Forging the Trident: A Navy Board (Central Planning-Esque) Quest

Whitehall
1770

The Falklands Crisis is at present in full swing, with Spain having threatened to occupy the islands and Britain contesting the Spanish claim to the hitherto relatively quiet islands. The Falklands are wind-tossed rocks in the cold, stormy South Atlantic, their water supply thin and their economic value marginal, but they are the British eyes in the South Atlantic, a port and victualling station for fleets and squadrons threatening the Spanish base of power in South America and more specifically the River Plate. The islands have been a sore point between Spain and Britain, but they were until now viewed as a minor one – while the Falklands might be an eternal saddle-burr or blister, it is Gibraltar that is the greatest insult to the Spanish Crown. Which of course is why the Admiralty flies a massive Union Jack from the fortress at the Rock of Gibraltar at all hours of the day.

Now, though, the Falklands are contested. The energetic governor of Buenos Aires and the Rio de la Plata is Francisco de Paula Bucareli y Ursua, and he is at present threatening to send a force of frigates and marines to clear out the small British garrison and take the islands – while he can easily do so, the fact remains that doing so would lead to war between Britain and Spain. And of course, that would involve France. The indications so far point to peace, but Lord North has ordered a complete overhaul of the Navy just in case – a naval mobilization is something that takes time, calling back officers from half-pay and digging senior NCOs and sailors from the Indiamen and the bars. As a result, while Parliament has yet to take the problem seriously, the Navy Board and the Admiralty are forced to Do Something while pretending that they are Doing Nothing, because Doing Nothing is what the budgetary estimates have deemed is desirable.

You're just here as the newly minted Comptroller of the Navy, a former admiral who's been shuffled off here due to a mix of popularity, playing the prestige game, and the North Cabinet wanting a bona fide fighting man that can make a brave face before Parliament. You're not some old civilian hand like Sandwich or a priggish lout like Middleton, you're a man of the world. Just reading the dispatches and the reports of this new crisis are giving you ideas on what the Navy is to do.

And, of course, on which officers are suitable for the task. You smile a little. Patronage might be officially looked upon as something to do quietly, but it's still the game that makes or breaks careers in the Navy.

There's a knocking at your door, the dim lighting of the office this early in the morning making you squint a little. The door's shut, and you call out, "Come in. Who is it?"

It squeaks open, and in walks an austere man in a wig that's twenty years out of style, his eyes piercing and judging as he walks in. You don't stand to receive him. Not this old man. The man sits down, gives you as close to a glare as he'll ever do, and speaks. "Rodney. What are your plans for the Fleet? What the devil does the PM think, handing you the Navy Board?"

You raise an eyebrow, lean back a little in the hard wooden chair, and take a moment to answer. Anger takes time to subside, and it still roughens your voice when you speak. "I am to administer the Navy Board and work with the Admiralty, and to do it while building up the Fleet to face this new Spanish crisis. Possible Spanish war. I'm the fighting admiral and influential person that the PM tapped to lead the Admiralty, so that he doesn't have to deal with Parliament has much." Your last comment stings, for Sandwich is politically rigid and a priggish old man, refusing to play the patronage game and interfering in the privileges of the Admiralty.

He glares at you. You smile.

"The Navy is more than your fief, Rodney. Skimming from the top here will not be treated as lightly as your earlier misadventures. There are no French noblemen to loan you the remainders here." Your eyes narrow for a moment, and you're wondering where the fuck Sandwich learned about that, and then he smiles suddenly. "Now then. I am to replace Hawke as the First Lord and I will be working with you. Why not a drink, then, to toast the partnership we will have to build?"

There's not a trace of guile in the old man's eyes, and you take a long time to verify that. You grunt, and then smile back. It's completely insincere, as is the toast of Madeira and light conversation early in the morning that ushers in the new era of your life. You're left to contemplate things once Sandwich leaves, as the light filters in through old windows in the Navy Board's offices and the shouting of workmen beneath begins to drift up to your office. What a change, from Admiral Rodney to...this.

Head of the Navy Board, with the Spanish on the horizon and many, many eyes on you. With luck, the Parliamentarians won't be too nosy. With luck, you can amass enough to pay off your debts.

