Early Admiralty Boards could have as many as twelve Sea Lords without numbering them individually. The leading naval member was the Senior Naval Lord, an ancestor of the First Sea Lord, while the First Lord of the Admiralty was the political head. Numbered titles such as Second and Third Sea Lord became standard only from about 1830. This short passage is useful for decoding offices that otherwise look interchangeable in biographies and administrative histories.
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From the Senior Naval Lord to numbered Sea Lords
The board could contain as many as twelve Sea Lords, while numbered titles emerged only in the nineteenth century and distinguished naval from political leadership.