could be more effectively incorporated into the ship-machine, and this reinforced the emergent proto-executive role for the naval engineers; naval officers rather than just mechanics. Their combat role was, however, limited to defence of the vessel itself, and to maintenance of readiness for evacuation, as in the case of the H.M.S. Teazer's amphibious assault on a slaving town: ‘Mr. Chapman in the engine room went on deck to report engines ready’, and ‘Jackson and I had taken rifles from the rack’.54 While the H.M.S. Terrible was in port, John Brettell took watch over the ship, and recounted throwing coal at the bumboatmen to disperse them.55 Brettell did not appear to see it as unusual, but it does seem likely that engineers only took the watch when in port, rather than at sea, perhaps to give the military officers space for shore leave. The systems of command and control on board steam vessels reflected the changing nature of the engineers' role, and their integration and that of the engines into the ship-machine. In 1828 Captain Ross proposed a crude system of hand signals to communicate orders to the engineer – effectively only an engine driver under the direction of the commanding officer.56 However, the system of shouting down the hatch to the engineer which Sir Edmund Fremantle recalled from the H.M.S. Salamander indicates perhaps the normal pattern of communication,57 and gave a little more discretion as to precisely what went on in the engine room. The development of the electrical engine room telegraph in the mid eighteen-fifties removed the need for the engine room to be within shouting distance of the poop deck,58 and the opportunity for close supervision of engineers by military officers declined. Moreover, the use of the electric telegraph to issue orders to the engine room necessarily amounted to recognition of the engineers as naval officers, in command of their part of the ship, and a willingness to devolve that responsibility to them.59 While the role of the military officers in supervising their engineer officers was restricted by the new methods of command and control, the Admiralty extended its own surveillance of the engineers' work. This was part of the broader process of the Admiralty's bureaucratization and the expansion of surveillance systems which was ongoing during the nineteenth century.60 Inspection of the engineer officers and the engines for which they were responsible marked the first real extension of that surveillance into the day-to-day workings onboard ship. Engineers had to submit engine room logs and reports and to justify their ships' coal consumption.61 They were responsible for their professional conduct to the Admiralty rather than to their commanding officers: the finer points of engine and stokehold management were probably beyond most military officers. A formal system was also established for a thorough survey of the engines upon the return of a steamer to a home port, conducted in conjunction with the senior engineer of the dockyard. This was not simply to assess maintenance requirements but to provide an evaluation of the quality of the care taken of the engines.62 Damage and accidents were subject to detailed scrutiny and the Admiralty instituted a structure for the convocation of a committee of inquiry to assess cause and guilt in an ordered and impartial manner.63 Over time the number of inspectors of machinery afloat grew, and the Admiralty began to send some to serve on foreign stations. John Dinnen served during the Portugal steam fleet manoeuvres in 1850,64 and Thomas Baker in the Black Sea during the Crimean War.65 In 1859 a senior engineer was sent out to the China Station.66 Whereas, in the summer of 1856, the Admiralty only had the correspondence of Commander Maxse and his predecessor on the Ariel to decide whether to discipline Thomas Woodfield, later cases could be dealt with far more thoroughly.67 Thus, the Admiralty was beginning to encroach upon the military officers' control over the discipline of his ship. Certainly engineers could be and were summarily punished and disciplined in a variety of ways by commanding officers, such as stoppage of leave and confiscation of alcohol,68 but the Admiralty had the final say, and the scarcity of engineers dictated that discipline was not perhaps as harsh for those who transgressed the rules as for other members of the crew. When George Keeton, chief engineer of the H.M.S. Firefly, was criticized for neglect, the Admiralty was keen to take note of earlier favourable reports on his conduct, although his career record was quite unexceptional.69 Only in extreme cases of insubordination or incompetence were engineers dismissed from the service, and most misdemeanours earned either removal from the ship or a reprimand, formal or informal, and sometimes a temporary demotion or stop on promotion.70 The divorce of the engineer from his previous, largely mechanical function allowed the Admiralty to use engineers, as it used military officers, for a wide range of specialist tasks of value to the national interest and to the Navy as a whole. In 1856 Mr. Orr, a chief engineer, was even seconded to the Ottoman navy.71 Engineers reported back as respected professionals on a wide variety of technical issues including trials of lubricants, and their reports and drawings of engine parts and their maintenance informed the Surveyor's Department both for the purposes of establishing of best practice and for the design of future vessels and engines.72 Some engineers were assigned special missions, and in October 1856 Wheeler accompanied Sir John McNeill, who was surveying the possible route of a railway from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.73 Nor were engineers tied to their own vessels. Partly as a result of the strain on engineering manpower, and partly because of the pressure of time on repairs, engineers were frequently transferred for short periods of time to other ships to assist with major or urgent repair work, as in 1852 when both the H.M.S. Sidon and the H.M.S. Odin, suffering with crippled engines and ‘invalided’ engineers, were assisted back to port by engineers from the H.M.S. Vixen.74 During the Crimean War, this idea was considerably developed when the H.M.S. Volcano was used as a floating steam factory to maintain and repair the Baltic Fleet.75 Between sea voyages engineers were kept on harbour pay and, if not training in the factory workshops, maintained the engines of the steam reserve.76 Foreign stations kept a small reserve of supernumerary engineers to replace those discharged early through illness, injury, desertion or death. The Admiralty was beginning to learn the potential of integrating the engineer officers into the Navy as a whole. Despite the unambiguous development of a more executive role for engineers in their work, their status within the Navy and their relationships with military branch officers were not clear cut. Before 1847 there was some considerable public debate over the status of engineers, which suggested that they felt themselves to be undervalued.77 Such concerns were largely resolved by the 1847 regulations, which held out prospects of better pay and improved status. Throughout the first few years of the new establishment, engineers continued to petition the Admiralty with concerns about their status, such as accommodation and pay, but such examples became increasingly rare, and by the early eighteen-fifties the engineers seem to have accepted their new standing.78 The inclusion of engineers in the Navy List only from 1849, with seniority lists of chief engineers in 1852, may have been seen as overdue, as Penn suggests.79 There is, however, little evidence to support Penn's argument that mess