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 small until after the end of the sixteenth century. From a letter addressed to the Lord High Admiral in 1583, and preserved among Pepys' 'Miscellanies' (viii. 198), it appears that there were then only two queen's dry docks in the Thames, one at Woolwich, and the other probably at Deptford. The writers, Sir John Hawkyns, William Wynter, and William Folstoke, proposed "to enlarge that at Woolwich to that length and bigness that two royal ships at one time might be brought in to be repaired and built within the same."

Before the time of Henry VIII., the general executive government of the navy and some of the various other functions now discharged by the Admiralty were for a long period in the hands of the Admirals-in-Chief, no matter whether they happened to be called at the moment Admirals of the North and of the West, and held divided but co-equal authority, or whether the single head was Lord High Admiral. The civil work was done by the Clerk of the Ships, and occasionally by the King's Chancery. But the increasing business of the service necessitated the erection of more elaborate machinery. A Lord High Admiral continued to be appointed as before. To relieve him, however, of various branches of his duty, especially in his administrative work, civil officers, known as Commissioners, were appointed in April, 1546, to attend to victualling, construction and repair of ships, procuring of suitable ordnance, etc. These civil officers constituted the Navy Board.