The Evolution of Naval Armament

by Frederick Leslie Robertson

But how difficult a matter it was for a builder to depart from tradition, is shown from Pett’s account of the inquisition to which he was subjected in connection with the building of this famous ship. His rivals took advantage of the “Commission of Enquiry into the abuses of the navy,” of 1608, to indict him for bad design, bad building, and peculation. So much hard swearing took place on both sides that at last King James himself decided to act as judge, and at Woolwich, with the wretched Phineas on his knees before him, opened his court of inquiry. “Much time,” says the diarist, “was spent in dispute of proportions, comparing my present frame with former precedents and dimensions of the best ships, for length, breadth, depth, floor, and other circumstances. One point of proportion was mainly insisted upon and with much violence and eagerness urged on both sides, which was the square of the ship’s flat in the midships, they affirming constantly upon their oath it was full thirteen feet, we as constantly insisting that it was but eleven foot eight inches.” In the end the king called in a mathematician and had the controversy settled by actual measurement. None of the charges brought against him being sustained, Phineas was acquitted and restored once more to royal favour, to his own delight and to that of his youthful patron, Prince Henry.

The Prince Royal marks a new epoch in ship design. She was such a departure from all previous forms that she made the fame of Phineas Pett secure. She became, indeed, the parent or type of all future warships down to the beginning of the nineteenth century; for (says Charnock), were the profuse ornaments removed, her contour, or general appearance, would not so materially differ from that of the modern vessel of the same size as to render her an uncommon sight, or a ship in which mariners would hesitate to take the sea. In her a final departure was made from the archaic form imposed on fighting ships by tradition. The picture Charnock gives of her is of a highly ornamented but low and flush-decked vessel armed to the ends with two tiers of heavy guns. The projecting beak-head, a relic from the galley days which had been so prominent a feature of Tudor construction, has almost disappeared: the bow curves gracefully upward to a lion close under the bowsprit. The wales have little sheer; the stern is compact and well supported, with beautiful lines. The quarter galleries are long, and are incorporated in the structure in a curious manner: in the form of indented, tower-like projections, with ornamented interspaces. The whole picture gives evidence of stout scantlings and invaluable solidity. Although in many respects the Prince Royal was a masterpiece she was primitive in the variety of her armament. On the lower deck she carried two cannon-petro, six demi-cannon, twelve culverins; on her upper deck eighteen demi-culverins; and on quarter-deck and poop a number of sakers and port-pieces. Also, unfortunately, she was built of green timber, so her life was short.

In building a ship of unprecedented burthen Pett had the support of a large public opinion. The advantages attaching to large size were by this time generally appreciated: in the case of fighting ships, in respect of strength, artillery force, and sea endurance, in the case of merchant ships, in respect of carrying capacity and economy of crew. The growth in the size of merchant shipping during the reign was indeed remarkable. Trade followed the flag, and the Jacobean merchant made haste to profit by the conquests of the Elizabethan adventurer. For a short while after the war with Spain our mercantile marine was stagnant; at the accession of James I only small vessels of less than a hundred tons were being built, and English merchants were having strange recourse to the hiring of foreigners. But this state of things did not last for long. The story of the success of the Earl of Cumberland and his 800-ton Scourge of Malice, and the sight of the great Portuguese carrack captured in 1592, are said to have stimulated the merchants of London to possess themselves of vessels fit for the Eastern trade. It is said, again, that the appearance of two large Dutch ships in the Thames supplied the sudden impulse to build big. Be that as it may, “the idea spread like wild-fire.” Larger ships were laid down, and by the end of the reign the country possessed a considerable fleet of ships of 500 tons and above. In one instance, at least, the pendulum swung too far, and experience soon exposed the disadvantages of excessive dimensions: the reduction in strength, the unhandiness in shallow waters, the almost impossibility of graving and breaming, the risking in a single bottom of too great a venture. The Trades Increase, built for the new East India Company in 1605 by William Burrell and launched by the king at Deptford, was of no less than 1,100 tons burthen. On her first voyage to Java she was lost by fire, and no more ships of her size were ordered by the Company.

With the expansion of merchant shipping and with the recognition of artillery as the main instrument of naval warfare fighting ships made a corresponding advance in size. The Commission of Reform of 1618, on whose report the subsequent reorganization of the Navy was based, held that the primacy of the big gun had at last been established. “Experience teacheth,” the Commissioners recorded, “how sea-fights in these days come seldom to boarding, or to great execution of bows, arrows, small shot and the sword, but are chiefly performed by the great artillery breaking down masts, yards, tearing, raking, and bilging the ships, wherein the great advantage of His Majesty’s navy must carefully be maintained by appointing such a proportion of ordnance to each ship as the vessel will bear.” They recognized the extravagance of small ships, and advised that in future the royal navy should consist of a nucleus of about thirty large ships, which with the merchant fleet should form one complete service; royal ships of over 800 tons; great ships of over 600 tons; middling ships of about 450 tons. They also formulated the chief requirements of naval construction in considerable detail. This pontifical pronouncement on ship dimensions was doubtless of value in connection with the contemporary project to which their work had reference; nevertheless it formed a dangerous precedent for future administrations. It shackled the genius of the shipbuilder. It degraded design. The ship, especially the timber-built sailing warship, was essentially a compromise between a number of conflicting elements. To obtain full value from his skill the designer required as free as possible a choice of means to his end; and any over-drawing of the specification, or surplusage of data beyond the barest requirements, tended to tie his hands and render impossible a satisfactory design. It was this over-specifying of dimensions in the interests of standardization which, as we shall presently see, stultified shipbuilding in England not only in the seventeenth but throughout the whole of the eighteenth century.

