Announced on 25 December 1902 one of the primary objectives of the Selborne scheme was the unification of officer training and complete integration of the executive officer and the engineer. From the term of 1903 onwards all Executive Branch cadets would, upon promotion to Sub-Lieutenant, have the opportunity to become engineer officers as an option to the already existing choices of navigation, torpedo and gunnery. Their names would appear in the Executive Branch section in the front of the Navy List with the letter "E" in parenthesis after their rank to denote their speciality. The Engineer would at last become an executive officer with complete interchangeability being possible at the commander level. Conceivably, the engineer could aspire to become Admiral of the Fleet.

Essentially the scheme was a success. From then onwards all officers would be drawn from the same range of backgrounds, enter the navy through a common set of circumstances and share a common educational experience in their formative years. This would eventually eliminate much of the stratification that existed in the late-Victorian wardrooms. Commonality of training also went a long way toward producing a more capable and better educated officer. However, the five year training course, much of it of a practical nature, hitherto given to young men who wanted to become engineers, would be substantially diluted to the detriment of the trainee and the service.

Predictably, resistance to the scheme was immediate and substantial and the idea that an officer without executive experience could aspire to senior command positions was a particularly sensitive point. In the end Fisher was forced to make some concessions, one being that once a young officer opted to become an engineer he would be obliged to remain one for the rest of his career. Other more radical aspects of the scheme, such as the integration of the Marine officer into the shipboard watchkeeping roster and the elimination of the Paymaster Branch never reached the implementation stage.

The problem remained of what to do about the old-style engineers. In March 1903 an Order-in-Council granted the existing engineers Executive Branch ranks but preceded by the word "Engineer". However, this only went part way toward their assimilation, they were still listed in the Navy List in their own section separate from the Executive Branch and they still wore civil branch rank lace.

It took a while for the Selborne scheme to mature but in 1910, following the graduation of the last term of long course engineers, the RNEC Keyham was closed and all engineer officer training transferred to the RNCs at Dartmouth and Osbourne. It was not until 1913 that the first of the new engineers made their appearance and by the outbreak of war there were still only 16 Lieutenants (E) in the fleet. The Selborne scheme engineers were not particularly well thought of in the engine rooms of the fleet and were considered by the professional lower deck technicians to be "The monied people who took up engineering".

The Lower Deck