Two signatures controlled acceptance of a destroyer

A naval officer was responsible for meeting the service specification, while a civil-service naval constructor judged the engineering soundness of the design. Short construction programmes helped the same two people remain answerable throughout the build, with a traceable chain of responsibility and less scope to blame a predecessor or successor for problems. If either refused to sign, the ship could not enter service. A constructor's rejection of an engineer's calculations could lead the yard to remove that engineer from the job, giving acceptance officials considerable authority despite the builders' freedom to experiment. Destroyer officers also applied practical experience to details such as gun positions: excessive motion could make a gun difficult to fight, prompting movement toward the superstructure or alterations around the mounting. In this interpretation, past spending practices help explain later Treasury scrutiny, while continuity of responsibility helped keep the earlier experiments accountable.