accommodation for assistant engineers and the lack of a uniform sword were sensitive issues. Only one instance in the diaries consulted for this article reveals any frustration with the status of engineers: William Fowler remembered the cold winter of 1854–5 and not having a fire in the engineers' mess on the Otter, steam tender to H.M.S. Fisgard. His senior engineer refused to do anything, and his request was tersely rejected by the Admiralty, yet when the surgeon wrote on his behalf, a stove was promptly provided. Even Fowler seemed aware that the incident said more about his poor relationship with Harwood, the senior engineer, than it did about his relationship with the Admiralty.80 In the diaries of Fowler, Wheeler and Brettell, even situations which had the potential to cause conflict were not interpreted as politically sensitive in terms of status.81 There was no substantial correspondence between engineers and the Admiralty in the rest of the decade,82 and disputes about rank seem to have been largely absent even from ships which had difficult engine room crews.83 The engineers compared their position not with that of military officers but with engineers ashore and, as they became more experienced, with engineers in the merchant fleet.84 The prime concern of their comparisons lay in matters of pay rather than status;85 indeed, for men of a decidedly non-gentry background, the status of a naval officer could be a considerable perk of the job. Relationships between engineers and military officers were not always easy. The diaries of Fowler, Wheeler and Brettell reveal no substantial tensions with other officers, with the one major exception of Wheeler's ongoing grudge against Captain Horton of the Curlew, but there was a continual stream of disciplinary problems throughout the fleet, as engineers returned to their ships from shore leave excessively late, were drunk and disorderly, or abusive to their senior officers. The problems diminished after the Crimean War but did not totally abate. The continued catalogue of accidents in the late eighteen-fifties suggests that both the military officers and the Admiralty were concerned about the engineers, despite the fall in cases of indiscipline.86 Even where the incidents themselves did not centre on problems between military officers and engineers, the military branch was necessarily involved in their resolution and this intervention was not always welcomed. Certainly, this lay at the nub of Wheeler's hatred of Captain Horton. Punishment for his habit of outstaying shore leave in order to sightsee was also visited on the other engineers with the confiscation of liquor from their mess, and the restriction of socializing with engineers from other vessels.87 The crux of the matter was that the engineers had a rather different idea of what it meant to be a Royal Naval officer from that widely understood by the military officers.88 Whereas the increasingly gentrified military officer corps saw the responsibilities incumbent upon being a naval officer,89 the engineers, with their lower social origins, looked to their new privileges. Both Fowler and Wheeler lived for the travel. Shore leave was always important for morale, providing an opportunity for drink, sex, relaxation and a break from naval discipline. For the engineers it meant much more, for they had the money to travel further, and the status, as officers, to gain audience in the higher circles of society. Wheeler did his own Grand Tour as his ships travelled the Mediterranean, and Fowler visited the British consul and various local dignitaries in Tenerife.90 Engineers also enjoyed their alcohol, especially ashore, and, as officers, could afford not only beer but champagne and port.91 It is uncertain whether engineers drank more heavily than other naval personnel (they were expected to, because of their hot working environment),92 but it is clear that in their attitudes to both shore leave and drink, engineers often showed little regard for setting an example of discipline and decorum. They returned from shore leave late, or drunk, or both. Commander Jenner even resorted in 1849 to arresting his entire engineering staff.93 There is little to suggest that other officers looked down upon engineers because of their lowly background or lack of education, rather, they saw that a substantial number of engineers did not appreciate or rise to assume the stature of a naval officer.94 Despite this, there is little doubt that the engineers were confident in their identity as naval officers. For example, Fowler included himself when he wrote in his diary that ‘the whole of the officers of the Teazer went on shore for an excursion’ on Madeira.95 Brettell described himself as one of ‘us junior officers’, a position underscored by his advocacy of flogging to discipline the ratings, ‘most of them [being] the worst dregs of society’.96 Wheeler's inconsistency in using title, Christian name or nickname for other officers points to his own confidence in his identity within the officer corps. This parallels the social life charted in the diaries. All three diarists socialized with other officers from the civil branch, such as the paymasters and surgeons, although only rarely with military officers, both in travelling ashore on leave, and aboard ship.97 Despite the personality and culture clashes between engineers and other officers, and dismissals for incompetence, from 1854 to 1861, only about 2.3 per cent of the naval engineers left the service each year, suggesting that the vast majority displayed a certain commitment to life in the Navy.98 Most names recorded in the diaries under consultation belonged to other engineers, and the whole pattern of work and life reinforced the forging of a community of naval engineers. Chief engineers, as commissioned officers, were members of the wardroom, but they made up only a small proportion of the naval engineers. The others had their own mess, in which their social life was conducted in the same company as that in which they worked. Engineers were constantly coming into contact with other engineers. They met on the fleet reserve and in the training workshops,99en route to and from overseas postings, as supernumeraries for a station reserve,100 and while assisting with urgent repairs on other vessels.101 Ashore, engineers from different vessels often joined forces for their travels or drinking sessions. While Fowler was a loner, Brettell mentioned numerous engineers, and Wheeler's diary reads at times like a directory of engineer officers. These associations were primarily social in nature, and there was little development of a political consciousness, despite the foundation of the Royal Naval Engineers' Club in Portsmouth in 1851.102 However, the naval engineer's life offered a very precise range of experience, which made the construction of a common culture and corporate identity fairly easy.103 The engineer's monopoly of steam expertise conferred a degree of professional autonomy, which could be reflected in a concern for the reputation and interests of the branch.104 In 1853 the chief engineers at Portsmouth petitioned the Admiralty about ‘the degradation of wearing that odious “Button on the Collar”’. While the Admiralty disapproved of the style of the letter they shared the concern that engineers should be seen as ‘normal’ officers of Her Majesty's Navy.105 Nevertheless, engineers' solidarity was, in the eighteen-fifties, still quite diffuse, and based around the informal links of social and working life on ship, rather than around common grievances. Consequently, possible tensions did not crystallize in the period 1847–60. The picture of the engineers outlined above is a very mixed one. For all the disciplinary