It may appear that I have given undue prominence to the corruption and bad spirit of the navy in these years. But the insistence has been deliberate, for the great work which had to be done from 1744 onwards, for a generation, was to raise the standard of conduct expected from officers, not only by public opinion working from without, but by their own code of honour working within the ranks of the service. This would only be effected by bringing forward new men. If rules and regulations could have saved the navy from discredit and mismanagement, it had all it needed in the code of the Duke of York. The evil lay not in the laws but the men. Till they were better there was no real hope of reform. That one was wanted was beyond all question. In 1749 Sandwich, now First Lord, acting perhaps at the instigation, and certainly with the hearty approval, of Anson, made an Admiralty visitation of the dockyards. It was the first ever held by the Lords of the Admiralty or even by the administrative officers of the Navy Board. According to Sir John Barrow, who condensed the report in his life of Anson, they, _i.e._ the Lords of the Admiralty, “found the men generally idle, the officers ignorant, the stores ill-arranged, abuses of all kinds overlooked, the timber ill-assorted, that which was longest in store being undermost, the Standing Orders neglected, the ships in ordinary in a very dirty and bad condition, filled with women and children, and that the officers of the yard had not visited them, which it was their duty to do; that men were found borne and paid as officers who had never done duty as such, for which their Lordships reprimanded the Navy Board through the comptroller; that the store-keepers’ accounts were many years in arrear, and, what was most extraordinary, that the Navy Board had never required them;—in short, gross negligence, irregularities, waste, and embezzlement were so palpable, that their Lordships ordered an advertisement to be set in the various parts of the yards, offering encouragement and protection to such as should discover any misdemeanours, committed either by the officers or workmen, particularly in employing workmen or labourers, on their private affairs, or in any other abuse whatever.”