Henderson's shipyard intelligence and practical naval innovation

Henderson regularly visited shipyards and learned their construction capacity at first hand. In one meeting he corrected company directors by naming the welding system and number of welders in their own yard. That practical knowledge made inflated estimates of cost or difficulty harder to sustain. The episode also broadens the category of naval theorist: many Royal Navy admirals expressed their ideas through ships and administration instead of polished essays. Henderson worked within that institutional tradition of building arguments into the fleet.