Before the year 1613 British merchants had made altogether twelve voyages to the East Indies, for the most part in ships of less than 500 tons. In that year, however, all the merchants interested in the Oriental trade joined together to form the United East India Company. The first fleet fitted out by the re-organised Company consisted of four ships, of 650, 500, 300, and 200 tons burthen respectively. It had to fight its way with the Portuguese before it could commence to trade. The Portuguese considered that they were entitled to a monopoly of the trade with the East, and jealously resented the intrusion of the English merchantmen, whom they attacked with a fleet of six galleons, three ships, two galleys, and sixty smaller vessels. They were, however, ignominiously defeated, and the English merchants were enabled to accomplish their purpose.
During the last five years of the reign of James I. the strength of the Royal Navy was increased twenty-five per cent. His son and successor, Charles I., through all the troubles of his eventful reign, never neglected this branch of the national defences, and during his reign the Mercantile Marine grew to such an extent that, at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, the port of London alone was able to furnish 100 ships of considerable size, all mounting cannon and fitted up in every respect for the operations of war.
Fig. 48.—The Sovereign of the Seas. 1637.
The Sovereign of the Seas, illustrated in Fig. [48], may be taken as a sample of the largest type of warship built by Charles. Like the Prince Royal, she was designed by Pett, and was considered to be the most powerful man-of-war in Europe of her time. Her construction must have been a great improvement on that of the Prince Royal; for, whereas the latter ship was declared to be no longer fit for service fifteen years after her launch, the Sovereign of the Seas, though engaged in most of the naval battles of the seventeenth century, remained in good condition for a period of sixty years, and was then accidentally burnt at Chatham when about to be rebuilt. She was the first three-decker in the Royal Navy, but as she proved somewhat crank, she was cut down to a two-decker in the year 1652. At the Restoration she was renamed the Royal Sovereign.
This very remarkable vessel was of 1,683 tons burthen. Her length of keel was 128 ft.; length over all, 167 ft.; beam, 48 ft. 4 in.; and depth from top of lanthorn to bottom of keel, 76 ft. She was built with three closed decks, a forecastle, a half-deck, a quarter-deck, and a round-house. She carried in all 102 or 104 guns, and was pierced for thirty guns on the lower, thirty on the main, and twenty-six on the upper deck; the forecastle had twelve, and the half-deck fourteen ports. She also carried ten chasers forward, and as many aft. She was provided with eleven anchors, of which one weighed two tons.
The Royal Sovereign may fairly be taken as representing the commencement of a better school of ship construction. Her merits were due to the talents of Phineas Pett, who, though not uniformly successful in his earlier designs, was a great innovator, and is generally regarded as the father of the modern school of wooden shipbuilding.
Very little is known, unfortunately, of the character and rig of the smaller classes of trading vessels of the end of the sixteenth and the commencement of the seventeenth centuries. It is, however, tolerably certain that cutter-rigged craft were used in the coasting and Irish trades as far back as 1567; for there is a map of Ireland of that date in existence on which are shown two vessels rigged in this manner.