Or better yet, assign yourself a fleet command once war breaks out. Prize money is what you really need, prize money and the chance to see to your son's career. Well and so, there's a good plan.
Humming a little, you set to the paperwork with a lighter heart.

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Quantitative Indices

Resources/Budget: 150
In Storage/Reserve: None

Corruption: 30/100
Corruption Gain Per Turn: +10

Political Influence: 50
Political Influence Gain Per Turn: -5

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Targets: Range from Major Shortfall → Shortfall → Minor Shortfall → Sufficiency →Surplus →Major Surplus

Naval Supplies: Shortfall, Trending Down: There are shortfalls in seasoned wood, in copper, in rope and old-growth wood for masts.

Supplies: Minor Shortfall, Stable: The salt beef is old and complaints have already come in from ships on patrol, the beer is and always has been foul, and prices have ticked upwards. The harvest this year has been lackluster, prices are slated to rise.

Shipbuilding: Shortfall, Trending Down: Frigates have to be built for escort work, the line ships have to be rebuilt and refitted to stay in service, and maintenance has to be run on a large chunk of the Fleet.

Personnel: Sufficiency, Trending Down: Personnel are enough for peacetime service, expansion of the Fleet and more ships built means dealing with more personnel issues.

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Opinions

The Navy: Admiral Rodney is a divisive figure in the Fleet. While the men are tepidly in favor of a fighting admiral leading the Navy Board, the officers are well aware that Admiral Rodney is not just a competent admiral and fleet commander. He is also known for being spendthrift, grasping and very very sharp in the patronage game. The officer following who he has boosted are very supportive, most of the rest of the officer corps dislike him.

The Cabinet/Parliament: At the moment, Rodney is popular and known as the fighting admiral who will clean up the Navy Board and bring the Navy into shape in time for the war.

The Crown: Rodney being in the Navy Comptroller's slot means that one of the King's favorites is not able to be put in. This means that the King is not very willing to aid him, but then the King is also not very inclined to hinder him.

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You have three free dice
Supplies and Victualling: Three dice

[]Auditing the Agents-Victualler (0/40): Agents-Victualler are purchasing agents that liaise with port merchants and chandleries in naval basing stations who buy up everything from fresh vegetables to fresh livestock and supply them to the ships. While ships might load biscuit, salt pork and pickled cabbage in England and from bases abroad, the Agents-Victualler are the ones that make sure crews have fresh food for the sake of health and morale. Their accounts have to be thoroughly audited, especially since the last Comptroller was more focused on other matters, and their accounts are notoriously opaque. Best to have a grasp on things before Parliament takes an interest, and once we have a grasp on things we can move towards actually reworking the system or improving it. Costs 5 Budget per die.

[]Seasoning Stage 1 (0/50): Wood has to be seasoned and stored properly for a decent time to allow it to attain the right sort of hardness and resistance to the elements that is necessary for the hull timbers of a man-of-war. That means storing valuable hardwood – both cut timber for the frame and the larger ones for the 'skeleton', along with great oaken masts, at the yards under cover and safely. Hardwood is a valuable thing, and its loss means the setback of years in shipbuilding. At present, we have to survey England for suitable wood on royal preserves, and we have to set up the storage facilities at Deptford and Chatham Navy Yards to take the timber for whatever planned build program is on the books. Costs 20 Budget per die, -5 per turn.

[]Pre-Empting the Harvest (0/100): There is word that the harvest will be poor this year, and last year's harvest was not a good one. While forecasting the harvest is a mug's game, the last few years have seem mediocre and lackluster – perhaps it would be wise to pre-empt a potential failed harvest. Ensure that the Navy Board has contracts for more than enough of the market's output to make sure that we can supply enough hardtack, salt meat, pickled cabbage and vegetables, and grog to the ships - not to mention ensuring that we can sell off the surplus to top off the Navy Board's coffers should the harvest be good. Costs 20 Budget per die.

[]Convict Labor (0/50): Nobody likes working with rope. Ropes for naval use are difficult to make and have to be cheap to get the Navy the rope it needs for everything from hammocks to rigging to the nine-tailed ship's cat. A proposal by the Parliamentarians of the North of England proposes to use convicts who would otherwise be transported to the colonies as workmen for rope-making, paying them a nominal wage as they work off their sentence at a dockyard or naval workshop. While expensive for capital costs, it is supposedly more humane than transportation or the gallows. Costs 15 Budget per die, pays its expenses.

