Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

We give in Fig. 63 an illustration of the Royal Charles mentioned above. This delightful picture is from a photograph of a model in the South Kensington Museum. Built at Portsmouth in 1672 to the designs of Sir Anthony Deane, she carried 100 guns: her length was 136 feet, beam 46 feet, depth 18 feet 3 inches, draught 20 feet 6 inches. The arms of England and the lantern that ornamented her stern are still preserved in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, for the Royal Charles was one of those vessels which were either captured or destroyed when the Dutch came up to Chatham in 1667. In the beautiful model before us the ports are correctly gilded. The rake and length of the bowsprit are in accordance with the information that has been handed down to us. At the extreme end of the latter will be seen the sprit topmast, up which the sprit topsail was hoisted. A jackstaff is at the top of the sprit topmast. The present model does not show topgallant yards, but as we know from Heyward they were found in the inventory of this ship. Below the sprit topmast and on the bowsprit will be noticed the spritsail yard now kept fixed to the bowsprit.

As to what vessels of the seventeenth century looked like under way the delightfully realistic picture which Mr. Charles Dixon has painted for our frontispiece will materially help our imagination. And here perhaps we may say a word regarding the subject of the flags carried at this period. After the union of England and Scotland in 1603 all British vessels flew the Union flag of the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew in the maintop for a time, English and Scotch ships also carrying their national colours in the foretop. Ensigns of red, white or blue with the St. George’s Cross on a white canton next to the ensign staff were also commonly carried until the time of the Commonwealth. But on May 5, 1634, it was ordered that men-of-war alone were to fly the Union flag in future, and that merchantmen according to their nationality were to fly the St. George’s or the St. Andrew’s flag merely. This rule ended in February, 1649, when Parliament directed men-of-war to fly as an ensign the St. George’s Cross on a white field.[104] The Union flag was carried on the sprit topmast as shown in the frontispiece, and to-day the Jack is still seen at the bows of our men-of-war, though they be built of wood no longer.

Edward Heyward in his book just mentioned gives still further details of contemporary ships. The rule which he mentions for ascertaining the length of the mainmast was that it should be half the length of the keel and once the length of the beam put together. The mainstay was to be in thickness half of the diameter of the mainmast. The shrouds were to be one half the thickness of the stay, and the topmast shrouds to be one half the main shrouds’ thickness. One ton of hemp required three barrels of tar. As to the ship’s boats of the Sovereign, her longboat measured 50 feet 10 inches long, 12½ feet broad, and 4¼ feet deep. Her pinnace was 36 feet long, 9½ feet broad, 3¼ feet deep. Her skiff was 27 feet long, 7 feet broad, and 3 feet deep. Fourth-rates only carried a longboat and a pinnace, fifth-rates carrying simply a longboat, while sixth-rates had only a 22-feet boat.

The Prince mentioned in the above list was the Prince Royal of James I.’s reign. Her career had been a distinctly varied one. As originally launched she was the Victory belonging to Elizabeth’s reign. She fought against the Armada, having been turned into a galleon two years before the fight. In 1610 as stated she had been rebuilt and called the Prince Royal, but this “rebuilding” was during this period something far more than any moderate adaptation. After the death of Charles I. her name was called during the Commonwealth the Resolution, and at the Restoration this was changed yet again to the Royal Prince. According to Le Sieur Dassie in his “L’Architecture Navale” printed in Paris in the year 1677, Le Soleil Royal had a tonnage of 2500 as well as 120 guns and 1200 men. Le Royal Louis had the same tonnage and the same number of guns, but only a thousand men. He gives also a very full and interesting inventory of un vaisseau du premier rang of 2000 tons. Every detail is mentioned even to the ornements de chapelle. Very confusing is the naming of the three masts as used by the French at this time and embodied in Dassie’s work. Thus, as we hinted in a previous chapter, the foremast is the misaine, the main is the grand mast, while the mizzen is the mast d’artimont, or exactly the reverse of what we should have expected them to be named. From such a work as Dassie’s and, some years later, of Jean Bernoulli in his “Essay d’Une Nouvelle Théorie de la Manœuvre des Vaisseaux,” printed at Basle in 1724, we see how at last the scientific study of naval architecture had begun to make headway. The action of heavy bodies passing through the liquid sea, the relation of speed to design, were being slowly understood. Finally in 1794 the same scientific treatment was applied to sails. In “A Treatise Concerning the True Method of finding the proper area of the sails for Ships of the Line and from thence the length of masts and yards,” by F. H. af. Chapman, printed in London, the area of the sails in regard to the stability of ships is thoroughly entered into.

