The Navy Board offices that supplied the fleet

The Navy Board divided finance, construction, records, victualling, and dockyard administration among named offices. The Clerk of the Navy, most famously Samuel Pepys, supplied senior recordkeeping and secretarial expertise. Elizabeth I's victualling officers became a durable institution because feeding the fleet was essential, expensive, and unusually vulnerable to fraud. James I and Charles I re-established the function when attempts were made to discard it, and two officeholders often shared the workload. The contrast between long-serving officials and quickly exposed opportunists shows how scrutiny could turn a tempting office into an accountability mechanism.