Richard Vesey Hamilton harmonizes a modernizing Admiralty

Hamilton treated naval modernization as an administrative problem as much as a shipbuilding question. He sought to harmonize Navy Board functions inherited by the Third Sea Lord while expanding the capacity of both the First and Third Sea Lords. Debates over armored and unarmored ships helped drive his case for the emerging two-power standard and the infrastructure needed to sustain it. He worked with political factions inside and outside Parliament and was among the early senior naval officers to engage deliberately with the press. Although his active-war experience centered on the Second Opium War and Battle of Fatshan Creek, he used a mostly peacetime career to prepare the fleet for war.