The Victualling Board's principal bases were under the direct jurisdiction of this Admiralty office responsible for organising the different operations relating to victualling. An Agent of the Victualling Board was in charge of personnel, the number of which varied according to the situation of the base, and he managed victualling activities in close liaison with the Board Commissioners based in London.

The number of bases directly under the jurisdiction of the Victualling Board noticeably decreased during the first three conflicts in the eighteenth century (see Table 4.1). There were eleven bases during the War of the Spanish Succession, but then, with the abandonment of victualling at Lisbon and Harwich in 1713, there were only nine bases left to be directly victualled by the Victualling Board during the 1739–48 war. During the Seven Years War, this number fell to six. The fortress at Port Mahon in Minorca fell at the outbreak of hostilities, which led to the court martial, death penalty and subsequent execution of the British naval commander, Admiral Byng, who had failed to relieve the fortress. Victualling for Jamaica and Kinsale was entrusted to a private contractor who was responsible for meeting all the needs of any of the ships, according to an established procedure. This will be examined more closely in Chapter 6, which is devoted to victualling in the secondary ports and outlying centres.