DELIVERY OF VICTUALS to warships on stations outside home waters, although catering for a much smaller proportion of men than those operating in home waters, seem, if the volume of correspondence to and from the Admiralty is a true indicator, to have created an equal volume of work for the Victualling Board and its staff at Somerset House. The whole of the work of feeding the army was, with the exception of supplying troopships leaving Britain, for troops abroad.

The actual delivery system for warships abroad, although conducted on the same basis, was weighted almost diametrically opposite to that at home: less from the Victualling Board’s own yards and more from the second and third strategies of contractor depots and ad hoc purchases by pursers. Two variations of these strategies, those of peripatetic agents victualler and the use of senior pursers as buying agents for a whole squadron, which were not used at home, played an important part in the victualling of fleets operating far from other sources of supply. Problems also tended to be of different sorts from those at home. In most cases, for the Victualling Board in London, problems arose or were exacerbated by the difficulties of communication over vast distances, with a simple exchange of letters taking many weeks, and often many months. Other ever-present difficulties were those of a shortage of specie to pay for purchases abroad, the effects of epidemic diseases and seasonally tempestuous weather; finding suitable personnel to run the yards, and the need for subsequent monitoring of their activities. For the agents themselves, particularly those round the Mediterranean, there were constant difficulties caused by shifting political alliances and the intransigence of local rulers; this was especially prevalent in the countries of North Africa. As far as dealings with contractors were concerned, apart from the ever-present (and as it turned out in this period, exaggerated) worry about fraudulent activities, the principal effect on the victualling office in London was that of delayed accounts; this did not, however, affect the actual delivery of victuals to warships.

Victualling Board yards

At the beginning of the French Revolutionary war, the only permanent yard abroad was at Gibraltar; other yards were opened as wartime operations required: at Antigua, Lisbon, Port Mahon, the Cape of Good Hope, Malta and Rio de Janeiro.