The straightforward answer is that experience in the navy was not regarded as a sine qua non for the role of First Lord of the Admiralty. In fact, by the Edwardian period it was normal for the First Lord to not have a naval background. Much in the same way we don't expect every Education Secretary to have been a teacher or every Chancellor to have been an economist.

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The First Lord was again a civilian once Barham resigned, and that remained the case for the rest of our period [1805 - 1927], with the brief exception of the Duke of Northumberland (1842-3). Nor were there any with previous experience of the naval offices, apart from three former Parliamentary Secretaries (Halifax, Corry and Northbrook) and two briefly tenured junior lords (Childers and Geddes).^(1)

The role of the First Lord was to represent the interests of the Navy in the Cabinet and to prepare and lay before Parliament the annual Naval Estimates. On the finer details the First Lord was advised by a Board of the Admiralty.^(2)

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Notes

^(1) C.I. Hamilton, The Making of the Modern Admiralty: British Naval Policy Making, 1805-1927 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p.80

^(2) Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (London: Penguin, 2018), p.157