Henderson arrives on the technological cusp of 1892

The scenario gives Henderson his later knowledge but places him only a few decades before the technology on which he trained, making acceleration more plausible than miraculous invention. He arrives before a full naval race has begun, at the end of a long nineteenth-century order whose relative peace rested on repeated smaller wars and the memory of much larger eighteenth-century conflict. He understands gunnery, torpedoes, engineering, carrier operations, and the Victorian service culture well enough to identify useful people and feasible next steps. His first institutional problem is finding or preserving an operationally minded First Sea Lord, with George Tryon offered as a possible ally if the fatal 1893 manoeuvre can be averted. He must then direct money toward Parsons, Brown, Yarrow, boiler research, guns, and other foundations of the coming naval revolution. Six years are enough to lay foundations, but his memory of the First World War gives those years an urgent purpose.