§ The diagnosis which our inquiries have enabled us to make of the past working of the Dockyard system suggests the following remedies:—
§ That when a ship is laid down it is essential, if cheap and rapid construction be required, that the largest amount of labour that can be economically employed should be put upon the ship and kept there without undue interference till complete.
§ That no course can be more injudicious as regards the actual cost of building ships, or more likely to put their efficiency out of date when built, than to commence a large shipbuilding programme with insufficient funds.
§ That to properly employ the various trades and classes of labour, it is necessary to lay down large ships at intervals, and not simultaneously in the same yards.
§ That the more rigid the system of account, and the more items that are brought in as direct charges, the greater is the tendency of incidental expenditure to contract.
§ That if real financial control is to be exercised over shipbuilding and dockyard expenditure, it is essential that the control should be in the hands of men who understand the nature of work they supervise and of the expenditure they check. No official, whatever may be his aptitude, who is a purely accounting officer, can with advantage undertake, or have imposed on him, such duties.
§ By adherence to these simple rules in the future, to the efficiency of which the savings of 1887–88 testify, we hope to ultimately enable the Dockyards to compete successfully, both in cost and rapidity of construction, with the private yards of the country.
§
The amount of labour imposed upon the department of the Controller of the Navy during the last eighteen months has been exceedingly heavy. The completion of the large ironclads, with their novel and multitudinous fittings and mountings, the number of new designs to be worked out, and the alterations both in account and administrative detail necessitated by the change in the Dockyards, tested the capacity of the department in everything relating to both the design and building of ships, and the management of great establishments. The departmental officers have proved themselves fully equal to the onerous task imposed on them, and I am glad to be able to point out that the State commands the services of officials who are able to meet all the modern requirements of the day, and capable of giving to the country a good return for the expenditure entrusted to them.
* This sum now includes gun mountings and incidental expenditure, but excludes, as explained last year, expenditure upon "Nile" and "Trafalgar.