4 - Economy versus Efficiency

Summary

‘The transport service is liable to a great variety of unforeseen or unavoidable incidents and delays which, though independent of the Board itself, might blemish the impact of honest and unwearied energies.’

The Inevitability of Delays

Each government administration was anxious to reduce the costs of war. Occasionally, attempts to minimise expenditure resulted in decisions that lessened the efficiency of the transport service – in particular, instructions to discharge transports only to find that they were required again within a few months. The ensuing difficulty of re-procuring and preparing the transports for service caused frustration, extra effort and sometimes additional cost. Retention of transports might well have speeded up the preparation of some expeditions. These situations exposed the lack of forward planning and exacerbated the combined effects of ministerial interference, misunderstandings, miscommunication, departmental obfuscation and confusion that were invariably prevalent during the build-up to most military expeditions. At the port of embarkation the agents for transports were responsible for bringing order to an often frenetic situation. Delays were almost unavoidable given the number of departments involved, each with its own priorities and all operating under Treasury scrutiny for economy, combined with the inevitable reliance upon good fortune and favourable weather conditions. Such delays were hardly a surprise, but rarely were they anticipated or were mitigations planned. When the preparations for expeditions did not run as smoothly as was expected there was invariably a degree of manoeuvring to place the responsibility for failure elsewhere.

The Transport Board was in an invidious position given its central role in this logistics process; other departments were not slow to criticise it. That criticism, which was usually directed through the secretary of state for war, invariably led to demands to conduct an inquiry into the circumstances relating to the complaint. Study of the directions issued to the Board by its political masters and of the outcome of some of these enquiries reveals much about the complexity of the process of preparing for an expedition: it highlights the huge endeavours required and demonstrates the quality of the achievement. This chapter will consider the impact of political direction and the outcome from three enquiries, which will illustrate how delays occurred and the effects thereof.