problems, these men had chosen a career in the Navy. All three diarists, for example, were serious about their careers. Fowler joined as a career move, Wheeler was impatient to be promoted and Brettell went on to rise to the rank of fleet engineer and served until 1886.106 Many engineers could be described in their service records in terms such as ‘very steady and trustworthy’,107 while others, like George Button in 1850, were ‘reduced to 3rd Class Assistant Eng[inee]r for continued neglect of the order of his senior officer to keep proper account of the stores &c’.108 How could the officers and the Admiralty assimilate such a diverse body of men? The diversity makes much of the evidence ambiguous. Were the ‘moveable baths ord[ere]d for Engineers’ of the H.M.S. Royal George in 1853 the result of concern for their cleanliness, or did they drive from the frustration of military officers exasperated with the disreputable turnout of their engineer officers?109 On the scale between officer and rebel there was an alternative which emerged: that of the professional engineer, who could be employed and respected for his work with the engine, but whose responsibilities did not have to extend beyond that. In practice the engineers were fitted into a variety of roles depending upon the commanding officers, and indeed the engineers, concerned. The military officers' response was itself varied because the officer corps was not a homogeneous entity. The most importance influence in determining an officer's attitude towards the engineers under his command was his attitude to technology. Many of the ills of the Victorian Navy have been blamed upon a technophobic officer corps.110 However, the evidence from the engineers' diaries shows that the one captain who had the greatest ongoing problems with the engineers on board was Captain Horton of the Curlew, one of the new generation of ‘steam officers’.111 He had a fair understanding of steam navigation, and devised systems of tactics which were tried out with the Mediterranean fleet.112 Wheeler's clash with Horton was certainly personal, but he also referred to Horton's dislike of engineers in general.113 The new, technocratic military officers were most sensitive to the encroachment of the engineer officers upon the traditional universal competence of the military officer, precisely because they were attempting to expand that competence to meet the demands of the new technology. Less technologically-minded officers had to concede to the expertise of their engineers and accord them rather better status than that of glorified mechanics, as was the case on the Curlew. Despite the difficulties which Commander Maxse experienced as a result of the incompetence of his chief engineer, an indebted engineers' mess, and inexperienced junior engineers, his criticism was restricted to the individuals concerned rather than to the status of engineers as officers in principle.114 Between the close supervision maintained by some steam officers, and the responsibility given to the engineers on other ships, where they were allowed to fit better into the officer corps, there was a spectrum of relationships. According the engineers respect for their professional competence, but limiting their responsibilities as officers, could be a liberal stance for Horton, or closer control on the Teazer. Officers were actually very inconsistent; the issue was a practical rather than a moral one. Even Wheeler was invited by Captain Horton to dine in the wardroom with the officers.115 The terms of the relationship changed according to the individual engineers and the nature of the situation. The diligent Fowler, being wrongly found responsible for an accident on the Teazer, was allowed ‘no leave, not allowed to take a watch, but kept at work on all sorts of things, some quite unnecessary’.116 The Admiralty could not take such a fluid attitude to the status of engineers. It was concerned with the strength and preparedness of the Royal Navy, and the continuation of difficulties suggested that they were institutional rather than merely personal. Already, in the early eighteen-fifties, the Admiralty came upon problems. A significant number of engineers did not transfer onto the new establishment in 1847:117 because ‘their rank [was] below even that of junior engineers on the new scale, great difficulty [wa]s experienced in making arrangements for the employment in the Service’ of both scales, since the old establishment actually paid better.118 Only in 1851 did the Admiralty transfer all first engineers to the rank of first class assistant engineers, but retaining their original pay.119 A rather different question of status arose in 1850. John Dinnen, the first inspector of machinery afloat, was attached to the fleet steam trials in 1850 to assess the naval engineers and to supervise repair work.120 As Commodore Martin reported, ‘much inconvenience has been experienced by the inspector in the actual performance of his duties by virtually ranking with other engineers in the service’, yet ‘the nature of his duties [was] of similar surveillance to those of the Master of the Fleet’.121 Sadly the Digest offers no indication as to whether the difficulties were experienced with insubordinate engineers or obstreperous military officers. The Surveyor's Department recommended to the Admiralty Dinnen's immediate elevation on the List to rank with, but after, the master of the fleet, so crucial was his contribution to the maintenance of the squadron, especially in light of the fact that all the steam ships suffered defects after only five days of trials.122 For the Admiralty, setting the official status of the naval engineers correctly was central to forging constructive working relationships between officers and the engineers. In the late eighteen-forties and early eighteen-fifties in particular, the Admiralty seemed quite positive about seeing the engineers fulfil a naval officer's role. The 1847 regulations were the start. The establishment of the system of inquiry into accidents in 1850 extended to the engineers one of the major privileges of being a naval officer – protection from summary discipline by superior officers.123 Their new uniform was designed to confirm them within the officer corps.124 Chief engineers, members of the wardroom, could also attend the Royal Naval College,125 and in 1848 the Admiralty Board ‘approve[d] of the sons of chief engineers being included in the one hundred sons of commissioned and wardroom officers’ allowed to attend the Greenwich School, and agreed that their sons should be eligible for entry to the Royal Naval School.126 After some hesitation, the Admiralty allowed engineers to have a servant or steward for their mess in 1853.127 The Surveyor even suggested that other officers' sons might wish to join the Navy for a career as an engineer officer.128 The Admiralty was aware of the gap between the role they wanted the engineers to fill and the actual conduct of some of the engineer officers. Some measures were intended to compel or to encourage the junior engineers, with whom most of the disciplinary problems lay, to become more respectable, more like officers. The promotion ladder and pensions for widows, children, and retirement were carrots to encourage junior engineers to grow up into the role of an officer. Hopeless cases were discharged, either for incompetence or misconduct. From the mid eighteen-fifties, an ambivalence grew in Admiralty policy towards the status of the engineers. The 1847 regulations had always reserved the executive monopoly to the military officers, and from 1848 the Admiralty began to study the possibility of including technical matters relating to steam in the lieutenants' exam.129 The