[]Swedish Iron, British Iron (0/100): Swedish iron ore is high-grade and the only source at present for the Navy Board's bar iron. The Swedes have a royal monopoly on their iron reserves and are perfectly willing to charge the earth for it – and the mines that we have in the north of England are nowhere as good. The mines of the North of England are not suitable and the mines of Sweden are far too expensive in the very long term, and that leaves the colonies. Surveys of the Americas and inquiries into Spain and Russia are alternatives to Sweden, and would provide competition at the least – allowing us to negotiate a lowering of prices from the Swedes. Costs 20 Budget per die.

[]Coppering, Supplies (0/100): A novel idea is to use copper to coat the bottom of a major ship and thereby prevent it from being fouled by the buildup of barnacles on its bottom. Scraping the bottom of a ship clean – careening – is a labor intensive, dangerous and potentially damaging task, and ideally requires a proper dockyard. Coppering a ship would, in theory, allow us to squeeze a knot or more from ships that spend longer at sea, and moreover allow us to keep longer windows between yard visits. Well worth it...if it works. And the first step to testing it is to arrange for enough copper to coat a ship and to try that with a small sloop that's sitting in the Medway. Costs 15 Budget per die.

Shipbuilding: Three Dice

[]Escorts Stage 1 (0/150): Lighter ships – frigates and scouts for the fleet, called Fifth and Sixth Rates of the Line in the Navy's terminology, are in short supply and always needed. They're needed to escort merchantmen, raid the enemy's supply lines, scout for the fleet and maintain the cordon for a close blockade. They're fast, lightly built in comparison to a battleship and don't last as long. They therefore have to be built back up. And that starts by laying down the skeleton of the ship's timbers and letting it season in the slip for a time under cover before building around that skeleton and fitting out a ship. We can start by using the slips in the south of England, and work onwards from there. Costs 20 Budget per die, -5 per turn maintenance.

[]Private Escorts Stage 1 (0/100): Private yards are also able to build a frigate and fit one out, albeit often requiring more inspection than Navy yards. They also are able to do the building faster and cheaper on paper than the government yards, although the Navy Board often asserts that the private yards do that and to a lesser standard. When one needs lighter vessels, private yards at ports ranging from Bristol to Liverpool to London are a ready source to tap. Costs 15 Budget per die, -5 per turn maintenance.

[]The Great Rebuilding, Stage 1 (0/300): The main battlefleet has to be rebuilt and reworked, the older ships being wormy and unhandy by now. They have to be careened, rebuilt, fitted out with fresh everything, and in the case of the older three-deckers, converted to two-decker 'razee' frigates that can act as flagships for escort units and tangle with a lighter ship of the line. The rebuilding is a cheaper alternative to the task of rebuilding the entire line of battle, and that makes Parliament happier – they always do prefer to see the Navy Board take economies. They also expect us to win. Costs 20 Budget per die, -15 per turn maintenance.

[]Slade's Offer Stage 1 (0/300): Renowned shipwright Thomas Slade is the one that designed HMS Victory and is already thinking up new iterations on his older designs. The new battlefleet would be significantly better in handling, in hardiness and in armament than the older ships that are due for rebuilding, but they are also expensive and time-consuming to build. First step is to build the skeleton, season the timbers, and lay out the masts and other materials as well – once it seasons on the stand, it can be built up to sail. Costs 30 budget per die, -20 Budget per turn maintenance.

Infrastructure: Two dice

[]Auditing the Yard Commissioners (0/50): The commissioners at the yards are often those who run the place like a family business, and Admiral Rodney's reputation for being spendthrift means that they may take liberties. The obvious solution is to arrange a series of inspections and audits, and then we can begin to use the yards' rivalries as well as the increasing capacity of private yards, against the more corrupt of the state shipyards. 5 Budget per die.

[]The West Indies Yards (0/100): The West Indies yards are not built for building ships, rather they are maintenance and careening yards that are meant to keep the West Indies Squadron seaworthy. The winds that carry ships to the Americas blow in a great half-circle, from the North Sea to Newfoundland to the West Indies, and that makes the Caribbean a crucial theater - best to ensure that it is well-equipped. Given the present situation with Spain. 25 Budget per die.

