The Sovereign of the Seas, the Sovereign, or the Royal Sovereign, as she was called by successive governments, was another great advance in size and solidity on all preceding construction, and was the masterpiece of Phineas Pett. Her length by the keel was 128 feet, her main breadth 48 feet, her overall length 232 feet. She had three flush decks and a forecastle, a half-deck, a quarter-deck, and a roundhouse. Her armament showed an approach to symmetry; the lower tier consisted of cannon and demi-cannon, the middle tier of culverins and demi-culverins. In one respect she was less advanced than Pett’s earlier effort, the Prince Royal, in that she had an old-fashioned beakhead, low hawses and a low and exposed forecastle. In general form she was extolled by all, and bore witness to the genius of her designer. No better form, said a later critic and constructor[14] after making an analysis of her lines—no better form could have been devised for a ship built (according to the prevailing customs of the times) so high out of water and so overloaded with ornaments. The king took a personal pride in her, and during her construction visited Woolwich and “seriously perused all the ship within board.” For him an elaborate description was written which, quoted at length by various writers, serves to show the extent to which mere decoration contributed to the cost of a royal ship. Two pictures of the vessel are reproduced by Charnock, of such obvious disparity that they serve to show (as the author observes) to what a degree artists may differ in the presentment of the same vessel. They confirm, besides, the profuseness of the ornamentation which was massed on her—the trophies, angels, emblems, mouldings—which made her the occasion of loud complaints against ship-money, and “a miracle of black and gold.”
The Sovereign of the Seas had a distinguished career. When cut down a deck she proved to be an exceptionally serviceable unit, taking part in all the great actions of the Dutch wars and crowning her work at La Hogue, where she engaged, crippled, and forced to fly for shallow water the great Soleil Royal, 104, the French flagship. At length, when laid up at Chatham in 1696 in order to be rebuilt, she was set on fire by negligence and destroyed.
§
By the outbreak of the first Dutch war the modern ideas introduced by Phineas Pett had received a general embodiment in the navy. Blake found to his hand ships well suited to the intended warfare, nor was he much concerned to add either to their number or their magnitude. Only in one feature did the new vessels built show any difference from older construction: their depth in hold was reduced, probably to render them more suitable for work among the shallow waters of the coast of Holland.[15] In other important respects improvement had preceded the opening of hostilities.
The lofty stern with which it had been the custom to endow the sailing ship was a feature which had survived from ancient times. In the galley, whose armament was concentrated in the bows, the after part was not devoted to military fittings, but was appropriated chiefly to the accommodation of the officers. So it was in the galleon or sailing ship. With the desire and need for increased accommodation the extra space was obtained by prolonging aft the broad horizontal lines of the vessel and terminating them in a square frame. To give more space, quarter galleries were then added, outside the vessel. Then extra tiers of cabins were added, also with quarter galleries, each storey, as in the case of domestic architecture, projecting over that beneath it, and the whole forming, with its surmounting taffrails, lanterns and ornaments, an excessively weighty and top-heavy structure. Similarly, at the fore end of the ship there remained the survival of the ancient forecastle.
With the acceptance of artillery as the medium for battle, with the decay of boarding tactics and the decline in value of small man-killing firearms, close-fights and end-castles, the lofty forecastles and sterns ceased to possess much of their special value. The arguments of Sir Richard Hawkins’ day in favour of large cage-works no longer held; nor could the preference of some shipbuilders for high sterns, as allowing a quick sheer and thereby contributing to the girder strength of the hull, be considered sufficient to justify their retention. The stern galleries held a great deal of wind and tended to rot the decks in their vicinity; their weight put a strain upon the supporting keel; but, chiefly, the danger of their taking fire in action induced the authorities to cut them down. For similar reasons the forecastles were attacked. But there was strong opposition to their elimination, because of the cover which they afforded in a fight. In 1652 the Phœnix, one of the finest frigates in the service, was taken by a Dutch ship, “having no forecastle for her men to retire to.” In the second Dutch war experience confirmed their usefulness. “All the world,” wrote Mr. Secretary Pepys in his diary for the 4th July, 1666, “now sees the use of forecastles for the shelter of men.”
No general increase in the size of our ships took place till toward the end of the third Dutch war. Until that time the navy of France was a negligible quantity; in 1664, it is said, the only war-vessel at Brest was one old fireship. The Dutch, our only strong opponents, fought in ships not unlike our own, stout, buoyant vessels mounting from 24 to 60 guns, and of from 300 to 1200 tons burden. Geography had a curious influence on their construction. Owing to the shallowness of their coasts the Hollanders built their ships with less draught and flatter floors than those of other countries; from which policy they derived advantages of a greater carrying capacity and, in pursuit, an ability to retreat among the shallows; but on account of which they suffered a serious handicap in the hour of action, when, faced by English ships built of superior material and with finer bottoms which enabled them to hold a better wind, they were weathered and out-fought.[16]
There was no apparent advantage, therefore, in augmenting the size of our ships. Improvement was sought, rather, from a further unification of the calibres of the guns, and from an increase in the number carried. Their characteristics of shortness and large bore were such as to make them well-suited to the form of battle now favoured by English leaders—the close-quarter action.
In solidity of construction the English ships compared favourably with those of the Dutch. The thick scantlings introduced by Phineas Pett now proved of great value; the wood itself, tough English oak, was unequalled by any other timber. English oak was the best, as Fuller noted. Even the Dutch had built some of their ships of it; while other countries frequently built of inferior fir, the splinters of which killed more than were hit by hostile cannon balls. To what was the superiority of the English timber due? To the soil and climate of this favoured country. Under the influence of successions of warmth and cold, of rain and sunshine, frost and wind, all in a degree most favourable for alternate growth and consolidation, the English oak attained an unrivalled strength and durability. Trees planted in forests, where mutual protection was afforded from wind and cold, grew rapidly, but were inferior in quality to trees planted in small parcels or along the hedgerows; these latter, slow-growing and tough, felled “at the wane of the moon and in the deep of winter,” supplied the thickstuff, knees, and planking for generations of our royal ships. Their endurance was frequently remarkable. The bottom timbers would last for fifty or sixty years, but the upper works, which were subject to alternations of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, decayed in a much shorter space of time. The Royal William is quoted by Charnock as a case in point. This first rate ship was launched in the year 1719, and never received any material repair until 1757. A few years later she was cut down to a third rate of 80 guns. Participating in all the sea wars of the time, she was surveyed in 1785 and converted into a guardship, which post she filled till early in the nineteenth century.[17]
Much attention, as we have noted, was given in this scientifically minded Stuart age to the form of body best suited to motion through water, but the efforts to improve design were largely misdirected. Many of our ships were unsatisfactory, not only from their slowness but because they were crank or tender-sided, and unable to bear out their lower guns or even to carry a stout sail. They were so clogged with timbers internally that they could not carry the victuals and stores necessary for long voyages; and vessels built by contract were often found to be carelessly put together, of green, unseasoned, and unsuitable timber.