Admiralty

Admiralty (pronounced ad-mer-uhl-tee)

(1) In military use, the office or jurisdiction of an admiral.

(2) In military use, the officials or the department of state having charge of naval affairs (not all of whom needed to be admirals); it was analogous with an army's general staff and an air force's air staff.

(3) In the UK, the building in which the lords of the admiralty, in England, transact business.

(4) In law, the branch dealing with maritime law; a court dealing with maritime questions (In England, when jurisdiction was under the division of Divorce, Probate & Admiralty, the lawyers' slang was “wives, wills & wrecks”); the system of jurisprudence of admiralty courts.

(5) In (historic) architecture, a frequent descriptor (Admiralty House, Admiralty Arch etc).

1300–1350: A compound word Admiral + -ty, from the Middle English amiralty, from the French amirauté, from the older form amiralté (office of admiral), from the Late Latin admīrālitās.  The best known sense, “naval branch of the English executive" dates from the early-fifteenth century, root of the word being admiral.  Admiral emerged circa 1200 as amiral & admirail (Saracen commander or chieftain) from the Old French amiral & amirail (Saracen military commander; any military commander) ultimately from medieval Arabic amīr (military commander) probably via the Medieval Latin use of the word for "Muslim military leader".  The suffix –ty is from the Middle English -te, borrowed from the Old French -te, from the Latin -tātem, accusative masculine singular of –tās; an alternative form of –ity, it was used to form abstract nouns from adjectives.  The first English admiral to appear in the records appears to have been Admiral of the Fleet of the Cinque Ports, Gerard Allard of Winchelsea, a royal appointment in 1300.  The Arabic amīr was later Englished as emir.  In another example of Medieval error, because in Arabic use, amīr is constantly followed by -al- in all such titles, amīr-al- was assumed by Christian writers to be a substantive word and variously Latinized.  The process thus was a shortening of the Arabic أَمِير اَلبَحْر‎ (ʾamīr al-baḥr) (commander of the fleet; literally “sea commander”) and the additional -d- is probably from the influence of the otherwise unconnected Latin admirable (admīrābilis).  For those stalkers who take selfies at locations used in movies (Instagram made this niche), the The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey (listed as the only waterside hotel in Los Angeles with a Five Diamond rating from the AAA) is at 4375 Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey.  It has appeared in a number of productions (film & television), notably Lindsay Lohan's remake of The Parent Trap (1998).  Admiralty & admiral are nouns; the noun plural is plural admiralties.  When used as a proper noun (thus the initial upper case), in Royal Navy use, Admiralty referred (1) the historical naval bases established in the Far East: (1) HMS Tamar (Hong Kong) and (2) HMS Sembawang (Singapore).

Admiralty Arch, London.

An island rather than a continental power and later an empire, for England, the navy assumed an importance in foreign policy standing armies never did and the Royal Navy’s high command, the Admiralty, was for centuries entangled in both military and political matters.  The Admiralty no longer exists, absorbed in 1964, like the high commands of the other services, into the newly created Ministry of Defence.  Over the centuries, the structure of the Admiralty evolved as technology changed, threats and alliances came and went, budgets waxed and waned, political vicissitudes always hovering.  As a bureaucracy, the Admiralty has been staffed by a bewildering array of offices and titles including board members, presidents, sea lords, secretaries, civil lords, controllers, comptrollers, accountants-general, directors-general, storekeepers-general, surveyors, deputy chiefs, vice chiefs & assistant chiefs but in its final incarnation, under a First Lord of the Admiralty (a minister for the navy who sat in parliament and was thus political head of the navy) there were five admirals, known as the sea lords (of which there were eight lords during World War II; things were busy then).  The sea lords each enjoyed a sphere of responsibility for naval operations:

The First Sea Lord (later First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff), directed naval strategy in wartime and was responsible for planning, operations and intelligence, for the distribution of the Fleet and for its fighting efficiency.  He was the military head of the Navy.

The Second Sea Lord (later Second Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Personnel), was responsible for manning & mobilisation and all personnel questions relating to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.

The Third Sea Lord (later the Controller of the Navy) was responsible primarily for ship design and construction and most material matters including the Fleet Air Arm.

The Fourth Sea Lord (later Chief of Naval Supplies) was responsible for logistics, victualling and medical departments.

The Fifth Sea Lord (later the Chief of Naval Air Services) was responsible for all naval aviation.