ABSTRACT
The shore-based infrastructure of the Royal Navy is a relativelyunder-examined subject. Ann Coats provides a reassessment of theefficiency and effectiveness of English dockyards in building, fitting out andrepairing Royal Navy warships. Effectiveness, which encompasses performance, productivity and use of resources, is a more appropriate yardstick than efficiency to assess the Admiralty and Navy Boards and the dockyards. An assessment of both the efficiency and effectiveness of naval dockyards is essential to a study of their history, and has been made contextually by many historians of naval administration. Surveying naval dockyards from the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509) to the twentieth century, Haas began with the premise that 'the Royal Dockyards were not well-managed. Sidney Pollard praised Haas's 'intelligent insight' directed at the 'mass of surviving official papers' which enabled him to make 'judgements on the performance of the dockyards by the usual management criteria'.
