This was a great disappointment. The King retired to the palace at Greenwich, though the Prince lingered behind. When he left, he promised to return by midnight, after which it was proposed to make another effort to set the ship afloat. When the time arrived, the Prince again made his appearance, and joined the Lord High Admiral, and the principal naval officials. It was bright moonshine. After midnight the rain began to fall, and the wind to blow from the southwest. But about two o'clock, an hour before high water, the word was given to set all taut, and the ship went away without any straining of screws and tackles, till she came clear afloat into the midst of the Thames. The Prince was aboard, and amidst the blast of trumpets and expressions of joy, he performed the ceremony of drinking from the great standing cup, and throwing the rest of the wine towards the half-deck, and christening the ship by the name of the Prince Royal.[27]
The dimensions of the ship may be briefly described. Her keel was 114 feet long, and her cross-beam 44 feet. She was of 1400 tons burthen, and carried 64 pieces of great ordnance. She was the largest ship that had yet been constructed in England.
The Prince Royal was, at the time she was built, considered one of the most wonderful efforts of human genius. Mr. Charnock, in his 'Treatise on Marine Architecture,' speaks of her as abounding in striking peculiarities. Previous to the construction of this ship, vessels were built in the style of the Venetian galley, which although well adapted for the quiet Mediterranean, were not suited for the stormy northern ocean. The fighting ships also of the time of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth were too full of "top-hamper" for modern navigation. They were oppressed by high forecastles and poops. Pett struck out entirely new ideas in the build and lines of his new ship; and the course which he adopted had its effect upon all future marine structures. The ship was more handy, more wieldy, and more convenient. She was unquestionably the first effort of English ingenuity in the direction of manageableness and simplicity. "The vessel in question," says Charnock, "may be considered the parent of the class of shipping which continues in practice even to the present moment."
It is scarcely necessary to pursue in detail the further history of Phineas Pett. We may briefly mention the principal points. In 1612, the Prince Royal was appointed to convey the Princess Elizabeth and her husband, The Palsgrave, to the Continent. Pett was on board the ship, and found that "it wrought exceedingly well, and was so yare of conduct that a foot of helm would steer her." While at Flushing, "such a multitude of people, men, women, and children, came from all places in Holland to see the ship, that we could scarce have room to go up and down till very night."
About the 27th of March, 1616, Pett bargained with Sir Waiter Raleigh to build a vessel of 500 tons,[28] and received 500L. from him on account. The King, through the interposition of the Lord Admiral, allowed Pett to lay her keel on the galley dock at Woolwich. In the same year he was commissioned by the Lord Zouche, now Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, to construct a pinnace of 40 tons, in respect of which Pett remarks, "towards the whole of the hull of the pinnace, and all her rigging, I received only 100L. from the Lord Zouche, the rest Sir Henry Mainwaring (half-brother to Raleigh) cunningly received on my behalf, without my knowledge, which I never got from him but by piecemeal, so that by the bargain I was loser 100L. at least."
Pett fared much worse at the hands of Raleigh himself. His great ship, the Destiny, was finished and launched in December, 1616. "I delivered her to him," says Pett, "on float, in good order and fashion; by which business I lost 700L., and could never get any recompense at all for it; Sir Walter going to sea and leaving me unsatisfied."[29] Nor was this the only loss that Pett met with this year. The King, he states, "bestowed upon me for the supply of my present relief the making of a knight-baronet," which authority Pett passed to a recusant, one Francis Ratcliffe, for 700L.; but that worthy defrauded him, so that he lost 30L. by the bargain.
Next year, Pett was despatched by the Government to the New Forest in Hampshire, "where," he says, "one Sir Giles Mompesson[30] had made a vast waste in the spoil of his Majesty's timber, to redress which I was employed thither, to make choice out of the number of trees he had felled of all such timber as was useful for shipping, in which business I spent a great deal of time, and brought myself into a great deal of trouble." About this period, poor Pett's wife and two of his children lay for some time at death's door. Then more enquiries took place into the abuses of the dockyards, in which it was sought to implicate Pett. During the next three years (1618-20) he worked under the immediate orders of the Commissioners in the New Dock at Chatham.
In 1620, Pett's friend Sir Robert Mansell was appointed General of the Fleet destined to chastise the Algerine pirates, who still continued their depredations on the shipping in the Channel, and the King thereupon commissioned Pett to build with all dispatch two pinnaces, of 120 and 80 tons respectively. "I was myself," he says, "to serve as Captain in the voyage"—being glad, no doubt, to escape from his tormentors. The two pinnaces were built at Ratcliffe, and were launched on the 16th and 18th of October, 1620. On the 30th, Pett sailed with the fleet, and after driving the pirates out of the Channel, he returned to port after an absence of eleven months.
His enemies had taken advantage of his absence from England to get an order for the survey of the Prince Royal, his masterpiece; the result of which was, he says, that "they maliciously certified the ship to be unserviceable, and not fit to continue—that what charges should be bestowed upon her would be lost." Nevertheless, the Prince Royal was docked, and fitted for a voyage to Spain. She was sent thither with Charles Prince of Wales and the Duke of Buckingham, the former going in search of a Spanish wife. Pett, the builder of the ship, was commanded to accompany the young Prince and the Duke.
The expedition sailed on the 24th of August, 1623, and returned on the 14th of October. Pett was entertained on board the Prince Royal, and rendered occasional services to the officers in command, though nothing of importance occurred during the voyage.