experience of problems with the junior engineers was exacerbated by the strains of gearing up for the Russian war. Their numbers were increasing fast, the Navy was increasingly dependent upon them and too many of them did not conform to the role of a naval officer.130 In 1855 the Admiralty intervened in their messing arrangements,131 and decreed in 1858 that engineers should not be allowed to reside at the Royal Naval College, although they could still attend.132 The Admiralty had to decide how far the engineers should be officers, or just professional engineers. The engineers' uniform had been based upon that of the masters of the fleet, indicating their technical role, but was amended in 1856 to follow the pattern of the surgeons', implying a more professional and restricted role.133 The Admiralty also explored ways to reduce their ‘officerness’. In April 1856 a new rank was established, the engineer qualified for charge.134 First class assistant engineers who were fully qualified to become chief engineers, but felt that they would not like to enter the wardroom, could opt to enter the new rank, so that they would not have to serve under less experienced chief engineers as they themselves got older.135 The other option was to elevate the status of the engineers by disposing of those ranks which had proven the least ‘officer-like’: the assistant engineers. In 1858 recruitment ‘of Assistant Engineers [was] stopped while the Board [wa]s considering [the] proposal of Admiral Ramsy to reduce no. [sic] of Assistant Engineers and substitute 1st rate Stokers for them’.136 The Admiralty's initial reluctance to countenance artificer engineers was gradually replaced with increasing enthusiasm for a possible solution to both the social and disciplinary problems, and to the acute shortage of naval engineers. For the engineers, themselves, status was a relatively minor issue, essentially because they had little about which to complain and were confident in their identity as officers, although there was a growing awareness of their parallel identity as engineers. However, other officers and the Admiralty were more sensitive to the implications of status. The disciplinary problems with some of the junior engineers meant that, even if there were only rare conflicts directly between engineers and the military branch, the engineers were not fulfilling the role of an officer as the military officers understood it. For the Admiralty, this threw its efforts to incorporate the engineers into the officer corps, about which it had always been somewhat ambivalent, into doubt. By 1860 the future trajectory of the engineers' branch of the officer corps was set upon its path as firmly separated from the military, based upon a role limited to the function professional engineer. In terms of work, the period 1847–60 saw a steady integration of the engineer officers into the ship and into the Navy, as their relationship with the engine itself became more distanced. As engines grew larger and more complex, with larger engine room crews to run and maintain them, the role of the engineer became more like that of an executive officer. This process was accelerated by the informal emergence of artificer engineers, mechanically competent stokers, a decade before they were formally established as a rate. The emergent proto-executive function led to more tasks aboard ship, from a limited combat role to taking harbour watch duty. It was also reflected in the relationship with the Admiralty, which increasingly employed engineers on a variety of tasks beyond the ship. This relationship with the Admiralty was, though, not the same as that enjoyed by other officers; it was far more bureaucratized. The work done by naval engineers, and the structures within which they worked, underwent significant changes in the mid nineteenth century as larger engines, the pressure on the number of engineers, their increasing professionalism and range of skills had an impact upon the working and command practices in the Navy. As the context of the engineers' work changed on board ship, so it did within the Navy as a whole, as bureaucratic control by the Admiralty increased. This bureaucratization lay at the heart of the emergence of a new kind of Navy, in which the Admiralty became more involved at the level of the ship, and took on a growing responsibility for standards of discipline and professionalism at the expense of commanding officers. The Admiralty's impulse to bureaucratize the service, and the more distant relationship between the engineer and the engine, transformed these relationships, and already by 1860 this process was clearly visible. The relationship between engineer officers and military officers was certainly not the stark story of mistrust and rivalry which has been the received wisdom. There is very little evidence that engineers were concerned about their status; they were confident in their identity as naval officers, and content in their emergent corporate identity as engineer officers. In the period under discussion there was no conflict between the two. For military officers and the Admiralty it was less clear-cut. There was a clash between ideas of officership and respectability. They saw that engineer officers could be highly competent and loyal, but often spent time enjoying their status in an arriviste fashion, outstaying their shore leave, drinking heavily and being generally independent-minded. The officers made a variety of responses; the issue was generally seen as a practical matter involving individual relationships. However, the Admiralty saw a stream of correspondence complaining about indiscipline and incompetence of naval engineers. The early enthusiasm for integration and innovation changed to ambivalence and conservatism, and the Admiralty began to look for ways to reconcile its growing need for the engineers' technical ability with defensive measures to preserve the genteel identity of the officer corps. The history of the naval engineers was thus not straightforward, and it is hoped that this article opens up significant new avenues of inquiry. There was a fundamental tension between the efforts of the Admiralty to win the loyalty of the engineer officers, to recruit them and to retain their services, and the complete failure to integrate them into the officer corps. This paralleled the contrast between the expanding professional role of the engineers and the rather slower growth of their responsibilities as officers. Official status did not keep up with the working reality, and this reinforced the tension between the idea of the engineers as officers and as professional engineers. This tension became more apparent in the attitudes of the military officers and the Admiralty from the mid eighteen-fifties, as a defensive response to concerns about the difference of the engineers from the military branch. Early innovation in personnel matters gave way to measures to preserve the gentlemanly identity of the officers corps; class formation was a top-down phenomenon. The social and cultural differences of the engineers were ultimately institutionalized as the Admiralty sought to square the circle of technical advancement and social conservatism and shied away from integration as too dangerous and difficult. Footnotes * This article is based on a paper which was awarded the Julian Corbett Prize in Modern Naval History for 2001. 1 E.g., M. Lewis, The Navy in Transition: a Social History, 1814–64 (1965), pp. 196–206; M. Lewis, England's Sea Officers: the Story of the Naval Profession (1st edn., 1939; 1948), pp. 281–90; D. Griffiths, Steam at Sea: Two Centuries of Steam-Powered Ships (1997), pp. 136–9. 2 G. Penn, ‘Up Funnel, Down Screw!’ The Story of the Naval Engineer (1955), pp. 124–36, 164–6. 3 Even Rasor's otherwise commendable study is based on the idea that while the Navy was conservative in technical matters, it was positively reactionary when it came to personnel (E. L. Rasor, Reform in the Royal Navy: a Social History of the Lower Deck, 1850–80 (Hamden, Conn., 1976), p. 16). 4 J. H. Briggs, Naval Administrations, 1827–92 (1897). Cf. the revisionist work of P. Brock and B. J. Greenhill, Steam and Sail in Britain and North America (Newton Abbott, 1973); D. K. Brown, Before the Ironclad: Development of Ship Design, Propulsion and Armament in the Royal Navy, 1815–60 (1990); Steam, Steel and Shellfire: the Steam Warship, 1815–1905, ed. R. Gardiner and others (Conway's History of the Ship, 1992); B. Greenhill and A. Giffard, Steam, Politics and Patronage: the Transformation of the Royal Navy 1815–54 (1994); B. Greenhill and A. Giffard, The British Assault on Finland 1854–5: a Forgotten Naval War (1988); A. D. Lambert, Battleships in Transition: the Creation of the Steam Battlefleet 1815–60 (1984); A. D. Lambert, ‘The Royal Navy and the introduction of the screw propeller 1837–47’, in Innovation in Shipping and Trade, ed. S. Fisher (Maritime Studies, vi, Exeter, 1989); R. Morriss, Cockburn and the British Navy in Transition: Admiral Sir George Cockburn 1772–1853 (Exeter, 1997); H. Campbell McMurray, ‘Turbinia and beyond: Charles Parsons, the man and his influence – a view from the other side’ (Charles Parsons Memorial Lecture, Institute of Marine Engineers Annual Conference at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 26 June 1997). 5 Penn ‘Up Funnel’; G. Penn, H.M.S. Thunderer: the Story of the Royal Naval Engineering College Keyham and Manadon (Emsworth, 1984). E. C. Smith (A Short History of Naval and Marine Engineering (Cambridge, 1937)), from whom Penn borrowed much of his early material, was less interested in engineers than in engineering as an applied technology, although the two obviously have some common ground. 6 M. Lewis, The Navy of Britain (1948); Lewis, England's Sea Officers, pp. 281–90; M. Lewis, The History of the Navy: a Connected Story of the First and often the Last Line of British Defence (Middlesex, 1957), p. 235; Lewis, Navy in Transition, pp. 149, 164–5, 194–206; C. Lloyd, The Nation and the Navy: a History of Naval Life and Policy (1954), pp. 206–7; Griffiths, pp. 132–9; P. M. Rippon, Evolution of Engineering in the Royal Navy, i: 1827–1939 (Tunbridge Wells, 1988), pp. 41–5, 108–13. The existence of the following came to the author's attention too late to be used for this study: Institute of Marine Engineers, Past, Present and Future Engineering in the Royal Navy (R.N.E.C. Manadon, Plymouth, the Institute of Marine Engineers Centenary Year Conference Proceedings, 6–8 Sept. 1989). 7 H. Campbell McMurray, ‘Ships' engineers: their status and position on board, c.1830–1865’ in West Country Maritime and Social History: Some Essays, ed. S. Fisher (Exeter Papers in Economic History, xiii, Exeter, 1980), pp. 79–100. 8 Exceptionally, Capt. Ross's seminal Treatise on Navigation by Steam (1828) discussed manning requirements, as well as operations systems for engineers, but there was little after that date. Arthur Anderson, in his house of commons speech, was more typical in assuming that the engineers would somehow be provided for his ‘auxiliary steam fleet’ (National Defence: our Best and Cheapest Militia an Auxiliary Steam Navy (1852)). G. Biddlecombe, Naval Tactics and the Trials of Sailing; Illustrated by Diagrams of the Several Evolutions (1850); G. Elliot, Remarks with Reference to a System of Naval Tactics for a Steam Fleet (Gibraltar, 1857); R. S. Robinson, Observations on the Steam Ships of the Royal Navy considered with reference to their Utility and Power in Time of War, in a letter to the right honourable the Earl of Auckland, First Lord of the Admiralty (1847); W. N. Glascock, The Naval Officers' Manual (2nd edn., 1848). 9 G. Giffard, Reminiscences of a Naval Officer (Exeter, 1892); a retired Flag Officer [Adm. Sir Nathaniel Bowden-Smith], Naval Recollections 1852–1914 (for private circulation, 1914); H. D. Capper, Aft- from the Hawsehole: Sixty-Two Years of Sailors' Evolution (1927); Adm. Sir William Creswell, Close to the Wind: the Early Memoirs of Adm. Sir William Creswell, ed. P. Thompson (1965); Sir W. H. Dillon, A Narrative of my Professional Adventures, 1790–1839, ed. M. Lewis (2 vols., Navy Records Soc., xciii, xcvii, 1953–6); Adm. James Hosken, Autobiographical Sketch of the Public Career of Admiral James Hosken (Penzance, 1889); E. Parry, Memoirs of Rear-Adm. Sir W. Edward Parry (1860); E. H. Cree, The Cree Journals, ed. M. Levien (Exeter, 1981). Cf. also the accounts of the loss of H.M.S. Tiger off Odessa in 1854, where only the surgeon (and none of the military officers) recorded the efforts of the engineer to save the vessel (Greenhill and Giffard, Steam, Politics and Patronage, pp. 17–23). 10 Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, pp. 18–21. Penn does not examine the structure within which the engineers worked, but the supervisory role of Simon Goodrich, the chief engineer of Portsmouth dockyard, is apparent from the evidence which Penn presents. There is some suggestion that apprentices were taken on board steam ships in the late 1820s, but professional standards seem to have been low (p. 22). 11 Gardiner and others, pp. 22–3; Morriss, pp. 242–7; Greenhill and Giffard, Steam Politics and Patronage, pp. 53–8. 12 Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, pp. 35–9; The National Archives of Public Record Office, ADM 11/49, inside front cover Memorandum, Admiralty 24 July 1837; the U.K. ADM 11/49, Admiralty 14 Aug. 1837, Regulations as to the Qualifications and Examination of Engineers in Her Majesty's Service. 13 Morriss, p. 251; Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 39. 14 Morriss, pp. 247–53; 15 T. J. Main and T. Brown, The Marine Steam Engine: Designed Chiefly for the Use of Naval Officers and Engineers (1849), pp. 328–33; H. Douglas, On Naval Warfare with Steam (1858), pp. 137–9. 16 D. Lyon, The Sailing Navy List: all the Ships of the Royal Navy Built, Purchased and Captured, 1688–1860 (1993), pp. 307–9. 17 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/7, 6 Dec., Estimates 1851–2, Number of engineers at present employed; ADM 93/17, 1 Dec. 1857, Number of engineers in the Royal Navy, Estimates 1858–9 vote no. 1. 18 B. Greenhill, ‘Steam before the screw’, in The Advent of Steam: the Merchant Steam Ship before 1900, ed. W. R. G. Gardiner (1993), p. 26. These were probably only the largest vessels, and did not include the more numerous river or coastal vessels, where steam propulsion was already quite well established. Morriss, p. 242 reports that there were in 1840 about 800 steamers, of which 282 were seagoing. 19 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 2/1388, pp. 534–5. The details were also reprinted in The Navy List after the regulations were introduced (Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, pp. 72–5). 20 The Surveyor was responsible to the Admiralty for all technical matters. The equipment of dockyards fell under his jurisdiction, as did the design of ships, although the Admiralty Board had the final say in all cases. The Steam Branch was a subordinate department responsible for all aspects of steam machinery, both ashore and afloat, and was the successor to the more autonomous Steam Department. The correspondence is mainly to be found in T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12, section 97a–3, ADM 84 and ADM 93 (there is some correspondence in ADM 85). 