Catalogue description Admiralty: Victualling Department and predecessors: Estimates

The first Accountant-General's duty was to start the new machinery for claiming and disbursing the moneys which Parliament votes the Navy annually for its up-keep: the Naval Estimates.

The Estimates were divided into sixteen Votes. Vote 'A' laid down the total numbers of officers and men to be borne on the Navy's books in the course of the year. The other Votes, numbered one to fifteen, categorised the Navy's probable requirements under separate broad headings - naval stores, victualling stores, medical stores and so on. They were the "money Votes". Every penny the Admiralty spent had to be accounted for under one of those headings. The First Lord presented the Estimates to Parliament every year, and a committee of members went through them Vote by Vote, approving or amending each total for expenditure in the next financial year.

Once Parliament accepted the amounts, the Admiralty could spend up to each of them. Groups of Votes were the responsibility of the various Sea Lords, and they were allowed to set off a surplus against a deficiency under the sub-heads within a Vote, but not to carry surpluses forward to the next year nor to transfer a saving from one Vote to another.