THE “ARK ROYAL,” THE ENGLISH ADMIRAL’S FLAGSHIP.
From a Contemporary Print.
(click image to enlarge)
Of the merchant ships engaged, the largest were the Leicester, sometimes called the Galleon Leicester, and the Merchant Royal, each of 400 tons. The great galleys and galleasses of the Armada were not the largest ships afloat by a great deal, for they were far exceeded in size by many contemporary merchantmen in the Mediterranean.
The Queen’s ships were sometimes employed upon peaceful and ambassadorial errands. The voyage of the Ascension to Constantinople shows a definite attempt to spread English prestige in distant seas by means of English trade openings, instead of by the diplomacy of the day, a prominent feature of which was the discovery of means and opportunities of raiding a state having much portable riches and not sufficient power to protect them.
The Ascension, in which Queen Elizabeth sent her second present to the Sultan of Turkey, left London in March, 1593, and arrived in August, 1594. She was “a good shippe very well appointed, of two hundred and three score tunnes (whereof was master one William Broadbanke, a provident and skilfull man in his faculties).” Some days after the arrival when the wind suited, “our shippe set out in their best manner with flagges, streamers, and pendants of divers coloured silke, with all the mariners, together with most of the Ambassador’s men, having the winde faire, and came within two cables’ length of this his moskyta,[20] where (hee to his great content beholding the shippe in such bravery) they discharged first volies of small shot, and then all the great ordinance twise over, there being seven and twentie or eight and twentie pieces in the shippe.”[21]
The early part of the seventeenth century, when James I. was king, saw a remarkable advance in shipbuilding, thanks to Phineas Pett, who dropped the somewhat haphazard rule-of-thumb methods of ship construction and introduced a more or less scientific system of measurement and estimate of weights. In 1610, the Prince, or Prince Royal, of 1,400 tons, and mounting sixty-four guns, was launched. She is described as “Double-built,” which has been supposed to mean that she had an outer and inner skin and an additional number of beams, etc. This may afford a partial explanation of the fact that though seven hundred and seventy-five loads of timber were estimated to be necessary for her construction, one thousand six hundred and twenty-seven loads were used. Also, as the ship only lasted fifteen years, a possible further explanation of the discrepancy may be found in the suggestion that much of the timber supplied and included in the larger amount was unfit for use. The Prince Royal was “most sumptuously adorned, within and without, with all manner of curious carving, painting and rich gilding, being in all respects the greatest and goodliest ship that was ever built in England.” In 1624 this ship had two cannon-petro, six demi-cannon, twelve culverins, eighteen demi-culverins, thirteen sakers, and four port-pieces.
THE “SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS.”