For me the DNCs of the Victorian Royal navy are gentlemen to doff the cap to.
-Sir Edward Reed 1863-1872
-Nathaniel Barnaby 1872-1885
-Sir William White 1885-1902
These engineers and managers of vast amounts of public money and turning them via their departments into many hundreds of warships and equipment, the like of which had not been seen before or since.
From sail to turbine, they either pioneered or enacted swift development of technologies that saw warships progress as 'Steam beings'. While the navy was sometimes seen as conservative, (the retention and development of muzzle loading ordnance for example) they embraced electricity, metallurgy and steam propulsion technologies.