Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p1.djvu/369

 “A boat may be sent to the yard for present-use stores only, to prevent delay, in the same manner as is in practice for obtaining a small quantity of provisions, when so large a vessel as a lighter is unnecessary; and great attention should be paid not to detain this boat, by giving her the preference, which would prevent the detention exceeding one hour.

“All condemned and unserviceable stores should be returned before ships begin to refit; the clerk of the survey frequently complains of stores being returned by ships’ boats, at different periods, as opportunities offer i which makes the attendance of clerks necessary, when they should be on other duties, and occasions complex and irregular accounts.”

“When many ships and vessels are receiving and returning stores (and I have known from thirty to forty ships’ boats on this duty on the same day), it will occur without any neglect on the part of the dock-yard officers, or their clerks, that many warrant officers must be unattended to, as the store-keepers’ clerks attend both the issuing and receiving of stores, and cannot serve more than five ships at one time.

"The duty to be performed at the dock-yard causes the boatswain and carpenter to be absent from their ship when fitting or refitting, though the service would be much expedited by the personal attention of the former to his duty on board; more particularly as the rigging in his absence, is often undesignedly cut out to waste; and the shipwrights and caulkers frequently require the carpenter to point out defects; and his presence is indispensable to their executing their duty properly.

“The men sent with these warrant-officers to the yard (more particularly from small ships and vessels) reduce the working strength afloat so much as very materially to retard the equipment of the ship.

“The warrant officers must get the demands signed by the master attendant, or builder, and clerk of the survey, at whose office, notes or warrants to the store-keeper and timber-master, for the delivery of the stores are given; and these warrants to be signed the same as the demands, and numbered at the present-use store.

“The warrant thus far completed, the warrant officers proceed to drawing their stores, considering they have no farther difficulty to experience; but they have still to learn where every article is issued: At the paint shop a document, unknown to them, is required, namely, “a note for the paint and oil from a clerk at the storekeeper’s office,” taken from the warrant.

“The warrant officers, thus disappointed, go to the office for the clerk, whose duty, probably, has, at the same time, obliged him to be at the sail-loft, or at some of the store-houses, and are told that no other clerk can assist them without the direction of the store-keeper, who may be at the weigh-bridge, present-use store, or lot-yard; much time is lost by the warrant officers and their parties thus going over half the yard in quest of dock-yard officers, with whose persons they are unacquainted, and