Admiralty

The Crown's naval authority. It prints verifiable sea hazards and standing instructions (avoidance of great sea creatures, Basin fair-weather practice), suppresses rovers in its own water, convoys in season, and keeps lists of foreign officers such as Admiral Ingrid Skall.

The realm's naval administration. It prints the Basin fair-weather practice in its sailing directions without any explanation, keeps an unpublished standing list of what each lane would need if any link were lost, and reviews the narrows arrangement annually. The Crown's naval administration, whose political head is the First Lord and whose professional summit is the Admiral of the Fleet. It keeps a charts office at Dover and issues route circulars.

Named with it

• Lord Admiral Henry · First Lord of the Admiralty
• Admiral Sir George Blackwood · Admiral of the Fleet
• Jonas William Pike · charts office surveyor
• Captain Anne Merrow · author of Admiralty route circular
• Admiral-Captain Ysabel Mere · basin command

Ties

• administers the Navy
• claims the Crown aerial service as a branch
• House Corbin is close to the professional fleet
• office of the Crown
• directs the Navy
• shares priority at Admiralty Basin with the Crown
• its circular is contrasted with the Dover pilots' roll's copy book
• sends sealed bags through the Dover Packet Office

At the table

The First Lord belongs to the royal household world, giving the Admiralty a direct line into court and making naval disputes slightly dynastic. Admiralty men insist aerial service remains a branch of maritime and Crown transport logic. The lesson of the northern raiders' wind mages — that naval power in those waters is a struggle of weather and nerve as much as of wood and gun — it has never entirely absorbed and never entirely forgotten. Henry answers upward to court and ministry, while captains trust Blackwood to know what a ship and a winter sea can bear. Middling families sometimes educate a boy for Admiralty examination rather than university.