At the end of the seventeenth century, captains in the Navy were being paid £1 10s. a month during the time of peace, but during war this was raised to £3. The idea of a naval uniform originated in France in the year 1669, but the practice of all grades of naval officers wearing uniform did not become general until the time of the first Empire. During the reign of our Charles II, ships of the English Navy carried as officers, captains, lieutenants, masters, pursers, surgeons, and chaplains. The seventeenth-century French Navy owed a very considerable debt to the far-sighted enterprise of Colbert, but directly it owed a very great deal to the labours of its chaplains, who instructed the pilots in their work and taught naval aspirants the mysteries of astronomy and navigation. During the first part of the seventeenth century the finest shipbuilders had been the Dutch, for, thanks to their East Indian and other colonies, Holland had every reason for building big ocean-going ships. No one in Spain, England, or France could for a time build ships like theirs. And so it was but natural that the zealous French went to Holland, lived there for some time in order to learn shipbuilding, translated the best Dutch authorities on this subject into French, and returned home to build on even more scientific lines. Therefore in the eighteenth century the French could build vessels as no one else in the world. It was from the latter, in turn, that the English at last acquired so much skill that the old rule-of-thumb methods of ship construction were for ever banished and the era of scientific shipbuilding entered upon. In such scientific matters as the improvement of gunnery, the log, the stability and better under-water design of ships, France led the way for those vast reforms which were subsequently to follow.
In the whole history of shipbuilding there is no name which stands out so prominently as Pett. From the time of Henry VIII right down till that of William and Mary, one or more members of this family were busy building ships for the State. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the finest and largest ship which had ever been in the British Navy was the Prince Royal, of 1200 tons. She was designed and built by Sir Phineas Pett, and her keel was laid down in 1608, and the first attempt to launch her was made on the 24th of September in 1610. Among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum is a quaint volume of a hundred and thirteen pages, entitled “The Life of Phineas Pette, who was borne Nov. 1st, 1570,” and the account continues down to the year 1638. It is a curious record, in which the most intimate domestic matters are mixed up with the most interesting facts concerning the building of ships. For example: “In the beginning of August, I was summoned to Chatham with my fellow master shipwrites there to take a survey of the Navy according to the yearly Custom.... The 6th. of this Month of Augt. my wife was delivered of her 5th. son at Woolwich.”
However, this MS. attracts our attention, because it gives us a most interesting and detailed account of the way ships in England were launched only twenty-two years after the Armada was fought and vanquished. There is, I believe, in existence no such satisfactory a picture of the time-honoured ceremony of sending a ship for the first time into the water that is to be her abiding support. I will, therefore, ask the reader to be so good as to accompany me down to Woolwich a few days before the end of September in that year 1610. Here, at last, after two years’ worry, work, and anxiety, Pett has finished his master-work, the biggest craft which even a Pett had ever fashioned. Even to-day, as then, the shipbuilder feels never so much anxiety as the day on which the launching of a great ship is to take place. A hitch—a difficulty in persuading the ship and water to become acquainted—may spoil the labour of many a month, besides being a source of great depression to all concerned, from the builder downwards and upwards.
Early Seventeenth-Century Dutch West Indiamen.
By a Contemporary Artist. These were the merchant ships which used to bring back to Holland the rich cargoes from across the Atlantic. Notice the exquisite carving.
However, here we are arrived at the Woolwich yard, where the great Prince Royal is seen towering high above other craft, and the last touches are being given alike to the ship and to the arrangements, for Royalty are coming to grace the launching ceremony. There was a great “standing sett up,” Pett informs us, “in the most convenient place in the yard for his Majesty, the Queen and the Royal Children, and places fitted for the Ladies and Council all railed in and boarded.” All the rooms in Pett’s own lodgings had been “very handsomely hanged and furnished.” “Nothing was omitted that could be imagined anyways necessary both for ease and entertainment.” Pett had been round the dockyard on Sunday, September 23, and then in the evening came a messenger to him with a letter ordering him to be very careful and have the hold of the Prince Royal searched lest “some persons disaffected might have board some holes privilly an’ the ship to sink her after she should be launched.” Pett, however, was far too wide-awake not to have foreseen any such possibility.
On Monday morning, then, he and his brother and some of his assistants had the dock-gates opened. Everything was got ready for the approach of high tide and the time when the Prince Royal was to be floated. But matters were not going to be quite satisfactory. It was, of course, a spring tide, but unfortunately it was blowing very hard from the south-west, and this kept back the Thames flood so that the water failed to come up to its expected mark, and the tide was no better than at neaps. This was a great disappointment, for presently arrived the King and his retinue. Pett and the Lord Admiral and the chief naval officers received James as His Majesty landed from his barge, but it was with a heavy heart. The King was conducted to Mr. Lydiard’s house, where he dined. The drums and trumpets were placed on the poop and forecastle of the Prince Royal, and the wind instruments assigned their proper place beside them. But still the tide was behind-hand.
So Pett thought out a device. About the time of high water he had a great lighter made fast at the stern of the Prince Royal so as to help to float the latter. But it was of no avail, for the strong wind “overblew the tide, yett the shipp started, but yet the Dock gates pent her in so streight that she stuck fast between them by reason the ship was nothing lifted with the tide as we expected she should, and ye great lighter by unadvised counsel being cut of(f), the sterne of the ship settled so hard upon the ground that there was no possibility of launching that tide.” Furthermore, so many people had gone aboard the ship that one could hardly turn round. It was a terrible contretemps that the ship remained unyielding, for here were the distinguished visitors on board waiting. “The noble Prince himself accompany with ye Lord Admirall and other great Lords were upon the poope where the standing great guilt Cupp was ready filled with wine to name ye shipp so soon as she had been on floate according to ancient Custome and ceremoneys performed at such time by drinking part of the wine, giving the ship her name and heaving the standing cup overboard.”
But time and tide wait on no man, prince or shipbuilder. It was no use to expect a launch that day. “The King’s Majtie,” Pett adds sorrowfully, “was much grieved to be frustrate of his expectation comeing on purpose tho very ill at ease to have done me honour, but God saw it not so good for me, and therefore sent this Cross upon me both to humble me and make me to know that however we purposed He would dispose all things as He pleased.” Thus, at five that afternoon, the King and Queen departed. When the last guest had gone, Pett, pathetic but plucky, set to work with his assistants “to make way with the sides of the gates,” and, plenty of help being at hand, got everything ready before the next flood came up. The Lord Admiral had sat up all night in a chair in one of the rooms adjoining the yard till the tide “was come about the ship.” It was a little past full moon—when the tides, of course, are at their highest—and the weather was most unpropitious. It rained, it thundered and it lightened for half an hour, during which Prince Henry returned to the yard and went aboard the Prince Royal together with the Lord Admiral and Pett. It was now about 2 a.m., or an hour before high water. Another attempt was made to launch the great ship, and happily this time she sped into the water without any difficulty or the straining of screws or tackles. As she floated clear into the channel, the Prince drank from the cup and solemnly named the ship the Prince Royal. Thus, at length, this glorious ship that was to be so much admired presently with her fine carvings and decorations, with her elaborate figurehead at the bows representing her namesake on horseback, kissed the waters of the Thames. Soon, fitted with three lanterns at the poop and her yards and masts, her fifty-five guns and her spread of canvas, she would go forth to the open sea, the proudest ship flying the British ensign. But though this ship contained many of the improvements which had been made recently in the art of shipbuilding, yet there had been a scandalous excess of expense, for the Commissioners discovered that more than double the loads of timber had been used than had been estimated for.