Nineteenth-century Secretary to the Board Vernon Lushington once described the Board of Admiralty as a “phantom board.” For some historians, this phrase remains relevant today as the board’s decision-making and policy process continues to be elusive. As C. I. Hamilton notes in his introduction, there is a trend in British and naval historiography to refer to “Admiralty thought” as if this large and complicated government body “constituted some kind of single mind” (1). Hamilton seeks to dispense with this shorthand, and in the book’s nine chapters, he charts the changes and continuities of Admiralty attitudes and practices toward policy, forward planning, and strategy.

Hamilton’s overarching thesis is that between Trafalgar and the aftermath of the Great War, naval policy making became increasingly common and gradually institutionalized within Admiralty bureaucratic structures. In a chapter on Lord Barham’s Admiralty, the author demonstrates that contemporaries did not speak of policy but rather objects and measures, suggesting that Admiralty actions tended to be immediate and retrospective. Thus, the author notes, “policy was not just not common, it was not expected” (38). The limited policy making that did occur was undertaken in an ad hoc manner by small coteries of Admiralty officials, often working around the First Lord of the Admiralty. Over the course of the nineteenth century, there was a marked increase in the number of novel investigatory and standing committees. At first, these committees tended only to advise, but increasingly they gained the authority to shape policy within the Admiralty. At the turn of the century, policy making entered a third phase in which a markedly expanded naval staff worked with varying levels of independence and interdependence to orchestrate naval operations and work toward securing Britain’s future naval strength through strategic, matériel, and financial planning. The staff worked in permanent offices with distinct areas of focus (naval intelligence, plans, training and staff duties, etc.).

The author combines a focus on decision and policy making with the structural transformation of the Admiralty as a government department. This approach helps to reveal how authority within the Admiralty was in a continual state of oscillation between office holders, depending on the structure of the institution and the attitudes of respective first lords to delegation and initiative. For example, Hamilton traces how the office of controller (comptroller), the chief officer in charge of naval matériel, was transformed from an “instrument of the Board” into a key advisor on naval estimates who, for a period of time, sat on the Board of Admiralty (132). The book offers a similar structural analysis on the office of the secretary to the Admiralty (later the permanent secretary). This office was initially part of a small secretariat that acted as a “central sorting office” for all Admiralty correspondence. The holder of this office gained authority with the introduction of the Benthamite notion of individual responsibility, which abandoned the multiple checks on decision making. Hamilton notes that the secretaries “were not supposed to be policy-makers, [however,] that was eventually just what they became” (154).

Much of the interpretation in The Making of the Modern Admiralty focuses on this internal dynamic between institutional structures and how officials operated within them (and occasionally beyond them). The shift from the policy-making practices of a small number of individuals to permanent bureaucratic structures is not considered in this text in relation to a wider setting, historically or comparatively. There is no explanation given for the proliferation of investigatory committees, be it pressure from within government, parliament, or the press. There is mention of certain high-profile incidents that led to the formation of committees, but if these bodies were indeed novel further exposition is needed to explain how Admiralty officials hoped they would operate. With regard to naval policy, the text does not discuss the relationship between the Admiralty and the institutions set up for the express purpose of furthering knowledge and thought on naval subjects, such as the Royal United Service Institution. In short, the text does not follow the subject of policy making beyond the idiosyncrasies of specific actors working within the Admiralty.

The book excludes any conceptual consideration of authority, in particular, the relationship between authority and expertise. Although not adequately analyzed, this tension recurs throughout the volume: the description of collegiate decision making (80), decisions on shipbuilding programs (132, 185), why officials chose not to act on specialized knowledge (89, 155), and why specialists were uncertain of their grounds to advise more senior officials (246). On these questions, Hamilton notes where “professional knowledge was concentrated” but appears silent on the matter of how specialists were perceived within the Admiralty. Their expertise is regarded under the assumption that professionalization is a guarantor of authority (19, 194). The complexity of questions of intra-institutional expertise resists any presumption that expertise and authority are interchangeable concepts. A discussion of their distinctions would enhance Hamilton’s argument about Admiralty policy and decision making.

Naval historians will find The Making of the Modern Admiralty a useful guidebook on the administration and organization of the Admiralty during the long nineteenth century. The text examines institutional questions that have been overlooked in historiography for too long. Hamilton’s detailed focus on the institution of Admiralty, however, will likely alienate the nonspecialist. The author does too little to explicate the book’s narrative to contribute to the current historiographical attention on questions of expertise, political culture, and the social shaping of technology. While these shortcomings detract from the historiographical reach and interpretative scope for this study, naval historians should be indebted to Hamilton for fleshing out the “phantom” nature of the Board of Admiralty and providing a discussion on how it formed naval policy.