page_title: Victualling Commissioners
section_title: Before 1815
hierarchical_section_title: Victualling Commissioners / The Victualling Yards / Before 1815
caption_attribution_description: English: Victualling Office Lane Gibraltar
context_page_description: The Commissioners for the Victualling of the Navy, often called the Victualling Commissioners or Victualling Board, was the body responsible under the Navy Board for victualling ships of the British Royal Navy. It oversaw the vast operation of providing naval personnel with enough food, drink and supplies to keep them fighting fit, sometimes for months at a time, in whatever part of the globe they might be stationed.
  It existed from 1683 until 1832 when its function was first replaced by the Department of the Comptroller of Victualling and Transport Services until 1869 then that office was also abolished and replaced by the Victualling Department.
context_section_description: By the early eighteenth century, Victualling Yards of various sizes had been established alongside several Royal Naval Dockyards in Britain, including Portsmouth, Plymouth, Deptford and Harwich (though the latter was closed, along with Harwich Dockyard, in 1713). There was also a Victualling Yard at Dover (which had no Dockyard, but was used to service ships in the nearby anchorage the Downs); the Maison Dieu served as Dover's victualling store from 1544 until 1831, when the Yard closed.
  HM Victualling Yard, Deptford was the largest and busiest of the Victualling Yards (being advantageously close to the food wharves and markets of London).  The other Naval Dockyards in the Thames area (Chatham, Sheerness and Woolwich) were all dependent on Deptford for victualling. (The Commissioners did maintain a small Yard at Chatham but little or no manufacturing took place here, it was more a storage depot). Deptford also directly supplied a
  Victualling Yard at Gibraltar (established in the eighteenth century).
  In the first decade of the nineteenth century, the Commissioners established new minor Yards at Sheerness and at Deal (which, like Dover, provided for ships anchored in the Downs). In the following decade, a complex of naval and victualling storehouses was built on Haulbowline Island in Cork Harbour, Ireland (successor to an earlier depot at Kinsale). It was known as the Royal Alexandra Victualling Yard before being handed over to the Irish government in 1923.
  Overseas victualling was, where possible, arranged through contracts with local suppliers. In some places these were overseen by a resident Agent appointed by the Victualling Commissioners (though in more out-of-the-way locations ships' captains were expected to make their own arrangements). In the 17th century there were Agent Victuallers in Leghorn and Tangiers, as well as at a range of ports at home; by 1810 they were in such diverse locations as Malta, Rio de Janeiro, the Cape and Heligoland. For maximum flexibility, any necessary buildings were for the most part rented, rather than purpose-built; (although, in the 18th century, Yards were established on Jamaica and Antigua, these did not prove durable). On Gibraltar, however, a Victualling Yard was built in 1799 (following the loss of a rented property), and remained in operation until the 1980s.
caption: A street sign in Gibraltar
exif: {"Image Make": "ZTE", "Image Model": "Orange Monte Carlo", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "134", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "432", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "57328", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:07:22 19:17:03", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:07:22 19:17:03", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FocalLength": "431/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2560", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1920", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "308"}