[]Marine Barracks (0/100): The Marines are at present an odd lot. Trained and equipped as army units, dispersed in penny-packets aboard ships as landing troops and enforcers, expected to serve as unskilled ship's labor, and used against potential unrest on the ship's company. They are not of the Navy, and they are at present too much like the army in culture and in behavior. Building out barracks and facilities for them away from the army facilities and quartering that has kept them until now would allow for better integration, and allow them to suppress impressment riots in Portsmouth besides. 10 Budget per die. Maintenance -10 per turn on completion.

Personnel: Three dice

[]Cleaning the Naval Hospitals (0/50): Hospitals for the wounded and the lame are a place to die or a place to convalesce from the few injuries that can be efficiently treated by barber-surgeons and doctors. Cleanliness is key to these institutions, to avoid bad air from infecting wounds and exacerbating illness, and that means in this case funding the hospitals back up to scratch. At present there are small hospitals at the bases of Devonport, Chatham and Plymouth, as well as a small one in the Caribbean to provide what solace it can to the suffering there. Costs 5 budget per die, -5 budget per turn.

[]Setting Up Press Gangs (0/50): The Navy is not manned by volunteers, or at least not in its entire. The press gangs are a major component of the Navy's manning, trawling the ports and impressing seamen who are not one of the exempt groups. Local governments tend to take exception to pressing, and thus tend to either inhibit the press-gangs' operation or assign sailors to exempt categories – and thus the press-gangs have to be both well-funded and willing to pay out bounties and bribes with that funding. Costs 10 budget per die due to paying out bounties.

[]Standing Orders (0/50): The Fighting Instructions are the backbone of the Admiralty and the Navy's discipline, their rules and regulations nominally governing the Fleet. While the Navy's Fighting Instructions are nominally subject to the Admiralty's orders and doctrine and therefore outside the purview of the Navy Board, the Navy Board also lays out in those instructions the paper work that captains are expected to complete and turn in on pain of stoppage of pay. While extensive paperwork will cut corruption and too little will lead to excessive license being taken, some is needed – the issue is judging balance. Costs 5 Budget per die. Reduces Corruption, which can have adverse effects on morale.

[]Dredging Up Officers (0/100): Good officers are rare, and the bulk of the Navy is demobilized in peacetime. That means hundreds of officers drawing half-pay (What midshipmen call 'nothing a day and duties besides'), who can be called up to serve in wartime. In theory. In practice, most of them are already aboard other ships or serving abroad, and we have to find them and offer commissions, or at least make sure that it is known that we are offering commissions. That way we can rake in what trained gentlemen we can before war breaks out. Costs 10 Budget per die.

Politics: Two Dice

[]Additional Personnel: Hiring additional personnel would allow for more actions to be undertaken and more of the administrative work to be handled by the staff in that area, but at the same time we would have to ensure that said personnel are clean, honest and literate. That would take time and effort, and money besides. And after all of that, we have to pay them. Unfortunately, patriotic gentlemen also expect to be paid. DC25/50, lower DC is to succeed and increase Corruption. Adds one die to a user selected category.

[]Smearing the Rockingham Whigs: Rodney is one that can use Parliament to talk about the navy's readiness with more than a little authority, being as he is one of the admirals of the fleet in the last war as well as the Comptroller of the Navy. That means he can slander them in Parliament and stake out a position that would make Lord North grateful – and that gratitude would have dividends in future. DC40, gain PI, make enemies in Parliament.

[]Patronage: The admiral is one that can play the patronage game, and has done so in the past with panache. Patronage involves the selective boosting of careers of individuals of either ability (who would therefore reflect well upon you later) or those who have political clout and influence (and therefore can aid your career implicitly). Admiral Rodney knows both sorts, and is unafraid to meddle in the navy – every man has a political 'interest', and this is hardly inflammatory. DC45, gain +10 PI, +5 Corruption. Potentially unsuitable admirals/captains elevated.

[]Additional Funds: Convincing Parliament to release additional funding is difficult, but the Navy Board can borrow on its account and use future funding to pay things off. At present our credit is good, and that means that we can borrow with ease. Parliament might not appreciate excessive borrowing, so be cautious here. Autopass, gain 50 Budget, maintenance -5 per turn at present for that.