Catalogue description Records of Accounting and Pay Departments

Before 1832 accounts were dealt with by a number of officials and offices. The Treasurer of the Navy was the most ancient, originating in the reign of Henry VIII. The senior member of the Navy Board and originally responsible for all Navy accounts, he gradually withdrew during the seventeenth century from the Board's day-to-day affairs and his office, the Navy Pay Office, came to be regarded as entirely separate from the Navy Office. The Treasurer of the Navy survived the reorganisation of 1832, but his office was abolished in 1835 and his duties transferred to the Paymaster General's Office.

The Comptroller of the Navy, another ancient member of the Navy Board, was responsible for auditing the Treasurer's accounts, but as his own general control over the Navy Board became greater his concern with accounting became secondary and his functions in this respect were delegated to a Comptroller of Treasurer's accounts and to several subordinate offices, including the Office of Bills and Accounts, the Office of Seamen's Wages, the Allotment Office and the Ticket Office, where tickets for the wages of disabled, discharged or deceased seamen were examined. From 1796 the work of these various offices was co-ordinated to some extent by the Navy Board's Committee of Accounts, which was later replaced for the last few years of the Board's existence by an Accountant-General who was one of the principal officers of the Board.

Between 1715 and 1830, at least three sets of pay books were maintained for each ship in commission, recording the names of all officers and men aboard each vessel. They were kept at the Pay Office of the Treasurer of the Navy, at the Office of the Comptroller of the Navy, and at the Ticket Office.

Before 1832 the Admiralty did not have an accounting department, except the Office of the Paymaster of Widows' Pensions.

In the reorganisation of 1832 all the Navy Office accounting and pay departments were combined in a single department of the Admiralty under the direction of the Accountant General. He had a general responsibility to the parliamentary and financial secretary for naval accounts and in 1886 he became the parliamentary secretary's deputy and was entrusted with a share in the preparation of the estimates. The Accountant General's Department kept records of ships' establishments, of services of petty offices and seamen and of medals; it also dealt with seamen's wills and effects and the payment of prize money and bounty. His responsibilities for pay and pensions were exercised under the superintendence of the fourth sea lord. From 1921 he was responsible to the secretary, as accounting officer, for the general oversight of the expenditure of the Admiralty; in 1932 the post of accountant-general was abolished and his department merged in the Secretary's Department (703/3/2).