21 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/7, Surveyor to Admiralty, 5 Nov. 1850. The pattern of the paperwork after 1850 does not support Penn's view that Thomas Lloyd, chief engineer and inspector of machinery of the Navy, became in truth the head of the branch (Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 78). 22 Penn claimed that ‘a change in the position of the engineers was inevitable, and it was not long before the second great milestone in their story was to be reached [i.e., the 1847 regulations]’ (‘Up Funnel’, p. 72). 23 Lloyd, Nation and the Navy, pp. 206–7. 24 These are but a sample of the passing certificates and correspondence which provide such biographical data: T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 13/200, p. 2, John Haselden Brettell, Passing Certificate for Chief Engineer, 6 Oct. 1864; ADM 2/1389, Mr. McEwan Steam Department, 15 June 1848; ADM 85/15 fo. 186, Passing Certificate for Assistant Engineer 1st Class, Edward Agnew, 5 Apr. 1854; ADM 93/12, Surveyor to Admiralty, 28 March 1855; ADM 84/11, Passing Certificate for Charles Jordan, 26 Jan. 1854; see also the Centre for Maritime History, University of Exeter, ‘Diary of F. Wheeler, Engineer 1855–65’ (unpublished typescript, transcribed R. Pim, 3 vols., 1996) (hereafter Wheeler), i. 1; Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, 470/7, Journal of W. Fowler, Naval Engineer, 1854/80 (hereafter Fowler), fo. 31r–v. Lewis, Navy in Transition, pp. 37, 198. R. A. Buchanan, The Engineers: a History of the Engineering Profession in Britain, 1750–1914 (1989), pp. 80–4 points to the provincial distribution of engineers throughout the country. 25 There is little research on British engineers in general, although tentative suggestions are offered by Buchanan, pp. 20–5; W. J. Reader, Professional Men: the Rise of the Professional Classes in 19th Century England (1966), pp. 70–2; M. J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 312; McMurray, ‘Ships’ engineers', pp. 83–5. On the culture of the officer corps in the mid century see Lewis, Navy in Transition, p. 22; Greenhill and Giffard, Steam, Politics and Patronage, pp. 59–61; N. A. M. Rodger, ‘Officers, gentlemen and their education 1793–1860’, in Les Empires en Guerre et Paix, 1793–1860 (Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes, 1990), pp. 139–50. G. A. H. Gordon, Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (1996), ch. 9, has a slightly different focus but is an important portrait of the Navy. 26 C. Dandeker, ‘Patronage and bureaucratic control: the case of the naval officer in English society, 1780–1850’, British Jour. Sociology, xxix (1978), 300–20; Greenhill and Giffard, Steam, Politics and Patronage, pp. 59–62. Cf. the discussion of the 1855 introduction of limited competition for administrative posts in the Admiralty following the Northcote-Trevelyan report on Civil Service recruitment in 1853, in C. I. Hamilton, Anglo-French Naval Rivalry 1840–70 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 240–1; E. J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–1870 (1st edn., 1983; Harlow, 1994), p. 287; N. Gash, Aristocracy and People: Britain 1815–65 (1994), p. 280; K. Robbins, Eclipse of a Great Power: Modern Britiain 1870–1992 (2nd edn., Harlow, 1994), p. 44. 27 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/657, section 97a–3, Surveyor to Admiralty, 26 Oct. 1857, 13 May 1858, and ‘re Engineers School on the Devonshire’; Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, pp. 87–8; and cf. Rodger, ‘Officers, gentlemen and their education’. 28 This is true of Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, probably because the author was an engineer himself, while Rippon, Evolution of Engineering does not really look at the practice of engineering. Griffiths, Steam at Sea is the only study to get to grips with the actual work done, but the treatment is very brief and covers the whole of the 19th century without deep analysis of the changing work structures (ch. 10, ‘Engineers at sea’, esp. pp. 132–9). 29 J. Black, ‘Military organisation and military change in historical perspective’ , Jour. Military Hist. , lxii ( 1998 ), 871 – 92 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 30 John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) expressed a deep revulsion at mechanization and the profit motive, which distanced man from nature. To pick one example from many in the work of Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1) drew harsh pictures of the dehumanizing influences of money in London, and the industrialization of Birmingham. 31 Lambert, Battleships in Transition, pp. 55–8; A. Lambert, ‘Iron hulls and armour plate’, in Gardiner and others, p. 56. 32 An extreme example occurred in 1852, when Sidon and Odin were crippled by breakdowns and injured engineers. The engineers on the Vixen were used on these vessels to get them back to port (T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/8, 12 March 1852). 33 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 95/20, pp. 130–1, Capt. Chad's report to Sir Charles Napier, 1 Aug. 1848; ADM 95/20, pp. 134–5, W. Rigby to Comptroller of Steam re trials of Dauntless, Aug. 1848. Fowler, fo. 38r. 34 Wheeler, ii. 11. 35 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/5, 12 Sept. 1849, Steam Department to Surveyor of the Navy, requesting co-operation in improving air circulation. 36 Fowler, fo. 42r–v. 37 Chichester, West Sussex Record Office, Additional MS. 1548, Letter book of Capt F. A. Maxse, H.M.S. Ariel 1856–7 (hereafter Maxse), letter to Rear-Adm. Stopford, 19 Nov. 1856; letter to Lord Lyons, 23 Dec. 1857. 38 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/3, 18 Sept. 1848, report on trials of H.M.S. Termagent. 39 Holystoning involved the rubbing of the wet timber deck with a piece of sandstone in order to clean the deck and give it a polished white finish. 40 I.e., breakfast at 6.30 a.m. and the day's cleaning programme began half an hour later at 7 a.m. Morning prayers were said at 9 a.m. 41 Wheeler, i. 17. Cf. Brettell's summary of routine on the Terrible (Portsmouth, Royal Naval Museum Library, Admiralty Library and Manuscript Collection (hereafter Admiralty Library), MS. 153, Diary of John Brettell, Engineer, H.M.S. Terrible, 1853–6, p. 15 (hereafter Brettell): ‘7am breakfast, 9am clear arms, muster with and clean weapons, followed by inspection and rigging drill, 12pm dinner, 12.30 grog, followed by maintenance cleaning and painting. Supper was at 4.30pm, and lights out for the men at 9pm, in steerage (engineers’ mess) at 10pm, and 11pm in the gun room'). 42 E.g., T.N.A.: P.R.O. ADM 95/20, pp. 30, 33. 43 T.N.A.: P.R.O. ADM 84/1, 13 Apr. 1850, draft circular to dockyard superintendents regarding the employment of engineers on cheque. 44 Fowler, fo. 29r–v. 45 Lloyd, Nation and the Navy, pp. 206–7. 46 G. Ahlström, Engineers and Industrial Growth. Higher Technical Education and the Engineering Profession during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries: France, Germany, Sweden and England (1982), p. 79. 47 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/9, 21 Feb. 1852, Surveyor to Admiralty; ADM 93/9, 16 March 1852, Surveyor to Admiralty proposing that chief engineers also be allowed to attend chemistry lectures. 48 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/4, 13 Jan. 1849. 49 T.N.A.: P.R.O. ADM 93/10, Surveyor to Admiralty, 6 Dec. 1853. Cf. the regulations of the 1847 establishment (ADM 2/1388, pp. 534–5) and the numbers of engineers in 1848 and 1857 (ADM 93/1, 14 Jan. 1848, estimates 1848–9, engineers employed at that date; ADM 93/17, 1 Dec. 1857, engineers no. in H.M.S., estimates 1858–9 vote no. 1, engineers employed at that date). 50 Maxse, letter to Secretary of the Admiralty, 11 Sept. 1856. 