Royal dockyards and the logistics of multiple fleets

John Jervis, Earl St Vincent, famously portrayed the Royal dockyards as hotbeds of vice, depravity, and work-shyness. Some individual failings may have contributed to delayed supplies, but the larger problem was structural. The dockyards were funded better than many foreign equivalents yet still lacked enough resources to meet every demand placed upon them. Several fleets required the same supplies and support at the same time, while each admiral regarded his own command as the urgent national priority. The shortages show how finite naval capacity had to be allocated across a far-flung war with competing operational risks.