'Admirals and the oilmen. The relationship between the Royal Navy and the oil companies, 1900-24' in S R Palmer & G Williams (eds), Charted and Uncharted Waters. Proceedings of a conference on British maritime history ... 1981

Notes:

Explores the 'border country' between maritime, naval and business history, the Royal Navy's switch from coal to oil and how this logistic change prompted the Admiralty to play an unfamiliar and radical role in the oil industry. Covers the period from c1900 but especially from 1912 when the Admiralty sought to obtain secure supplies of oil from British owned oil companies, notably Shell Transport & Trading Co Ltd, Burmah Oil Co Ltd and Anglo Persian Oil Co Ltd, detailing the nature of the Admiralty's oil supply arrangements, the negotiations and relationships between the parties, the long term contract reached between Burmah and Anglo Persian with the Admiralty acquiring a controlling shareholding in the latter. The issues are taken further in G Jones, ' The State and the Emergence of the British Oil Industry', 1981