After the Restoration the mantle of the Petts descended on a master shipwright of Portsmouth, who became an authoritative exponent of ship design, and to whose ability several improvements were due. “Another great step and improvement to our navy,” recorded Mr. Pepys in 1665, “put in practice by Sir Anthony Deane, was effected in the Warspight and Defiance, which were to carry six months’ provisions, and their guns four and a half feet from the water.” In the same diary for 19th May of the following year occurs the following characteristic note: “Mr. Deane did discourse about his ship the Rupert, which succeeds so well, as he has got great honour by it; and I some, by recommending him. The king, duke, and every body, say it is the best ship that was ever built. And then he fell to explain to me the manner of casting the draught of water which a ship will draw, beforehand, which is a secret the king and all admire in him; and he is the first that hath come to any certainty beforehand of foretelling the draught of water of a ship, before she is launched.” The calculations used by Sir Anthony Deane to forecast the draught of a projected ship might win him applause among the philosophers; but the scoffer at theory was able to point to considerable achievements wrought by men who made no pretence of any knowledge of science. In 1668 the Royal Charles, 110, was launched at Deptford. “She was built,” wrote Evelyn, “by old Shish, a plain, honest carpenter, master builder of this dock, but one who can give little account of his art by discourse, and is hardly capable of reading.”
The interest of Charles II in naval architecture may be gathered from a letter written by him in 1673: “I am very glad that the Charles does so well; a girdling this winter, when she comes in, will make her the best ship in England: the next summer, if you try the two sloops that were built at Woolwich that have my invention in them, they will outsail any of the French sloops. Sir Samuel Morland has now another fancy about weighing anchors; and the resident of Venice has made a model also to the same purpose.”
To girdle a ship, was to fasten planks along her sides some two or three strakes above and below the water-line; this had the effect of adding to her beam and thereby rendering her stiffer under sail. Incessant girdling seems to have been necessary at this period, to counter the defective conditions in which English ships were designed, built, and sent to sea. Ships were consistently restricted in beam, in compliance with the faulty “establishments,” and under a mistaken notion that narrowness, in itself, directly contributed to speed. “Length,” says Charnock, “was the only dimension regarded as indispensably necessary, by the ancients for their galleys and by the moderns for galleons. Breadth was not considered, or if considered was accepted as a necessary evil.” Pepys remarked, “that the builders of England, before 1673, had not well considered that breadth only will make a stiff ship.” It was an inquiry ordered by Sir Richard Haddock in 1684 which brought to light the fulness of the fallacy; ships were subsequently made broader, and experience showed that a good breadth was beneficial, not only for stability but for speed and sea-keeping qualities.
But even if a ship were built initially broad enough, the continual addition of armament and top-hamper to which she was often subjected had the effect eventually of impairing her stability. In such a case there were two remedies: to ballast or to girdle. The former expedient was objectionable, as it involved an increase both of displacement and of draught. Girdling was therefore generally practised. By this means the vessel was made stiffer, her buoyancy was improved, and her sides were also rendered less penetrable between wind and water. Even if, when thus girdled, she proved to be less stiff than the enemy this was not altogether a disadvantage: she formed a steadier gun-platform, her sides were less strained by the sea and, because her rolling was less violent, her topmasts were less liable to be sprung. But sufficient stiffness was necessary to allow of her lowest and heaviest tier of guns being fought in moderate weather; and for this reason alone, girdling was preferable to ballasting, in that the former tended to keep the guns high out of water while the latter brought them nearer the water-line.
Although rigidly restricted in dimensions, ships put to sea in these days under such varying conditions that it was difficult indeed to foretell whether a vessel were seaworthy or not. A commissioner of James the Second’s reign complained bitterly of the injudicious management whereby “many a fast sailing ship have come to lose that property, by being over-masted, over-rigged, over-gunned (as the Constant Warwick, from 26 guns and an incomparable sailer, to 46 guns and a slug), over-manned (vide all the old ships built in the parliament time now left), over-built (vide the Ruby and Assurance), and having great taffrails and galleries, etc., to the making many formerly a stiff, now a tender-sided ship, bringing thereby their head and tuck to lie too low in the water.”
In spite of these strictures it must be remembered that our ships had qualities which, brought into action by brave crews and resolute leaders, served the nation well in the day of battle. In no naval war, perhaps, did superiority of material exert such a consistent and preponderating effect as in the seventeenth century wars between this country and Holland.
The tactics of the English leaders involved close-quarter fighting. The material, both guns and ships, certainly favoured these tactics; though to what extent tactics dictated the form of the material, or material reacted on tactics, it may be difficult to decide. In one respect tactics undoubtedly directed the evolution of the material: while the Dutch employed a “gregarious system” of mutual support of their vessels by others of various force, fighting in groups and throwing in fireships as opportunity offered, the English always sought to match individual ships.[18] Forming in line ahead—a formation, said to have been first used by Tromp, which enabled our vessels to avoid the fireships—they came to close quarters in a series of duels in which the strength and prowess of each individual ship was its only means of victory. The success of this plan caused the Dutch to imitate it. The size of their ships rapidly grew; their weakest units were discarded. Three-deckers were laid down, at first carrying only 76 guns, but later, after the peace of 1674, as large as the British first rates. But by that time the critical battles had been lost and won. And the success of the British is ascribed, in Derrick’s memoirs, chiefly to the superior size of our ships, “an advantage which all the skill of the Dutch could not compensate.”
With the institution of the line of battle a need arose for a symmetry between ships which had never before existed. From this arose, not only that more complete differentiation of force[19] which lasted through the following century, but a still more stringent ruling of dimensions according to “establishments,” which ruling, injudiciously applied, was henceforth to exercise so harmful an effect on English naval construction.
After the peace of 1674 the navy sank into inefficiency. The French navy, on the other hand, ascended in power with an extraordinary rapidity. By 1681 it had expanded so much under the fostering care of M. Colbert that it comprised no fewer than one hundred and fifteen ships of the line. In design, as apart from construction, French ships were superior to ours. In size especially they had an advantage, being universally larger than British ships of the same artillery force: an advantage based on the law, known to our own shipbuilders but never applied, that the greater the dimensions of a ship, relatively to the weight she has to carry, the better she will sail. So superior were some French ships which visited Spithead seen to be, that in imitation of them Sir Anthony Deane was ordered to design and build the Harwich; and from the plans of this ship nine others were ordered by parliament, the class constituting the greatest advance in naval architecture of that time. But this departure from precedent had little effect. In dimensions as compared with tonnage we continued parsimonious. In the face of French experience we cramped our ships to the requirements of the faulty “establishments”; and until the end of the century no increase in size took place except in the case of some ships laid down in the year 1682, when the threat of a war with Louis XIV not improbably caused them to be constructed on a more extensive scale than had ever before been in practice.
In another respect our ships were inferior in design to those of our chief rivals: in the extreme degree of “tumble home” given to their sides. Adhering to ancient practice in this particular, in order to obtain advantages which have already been mentioned, we suffered increasingly serious disadvantages. The sides of our ships were so convex that, when sailing on a wind, every wave was guided upward to the upper deck, thereby keeping the crew continually wet. The deck space required for the efficient working of the sails was contracted. Moreover, ships having this high degree of convexity were more easily overset than were wall-sided ships. This exaggerated convexity had a striking effect on one feature of our construction, viz. the manner in which we affixed the chain-plates, to which the shrouds were secured, in a low position on the curve of the hull; while Holland and France raised them to a more convenient height—over the upper tier of guns, in their two-decked ships.