Talk:Robert Spencer Robinson

Controller

User 67.238.150.114 added:

"But Robinson's greatest achievement was his shepherding through the Admiralty design maze of the three great oceanic, mastless, turreted ironclads, HMS Devastation, Thunderer and Dreadnought in the face of fierce opposition, particularly from Captain Cooper Coles. These three warships were the nucleus of future battleships,once masts and sails and broadside ironclads had been discarded."

No source was provided for this POV statement. A few points may be made about this statement:

• Was there a "design maze"? Surely not in Robinson's time. If Robinson had thought that there was an "Admiralty design maze", surely he would have done something about it. After all, he was in charge of it long enough, and had excellent relations with his most important subordinate, Reed.
• Coles was on the outside - agitating through public and naval opinion. The relationship between the Admiralty and Coles was difficult. The Controller's department wanted to benefit from some of Coles' ideas - but they did not like the way that Coles (like some other inventors) promoted his ideas particularly when he used the media and politicians. (Compare with the "short ship controversy" of the early 1980s, or AH Pollen in the years before and after World War I.) I do not know whether Coles could have been handled better. Robinson was certainly a difficult man to deal with. There were probably faults on both sides.
• Robinson had responsibility for contruction and repairs for the whole Navy (though not sole responsibility). He left the Navy in very good shape (partly because he lied to get bigger budgets than necessary). The much criticised policy of building a fleet of samples turned out to be exactly the right policy for the time - better than the 1860s French policy of building large classes of near identical ships.
• As for the three ships named - there were many other excellent ships that Robinson was responsible for.

--Toddy1 (talk) 09:50, 12 June 2010 (UTC)