File:E-in-C Albert John Durston.jpg

Taken from The Navy & Army Illustrated, 1898.

Original caption: "Sir Albert John Durston, K.C.B., Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy, holds a most important office, and has rendered yeoman's service to the country. It would have been so easy for him and his department to let things go on as they were, but it needed a bold man, with equal competence, and confidence in himself, to recommend the in troduction of water-tube boilers for the larger vessels of the Navy. How great has been the success and the advantage all the world knows. The Engineer-in-Chief, who is directly responsible to the Controller of the Navy for all that concerns the steam and electric machinery of war-ships, and for gun-mountings and torpedo apparatus, as well as otherwise, for engineer training establishments and such-like matters, is the head of a branch of the Admiralty which collaborates with the Director of Naval Construction and the Director of Naval Ordnance in the design and construction of war-ships. The business is conspicuously vast, complex, and important, and certainly Sir John Durston has done a great deal to invigorate the Department. He was born in October, 1846, in the Naval atmosphere of Devonport, and studied at the Royal School of Naval Architecture, South Kensington, where he passed a special course. In 1866 he entered the Naval Service as an assistant-engineer, and became a chief engineer in 1877, a fleet engineer in 1886, an inspector of machinery in 1888, and a chief inspector of machinery in 1893. He was chief engineer of Sheerness and Portsmouth Dockyards from 1881 to 1888, and in November of the latter year received his present appointment at the Admiralty. He has been president of the Institute of Marine Engineers, and is a vice-president of the Institution of Naval Architects."