51 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 2/1387, 29 Nov. 1847, Steam Department to Accountant General, engineers employed at that date; ADM 93/1, 14 Jan. 1848, Estimates 1848–9. Engineers employed at present; ADM 93/7, 6 Dec. 1850, Estimates 1851/2. Number of engineers at present employed; ADM 93/8, 3 Dec. 1851, Estimates 1852/3, Engineers at present employed; ADM 93/10, 6 Dec. 1853, Naval engineers, Number employed, form sent to accountant general; ADM 93/17, 1 Dec. 1857, Number of engineers in the Royal Navy, Estimates 1858/9 vote no. 1, Number of engineers employed at that date. 52 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/605, section 54, circular to commanders-in-chief of Baltic and Black Sea Fleets, 31 Oct. 1855; ADM 12/624, section 97a–3, captain of Dragon to Admiralty, 23 Feb. 1856. 53 Cf. Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 95. 54 Fowler, fos. 40v–41r; cf. Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 77. 55 Brettell, pp. 30–1, 2 May 1854. 56 Ross, pp. 83, 139–40. 57 Sir E. Fremantle, The Navy as I have Known It, 1849–99 (1904), p. 73, cited in Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 71. 58 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/11, 1 Apr. 1854, ‘re installation of electric telegraph in H.M.S. Hannibal’. 59 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 95/97, pt. 1, SM 6343, appendix to report on Engine Room Telegraph, 25 Aug. 1859. 60 Dandeker, pp. 300–20. 61 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/621, section 54, expenditure of coal and use of steam: 4 circulars were issued (23 Aug., 26 Aug., 5 Sept., 6 Oct.), with different measures ranging from directives to use less steam, to tighter accounting; Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, pp. 74–5. 62 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 2/1388, circular, to Capt.-Supt. Sheerness, 1 May 1848. 63 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/7, Steam Department/Surveyor to Admiralty, 7 Feb. 1850. See also ADM 12/512, section 97a–3, Commander-in-Chief Jamaica Station to Admiralty, 24 March 1849, 7 June 1849, 1 Aug. 1849. 64 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/6, 9 Jan. 1850, instructions for Commander-in-Chief on Lisbon Station and for Mr. Dinnen; ADM 93/6, 11 Jan. 1850, Steam Department to Admiralty. 65 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/10, 17 Jan. 1854, Surveyor to Baker, copy sent to Dundas, virtually identical instructions. 66 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/689, section 97a–3, 13 Dec. 1859, additional inspector of machinery or senior chief engineer was sent to China Station; 23 Dec. 1859, inspector of machinery at Hong Kong to the Admiralty. 67 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/608, section 97a–3, Cdr. Luce to Admiralty, 2 May 1855; Maxse, letter to Secretary of Admiralty, 11 Sept. 1856. 68 Wheeler, i. 14, 16, 19. 69 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 95/97, pt. 1, bundle SM987, ‘re condition of boilers of Firefly’; ADM 196/23, p. 30. Cf. also the case of the boilers on the Medea (ADM 95/20, pp. 132–3, report by Charles Atherton, Chief Engineer Woolwich dockyard, submitted to Comptroller of Steam, 10 Aug. 1848). 70 E.g., T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/577, section 97a–3, Cdr. Jamaica Station, 7 May 1853; ADM 12/657, section 97a-3, Surveyor to Admiralty, 25 March 1858. 71 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/16, Surveyor to Admiralty, 30 Oct. 1856. 72 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 95/97, pt. 1, B295, S pro 27, Ad 611, Part J54; ADM 2/1387, Steam Department to Rear-Adm.-Supt. Portsmouth, 4 May 1847. 73 Wheeler, i. 8ff. 74 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/8, report on the engineers of Vixen, 12 March 1852. 75 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/608, Surveyor to Admiralty, 28 March 1855. 76 Only reserve steamers of the first division had their own engineer officers assigned (T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 95/20, pp. 114–27, letter from A.G. Ward proposing regulations for steam reserve at Portsmouth, 23 May 1848; ADM 1/5686, establishment of steam ordinaries at Sheerness, Portsmouth and Devonport). 77 Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, pp. 67–71; Admiralty Library, A. Gordon, ‘Marine steam engines of the Royal Navy’ (unpublished pamphlet addressed to the Admiralty, 1843), pp. 20–2. 78 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/481, section 97a–3, 3 Jan. 1847, Jas. Whitworth of Geyser complained about the poor accommodation; ADM 12/497, section 97a–3, 22 Dec. 1847, Thomas Baker, chief engineer of Victoria and Albert, the royal yacht, requested a pay rise. Both applications were refused. 79 Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 77. 80 Fowler, fo. 30r. 81 Fowler, fos. 42r–43r, 45r, 53r, 57r, 57v, 58r, 60v–61r; Wheeler, i. 3, 6, 14, 16; Brettell. 82 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12, Digest volumes for years 1847–60, section 97a–3. 83 E.g., Maxse, letters to Secretary of Admiralty, 3 June 1856, 26 Aug. 1856, 11 Sept. 1856; T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/497, section 97a–3, Senior Officer Brazil Station to Admiralty, 27 Oct. 1847, 2 May 1848. 84 Cf. McMurray, ‘Ships’ engineers', pp. 90–4. One exception to this reached the Admiralty Digest in our period: in Aug. 1858 the Admiralty refused the request of the assistant engineers of the Himalaya ‘to be placed on the same footing as the other junior officers’ for messing purposes. However, the Himalaya was a unique case because of the significant local pay concessions made by the Admiralty during the Crimean War and this dissatisfaction was perhaps part of the legacy (T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/657, section 97a–3, assistant engineers of Himalaya to Admiralty, 8 Oct. 1858). T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/608, section 97a–3, Cdr. Priest to Admiralty, 7, 10, 22, 23 Feb. 1855; P. & O. Company to Admiralty, 22 Nov. 1855. 85 Cf. McMurray, ‘Ships’ engineers', esp. pp. 89–91, 94. 86 A quick browse through T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12, section 97a–3 for the relevant years gives a sufficient impression: in 1858 (ADM 12/657), for example, only one engineer was dismissed for a misdemeanour, but there were at least 6 accidents warranting correspondence with the Admiralty. 87 Wheeler, i. 14, n.d. [mid Dec. 1856 to early Feb. 1857]. 88 Cf. F. M. L. Thompson, Rise of Respectable Society (1984), pp. 360–1. 89 Rodger, ‘Officers, gentlemen and education’, pp. 139–50; Greenhill and Giffard, Steam, Politics and Patronage, pp. 59–61. 90 Wheeler, i, 14–15 Apr. 1856, 2 May 1856, 4 May 1856, mid Aug. to late Sept. 1856, 11 Oct. 1856, 20 Oct. 1856, 24 June 1857, 30 June 1857; Fowler, fos. 58v–60r, 15 Feb. 1856. 91 Wheeler, i, 2 May 1856, 18 Dec. 1856. 92 Ross, p. 83; T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/608, section 97a–3, Admiralty Board minute, 10 Feb. 1855. 93 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/512, section 97a–3, Commander-in-Chief Jamaica Station to Admiralty, 24 March 1849, 7 June 1849, 1 Aug. 1849. 94 Cf. F.T. Jane, The British Battle-Fleet: its Inception and Growth Throughout the Centuries (1st edn., 1912; 1997), pp. 377–8; L. Gardiner, The British Admiralty (1968), p. 266; Adm. Sir P. Colomb, Memoirs of Adm. Sir Astley Cooper Key (1898), p. 322. 95 Fowler, fo. 35v, 3 May 1854. 96 Brettell, pp. 5, 15 (both undated), 98, 22 Oct. 1854. 97 Wheeler, i, 10 Apr. 1856, 30 June 1857; Brettell, pp. 11–12. 98 Based upon the 18.27% of engineers who were recorded as discharged in T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 29/122, Engineers' Succession Book, 1854–61. 