' The
'miserable scoundrel' had submitted a proposal for diminishing
the expenses which the administration was certainly ill able
to bear, The candid reader will draw his own conclusions when
he finds that the Queen did not approve the plan submitted; and
yet that not one of her assailants has let this appear.[71]
[Footnote 71: It may be stated here that the word 'rations' is
unknown in the navy. The official term is 'victuals.' The term
in common use is 'provisions.']
It is, of course, possible to concede that adequate arrangements
had been made for the general victualling of the fleet; and still
to maintain that, after all, the sailors afloat actually did
run short of food. In his striking 'Introduction to the Armada
Despatches' published by the Navy Records Society, Professor Sir
John Laughton declares that: 'To anyone examining the evidence,
there can be no question as to victualling being conducted on
a fairly liberal scale, as far as the money was concerned. It
was in providing the victuals that the difficulty lay.... When
a fleet of unprecedented magnitude was collected, when a sudden
and unwonted demand was made on the victualling officers, it
would have been strange indeed if things had gone quite smoothly.'
There are plenty of naval officers who have had experience, and
within the last ten years of the nineteenth century, of the
difficulty, and sometimes of the impossibility, of getting sufficient
supplies for a large number of ships in rather out-of-the-way places.
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