William Henry White Sir William Henry White ( 2 February 1845 – 27 February 1913 ) was a prolific British warship designer and Chief Constructor at the Admiralty . He was born in Devonport and became an apprentice at the naval dockyard there in 1859 . In 1863 he obtained a scholarship to enter the newly formed Royal School of Naval Architecture in South Kensington , in London . After his apprenticeship he worked for the Admiralty on specifications and calculations for new ships , and became secretary to the then Chief Constructor of the Admiralty , Edward Reed , until the latter ' s resignation on 9 July 1870 . He was then appointed instructor on naval design at the Royal School of Naval Architecture , and in 1872 became secretary of the Council of Construction which oversaw all Royal Navy ship construction . From 1872 – 1873 he worked at Pembroke and Portsmouth Dockyards . In March 1875 he was promoted to Assistant Constructor and married later in that year . He also published his " A Manual of Naval Architecture . For the use of Officers of the Royal Navy , Shipbuilders " . He resigned from the Admiralty in April 1883 and joined Sir William Armstrong ' s company as designer and manager of their warship construction . He returned to the Admiralty as Director of Naval Construction and Assistant Controller of the Navy on 1 August 1885 . He was immediately involved in a reorganisation of the dockyards and technical departments , and later worked on the design of the revolutionary " Royal Sovereign " - class battleships . He was knighted in 1895 . He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1901 following criticism in Parliament for the near - capsizing of the Royal Yacht , the " Victoria and Albert III " , which had happened when she was floated out of the graving dock where she was being fitted out on 3 July 1900 . The cause was around 700 tons of excessive weight above the centre of gravity of the ship , in particular a large amount of cement sound - proofing around the Royal apartments . Consequently , the metacentric height was reduced from a stable 2 feet to a very unsafe 3 inches . Although it exonerated him from direct responsibility , the Admiralty blamed him for " not sufficiently impressing upon your subordinates the novelty and importance of the task entrusted to them " . He submitted his last design for a battleship , the " King Edward VII " class , in April 1901 , but he was ill and constantly worried about trivial matters , unable to delegate even the most minor decision . He requested early retirement and left the Admiralty on 31 January 1902 . In the 16 years that he was head of naval construction , he bore ultimate responsibility for the design of 43 battleship s , 26 armoured cruiser s , 102 protected cruiser s and 74 unarmoured warships , a total of 245 ships worth ( in 1900 ) £80 million . Following his retirement , he was a consulting architect in the design of the Cunard liner RMS " Mauretania " and president of the Institution of Civil Engineers , the Institution of Mechanical Engineers , and the Institution of Marine Engineers . He was also Chairman of the Council , Royal Society of Arts from 1909 – 1910 and governor of Imperial College from 1907 until his death from a stroke in 1913 . White was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1888 He was conferred with Honorary Membership of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland in 1894 . He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1900 .