To the commencement of the 18th century.
| Date of Appointment. | Name. | Authority. |
|---|---|---|
| circ. 1546 | Benjamin Gonson. | Harleian MS. 249. (See Robert Legg, Treasurer.) |
| Gonson was appointed Treasurer of the Navy in 1549. | ||
| 1549 | *Sir William Winter. | Addit. MS. 5752, fo. 6b. |
| Letters Patent of Philip and Mary, dated 2nd Nov. 1557, recite a patent of Edward VI. appointing William Wynter to be “Surveyor of our Ships,” and go on to appoint him “Master of our Ordnance of our Ships,” in addition to the Surveyorship. He continued to hold the joint offices for many years—certainly till 1589, perhaps later. The date of his death is uncertain. | ||
| 1598 | *Sir John Trevor. | Cal. St. Pap. |
| 1611 | *Sir Richard Bingley. | Phineas Pett’s Autobiography. |
| 1616 | *Sir Thomas Aylesbury. | Cal. St. Pap. |
| 1632 | Kenrick Edisbury. | Cal. St. Pap. |
| This is the “Old Edgborough,” whose ghost was supposed to haunt the Hill House at Chatham. (Pepys’s Diary, 8th April, 1661.) He died in 1638. | ||
| 1638 | William Batten. | Cal. St. Pap. |
| Afterwards Sir William. (See 1660 below.) | ||
| 1642 | In abeyance. | Addit. MSS. vol. 9311 fo. 188. |
| A body of Commissioners appointed by Parliament instead of the principal officers. | ||
| 1660 | Sir William Batten, restored. | Cal. St. Pap., and Pepys’s Diary. |
| Died in 1667. | ||
| 1667 | Colonel Thomas Middleton. | Pepys’s Diary, 10th Dec. 1667. |
| See Middleton in List of Commissioners at Chatham, 1672. | ||
| 1672 | *Sir John Tippetts. | Duke of York’s Instructions (MS. in Admiralty Library). |
| 1686 | In abeyance. | Pepys’s Memoir. |
| 1688 | Sir John Tippetts, restored. | Pepys’s Memoir. |
| 1692 | Edmund Dummer. | Luttrell, ii. 522. |
| In the British Museum (King’s MS. 40) there is an interesting account by Dummer of a tour made by him in the Mediterranean on board H.M.S. “Woolwich” in 1682–84. The volume contains many plans and drawings. In the reign of William III., Dummer contrived a simple and ingenious method of pumping water from dry docks below the level of low tide, which enabled Portsmouth for the first time to possess a dry dock capable of taking in a first-rate man-of-war, previously regarded as impracticable, owing to the small rise of tide there as compared with that at Woolwich, Deptford, Chatham, and Plymouth. He also designed and constructed the first docks at Plymouth. (See Harl. MS. 4318; Lansdowne MS. 847; King’s MSS. 40, 43.) | ||
| 1699 | Daniel Furzer. | Luttrell, iv. 556. |
| 1715 | Jacob Acworth. | Byng Collection, vol. xiii. (MS. in Admiralty Library). |