The Making of a Civil Servant introduces Sir Oswyn Murray as the Admiralty's senior permanent official from 1917 through 1936, providing continuity while ministers and naval officers changed. The extract focuses on the early-1930s merger of the Accountant General's department into the Secretariat after years of retirement-driven preparation. The reorganisation reduced duplicated work, decentralised some welfare records to the home ports, and protected staff whose prospects initially appeared threatened. Its later value was resilience: the Admiralty could expand with less confusion and overlap than it had in 1914. Naval effectiveness depends on administrative design, institutional memory, and the ability to scale as well as on ships and commanders.
Chapter · 2:05:39-2:11:08
Oswyn Murray and Admiralty administration
A civil-service memoir explains how the Admiralty's senior permanent official reshaped financial and administrative machinery after the First World War.