But the report of 1618 was doubtless of great value as a guidance for the building of the new Stuart navy. “The manner of building, which in ships of war is of greatest importance, because therein consists both their sailing and force. The ships that can sail best can take or leave (as they say), and use all advantages the winds and seas afford; and their mould, in the judgment of men of best skill, both dead and alive, should have the length treble the breadth, and the breadth in like proportion to the depth, but not to draw above 16 foot of water because deeper ships are seldom good sailers.... They must be somewhat snug built, without double galleries and too lofty upper works, which overcharge many ships and make them loom fair, but not work well at sea.” As for the strengthening of the royal ships the Commissioners subscribed to the manner of building approved by “our late worthy prince”: “first, in making three orlops, whereof the lowest being two feet under water, both strengtheneth the ship, and though her sides be shot through, keepeth it from bilging by shot and giveth easier means to find and stop the leaks. Second, in carrying their orlops whole floored throughout from end to end. Third, in laying the second orlop at such convenient height that the ports may bear out the whole fire of ordnance in all seas and weathers. Fourth, in placing the cook-rooms in the forecastle, as other ships of war do, because being in the midships, and in the hold, the smoke and heat so search every corner and seam, that they make the oakum spew out, and the ships leaky, and some decay; besides, the best room for stowage of victualling is thereby so taken up, that transporters must be hired for every voyage of any time; and, which is worst, when all the weight must be cast before and abaft, and the ships are left empty and light in the midst, it makes them apt to sway in the back, as the Guardland and divers others have done.”

The ships built under the regulations of the Commissioners were certainly an improvement on earlier ships in many respects, but in one element of power they proved to be deficient, namely, in speed. The stoutly built, full-bodied, lumbering English two-deckers were out-sailed and out-manœuvred, it was noticed, by the relatively light and fine-lined Hollanders. Moreover our smaller ships were known to be no match in speed for the Dunkirk privateers which at this time infested the seas. A new type was seen to be necessary. The existing differentiation of warships into rates or classes was insufficient. For the line of battle there must be ships in which force of artillery was the predominant quality; but for other duties there must also be ships in which speed, and not force, was the distinguishing note. From this necessity was evolved the frigate.

Soon after the accession of Charles I an attempt was made to establish the new type by building small vessels on the model of the largest, miniatures which it was hoped would prove good sailors and capable, although square-sailed, of sailing near a wind. The Ten Whelps were laid down: flush-decked three-masted vessels of 200 tons, 62 feet long on the keel and 25 feet in breadth. They were not a success. It was left for Dunkirk, “the smartest dockyard in Europe,” to found the new model. In imitation of a captured Dunkirk privateer our first frigate was built in 1646 by Peter, son of Phineas Pett, and her success was such that he had the achievement recorded on his tomb. The Constant Warwick was 85 feet in keel-length, 26 feet 5 inches in breadth, of 315 tons burden and 32 guns. She was “an incomparable sailer.” Before the first Dutch war was over she had taken as much money from privateers as would have completely laden her.

It seems probable that the prestige of his name was sufficient to give Peter Pett a freedom from interference in his design which was not accorded less distinguished shipbuilders. In ’45 Andrews Burrell, in a remonstance addressed to Parliament, protested, “For the love of heaven let not the shipwrights that are to build them [three frigates for special service] be misled by those that would, but cannot, direct them, which error hath been very hurtful to the navy heretofore.” By the interference of Sir John Pennington, he asserted, the builders of the Ten Whelps were so misled that they proved sluggish and unserviceable. “Let no rules be given the shipwrights more than their tonnage, with the number and weight of their ordnance, and that the number and weight of their ordnance may be suitable to the burden of each frigate.”

King Charles, whose personal interest in the royal navy equalled that of his father, favoured the tendency to enlarge the tonnage and the individual power of his fighting ships. The Prince Royal displayed the advantages of size. The Dutch people, jealous of the interference with their eastern trade, were known to be building large ships. Across the channel an ambitious and all-powerful minister was envisaging the possession of a navy in which an inferiority in numbers might be neutralized by the superiority of the unit. In France a vessel of 1400 tons had been laid down. Charles determined to take up the challenge, obtaining the money by hook or by crook wherewith to build a greater. In the year 1634 the decision was made. A model of a great three-decker mounting a hundred and four guns was presented to him by Phineas Pett, and shortly afterwards the master of the shipwrights received the royal command to build a ship, and to proceed in person to the forests of Durham to select the thickstuff, knee timber, and planking requisite for the task.

Opposition to the building of such a prodigious vessel appeared from different quarters. Great ships, in the opinion of Sir Walter Raleigh, were “of marvellous charge and fearful cumber.” The cost of so large a ship must needs be great, for not only the whole cost, but the cost per ton, increased with the size of the vessel; so wasteful a process was the building of a great ship, indeed, that it was not unusual to build a small ship simultaneously, out of the timber discarded: a practice known as “building a small ship out of a great one’s chips.” Ships of the greatest size, again, were “of little service, less nimble, less mainable, and very seldom employed.” Nor was it believed that so large a vessel as that projected could be built. Trinity House, when they heard of the design, uttered a formal protest. Such a ship, they argued, would be too big for service, and unsafe from her enormous size. To carry such a number of pieces she must be a three-decker, and to build a serviceable three-decker was beyond the art or wit of man; if the lower tier were too low they would be useless in a sea, if at 5 or 5½ feet above the water-line then the third tier would be so high as to endanger the ship. In spite of this protest the new ship was laid down, and nearly two years later, in the autumn of ’37, she was launched at Woolwich, “the pride and glory of the Caroline navy.”