99 Wheeler, i, 30 Dec. 1855, 4 Feb. 1856, 6 Feb. 1856. 100 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/481, section 97a–3, Supt. Woolwich to Admiralty, 13 Jan. 1847; Wheeler, i, 14 Apr. 1856, 20 Apr. 1856, 22 Apr. 1856; T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/11, request for travel expenses for engineers' lodging while waiting at Southampton to board Simla, 18 May 1854. 101 Brettell, p. 10, 20 March 1854, p. 68, 12 Sept. 1854. 102 Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 79. 103 Cf. R. Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: a Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886–1914 (1984), p. 16. 104 Cf. S. Beckman, ‘Professionalization: borderline authority and autonomy in work’, in Professions in Theory and History: Rethinking the Study of the Professions, ed. M. Burrage and R. Thorstendahl (1990), pp. 115–38, esp. pp. 120–1; cf. Michael Burrage's discussion of 12th-century canon lawyers, who developed a professional consciousness and structure within the institution of the Church (‘Introduction: the professions in sociology and history’, in Burrage and Thorstendahl, pp. 16–17). 105 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/577, section 97a–3, remonstrance of chief engineers to Admiralty 16 July 1853. 106 Fowler, fos. 28v–29r; Wheeler, i. 23, 15 Aug. 1857; T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 196/23, p. 364. 107 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 29/108, p. 10, Charles Moxley. 108 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 29/108, p. 15, George Button. Cf. also the extreme cases of the incompetent Thomas Woodfield and the incorrigible James Channon (ADM 12/608, section 97a–3, Cdr. Luce to Admiralty, 2 May 1855; Maxse, letter to Secretary of Admiralty, 11 Sept. 1856; T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/624, section 97a–3, 13 March 1856). 109 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/577, section 97a–3, 25 Nov. 1853. 110 Cf. Lewis, Navy in Transition, pp. 125, 202–6; Lloyd, British Seaman, p. 269; and John Beeler's more differentiated interpretation, ‘“Fit for service abroad”: promotion, retirement and Royal Navy officers, 1830–90’ , Mariner's Mirror , lxxxi ( 1995 ), 300 – 12 , esp. pp. 302 –3, 309 –10. OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCatClose 111 Greenhill and Giffard, Steam Politics and Patronage, pp. 81–93; Rippon, Naval Engineering, pp. 43–4; Lewis, Navy in Transition, pp. 203–4; Lloyd, Nation and the Navy, pp. 206–7. 112 Wheeler, i, 25 July 1857, 31 July 1857. 113 Wheeler, i, 4 Aug. 1857. 114 Maxse, letter to Secretary of the Admiralty, 11 Sept. 1856. 115 Wheeler, i, 25 June 1857. 116 Fowler, fo. 43r. 117 Some were even promoted within the old establishment after 1847, e.g. Maurice Johnstone (T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/497, section 97a–3, 4 Feb. 1848). For numbers of engineers, see: T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 2/1387, 29 Nov. 1847, Steam Department to accountant general, engineers employed at that date; ADM 93/1, 14 Jan. 1848, estimates 1848–9, engineers employed at that date; ADM 93/7, 6 Dec. 1850, estimates 1851/2, engineers employed at that date; ADM 93/8, 3 Dec. 1851, estimates 1852/3, engineers employed at that date; ADM 93/10, 6 Dec. 1853, Naval Engineers number employed, form sent to accountant general. 118 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/8, Surveyor to Admiralty, 19 May 1851. 119 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/544, section 97a–3, 19 May 1851; the Surveyor's copy is much fuller (ADM 93/8, 19 May 1851, Surveyor to Admiralty). 120 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/6, 9 Jan. 1850, instructions to Commander-in-Chief, Lisbon Station, and to Mr. Dinnen; Lambert, Battleships in Transition, pp. 31–2. 121 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/544, section 97a–3, Cdre Martin to Admiralty, 2 July 1851. 122 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/6, Surveyor to the Admiralty, 11 Jan. 1850; Lambert, Battleships in Transition, p. 31. 123 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/7, Surveyor to the Admiralty, 7 Feb. 1850. 124 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 1/5675, circular no. 126, 8 Aug. 1853, circular no. 246, 11 Aug. 1856; ADM 1/5674, bundle G5, report of the Committee on Naval Uniforms (1856); ADM 12/512, section 97a–3, 30 March 1849, Joseph Churcher to the Admiralty, enquiring as to whether he was entitled to wear the new uniform. Cf. L. Gardiner, British Admiralty, p. 266 which claims that even after 1847 engineers wore only civilian clothes, a top hat and ‘soot’ (i.e., a layer of soot). 125 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/608, section 97a–3, 21 Dec. 1855, Royal Naval College to Admiralty. 126 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/497, section 97a–3, 7 Jan. 1848, Secretary of Royal Naval School to the Admiralty; ADM 12/497, section 97a–3, 2 Aug. 1848. 127 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/544, section 97a–3, engineers of the Dauntless to the Admiralty, 15 June 1851, whose request for a steward was refused; ADM 12/577, section 97a–3, Commander-in-Chief Plymouth to the Admiralty, whose request on behalf of the engineers of the Magicienne was granted. See also ADM 12/657, section 97a–3, Commander-in-Chief Sheerness to Admiralty, 22 June 1858. 128 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/10, Surveyor to the Admiralty, 27 Aug. 1853, with reference to entrants from the Greenwich School. 129 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 93/3, Steam Department to Lord Auckland, 7 Apr. 1848; ADM 93/3, Steam Department to the Admiralty, 14 Oct. 1848; ADM 1/5676, Report of the Committee on Naval Education, 11 May 1856. 130 Extensive correspondence is digested in T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/608, 624, 640, 657, 672, 689, section 97a–3. 131 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/605, section 54, 22 Dec. 1854/3 Feb. 1855, circular no. 175, regarding messing for engineers. 132 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/657, section 97a–3, 25 Jan. 1858. 133 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 1/5675, circular no. 126, 8 Aug. 1853, circular no. 246, 11 Aug. 1856; ADM 1/5674, bundle G5, report of the Committee on Naval Uniforms (1856). 134 The creation of this rank is not mentioned in N. A. M. Rodger, Naval Records for Genealogists (Kew, 1984; 1988), p. 27. 135 Penn, ‘Up Funnel’, p. 83; T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/689, section 97a–3, 29 March 1860, regarding the antedating of Stephen Harris's promotion. 136 T.N.A.: P.R.O., ADM 12/657, Admiralty Board minute, 8 Oct. 1858. The Surveyor was less enthusiastic about the prospect of stoker mechanics (ADM 12/657, section 97a–3, 24 Dec. 1858, Surveyor to the Admiralty). There were also trials in 1856 (ADM 12/624, section 97a–3, 14 Jan., 15 Jan., 11 Feb., Surveyor to the Admiralty). © The Author(s) 2004. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of lnstitute of Historical Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) 2004. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of lnstitute of Historical Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Officers or engineers? The integration and status of engineers in the Royal Navy, 1847–60
JF - Historical Research
DO - 10.1111/j.0950-3471.2004.00206.x
DA - 2004-05-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/officers-or-engineers-the-integration-and-status-of-engineers-in-the-XUjMqYBaNI
SP - 178
EP - 201
VL - 77
IS - 196
DP - DeepDyve
ER -