Fig. 64. A Dutch Man-of-war of about the End of the Seventeenth Century.

The illustration in Fig. 64 is of a model of a Dutch man-of-war now in the Royal United Service Museum, Whitehall. It is supposed to be of contemporary date, belonging roughly to the period of Louis XIV’s. rule, 1661-1715. The rigging may be relied upon, but the model is too broad in proportion to her length. The guns are also exaggerated in size, but for all that it may serve to assist the reader in visualising the ships of what was so important a maritime Power. The notable characteristic of the Dutch and French craft of the seventeenth century as opposed to the English was that the two former had their sterns terminating squarely, while the English rounded the lines of the stern above water more. This foreign characteristic of the square stern is everywhere noticeable in the contemporary paintings and engravings of Holland. Over and over again we see the overhanging stern gallery, with the transom stern below, going in (so to speak), for the gallery above to project out. We find it in the earliest yachts of Holland, in the Dutch East Indiamen as well as the ships of the line. The reader will recollect at an earlier period we referred to the “tumble-home” which had become a new phase in naval architecture consequent on the introduction of cannon on board ship. This during the ensuing two centuries had been overdone, so that the upper deck bore a ridiculously narrow proportion to the width of the ship at the water-line, but the Dutch in the height of their naval knowledge were the first of the nations to relinquish it. It is to the Dutch of the last part of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries that we owe the beginnings of the fore-and-aft rig and of yachting as we mentioned earlier. But in order that our attention may not be distracted from the history of the squaresail, it will be more convenient to deal with the development of the smaller craft in Chapter IX.

We have already referred to the great influence for good exercised on the English Navy by Dutch and French naval architects. Among the points of superiority which the smaller French craft possessed over ours was that their lower guns were as much as four feet above the water, an improvement that made for greater safety. They could also stow four months’ provisions, whereas our frigates were narrower and sharper, and carried their guns little more than three feet clear of the water, having space only for ten weeks’ provisions. It was as improvements on these defects that the Resolution and Rupert had been built by Sir Anthony Deane. During the reign of Charles II., also, Sir Philip Howard made an invention for sheathing his Majesty’s ships with lead in preference to using wooden boards with a layer of tar and hair between the sheath and the ship, the whole having been covered outside with a composition of sulphur, oil and other ingredients. The old method of sheathing with elm boards had been introduced by Hawkins during Elizabeth’s reign, but it does not appear to have been successful, for in a report dated October 12, 1587, the chief shipwrights state that the Bonaventure, which had been treated according to Hawkins’ method, had decayed timbers under her sheathing. But the reader will recollect that as far back as the reign of Edward VI. the ships that voyaged to the North-East under Chancellor and Willoughby had part of their underbody covered with thin sheets of lead, while the ancients of the time of Caligula and even before, had also adopted this method of preserving the hulls of ships. So Howard was really a reviver rather than an inventor.

Still, since complaint had been made that Hawkins’ method necessitated frequent cleaning, and the roughness of the wood-sheathed bottom interfered with the sailing abilities, Howard’s plan was adopted. The first experiment of using his milled lead sheathing was made on the Phœnix at Portsmouth in 1670-71, and afterwards on the Dreadnought, the Henrietta, and others in 1672. The Phœnix was careened at Sheerness in 1673, after two voyages to the Straits, and inspected by the King himself. In the same year Howard’s new method was finally adopted for the Navy by the Lords of the Admiralty. Considerable opposition was made by some critics, who rightly pointed out that the action of the lead was to corrode very rapidly the iron nails and rudder-irons of the ship, and eventually in 1682 the Navy Board reported against a further use of this sheathing.