caption branch death_date death_place birth_place allegiance image_size nationality battles birth_date rank image article_title name
sir charles wager kingdom of great britain 24 may 1743 stanley house , chelsea , england rochester , kent , england kingdom of great britain 220 british war of the spanish succession 24 february 1666 admiral sircharleswager.jpg charles wager
 sir charles wager
charles wager

sir charles wager -lrb- 24 february 1666 -- 24 may 1743 -rrb- was a british admiral and first lord of the admiralty between 1733 and 1742 .
despite heroic active service and steadfast administration and diplomatic service , wager 's reputation has suffered from a profoundly mistaken idea that the navy was then at a low ebb .
in reality its numerical preponderance over other navies was greater than at any other time in the century , and its dockyard facilities , overseas bases -lrb- wager was much involved in the development of new bases in the caribbean -rrb- , victualling organization , and central co-ordination were by far the most elaborate and advanced .
although british warship design was inferior to french in some respects , the real problem was an insufficiency of the versatile and seaworthy 60-gun ships , a class that wager 's admiralty had chosen to augment during the 1730s but , as wartime experience would show , not aggressively enough .
