1660 - New Sovereign

The great three-decker Sovereign of the Seas reappears as the Royal Sovereign after her rebuilding in the same Royal dockyard of Woolwich where she was originally built and launched in 1637. She has grown by a foot in breadth and by a hundred tons to be a 100-gun vessel, the largest in the world as she has ever been since her first day.

¤ Her original name claimed the rule over the seas for England. Under the Republican Commonwealth (1649-60), she briefly became Commonwealth then Sovereign.  Her rebuilding happens to be completed at the very time of Restoration, hence her new name : Royal Sovereign.

¤ Length of the keel = 127 feet – Breadth = 47½ feet – Depth in hold = 19¼ feet – Tonnage = 1605 tons.

¤ Armament: 22 cannons of 7 + 30 culverins + 48 demi-culverins = 100 guns, firing respectively 42-, 18- & 9-pound round shots.

In 1637 she was an extravagant warship, costing as much as nine or ten 40-gun great ships, that is £75,000, for the striking power of three or four at best, of two perhaps in a melee - thus a questionable investment.

¤ The Elizabethan galleon variant named Great Ship carrying about 40 guns was the warhorse of the English navy in the first half of this century.

She seemed to meet a royal whim rather than a strategic or tactical purpose. She was an extrapolation of the galleon pushed to the limits. A floating monument, her carvings only amounted to £9,000 and their gilding to £7,000. Planned to carry 90 guns, she was fitted with 102 ones – but cutting-edge ones - at the king’s insistence for the sky-high amount of £27,000.

Sovereign of the Seas cost as much as a third of the yearly tax revenue, which is absolute folly for a single ship and for a nation then at peace. Many artists, including famous Anthony van Dyck (†1641), contributed to her ornament.  Her guns are all made of brass and, for 92 in 102, the drakes, display a new pattern, an invention of John Browne (†1651), king’s Gunfounder. In this pattern trialed in 1634, breech and barrel have been redesigned so as to oppose gas pressure by appropriate thicknesses, variable along its profile. Overall gun weight is reduced by one seventh on the largest calibres for an improved resistance.

For the first time, artillery invaded places reserved to soldiers so far, on the forecastle and on the quarterdeck. Nothing in naval tactics required such evolution then. We may guess that the purpose was to reach the Royal demand of a hundred guns.

Designed by Phineas Pett (†1647) as the first genuine three-decker Prince Royal (1610), and built by his son Peter, 50 years old by now, she has long been a matter for controversy. Considered as useless under her original form, as she was ponderous so unfit for the then hallowed fight in melee, aiming at boarding her vis-à-vis, she was laid up after her completion for fifteen years.

Artillery prominence was a forefront feature in 1637. We do not know if she had enough gunners to fire a full broadside. We may guess that it was not the case by far : it would have anticipated a revolution which came twelve years later after tactical reflections which remain unknown. Another vanguard feature, which is fortunate, is the simplification of her armament to three calibres only. Also, instead of inheriting a makeshift armament, she got a brand new one, designed for the purpose. She was a temple of ordnance, in advance on her time, for a tactical conception yet to come.

The advent of this tactic in 1653, that is broadside firing in a line of battle, has changed the looking at her features and above all at her mighty artillery which has suddenly come to make plain sense. Once freed from her superfluous upper works and from most of her carvings, she has also come to be a good sailer and her latent qualities have finally surfaced. She is now described as a frigate – a compliment. Once conveniently served by an appropriate number of sailers and of gunners, she positions as the powerful flagship which the British navy, first in the World, deserves. Overall, her destiny reflects evolution of the strategic thinking about sail warship from the galleon to the ship of the line.

Galleon

The main ocean-going ship and the dominant one in warfare has been the galleon for the last hundred years. A Spanish creation, it corrected the deficiencies of her predecessor, the carrack, too loaded in the tops, not very manoeuvrable, not seaworthy enough for high seas. The carrack had become the outdated product of an obsessional research of volume for cargo, soldiery and light artillery to the detriment of seakeeping skills. Warfare and trade on high seas under fight risk – e.g. the ships meant to the Spanish Treasure fleet, a system of convoys imagined in 1564 by Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (†1574) – required a better sailer and combatant. It was the reason for an evolution that streamlined the ship by extending the stem and rubbed out the excessive volumes of the forecastle and of the poop.

Master Manuel Fernandes’ model from the Livro de Traças de Carpentaria (1616) displays the typical galleon feature of a stem which extends very long above water through a large curve. His galleon shows a sober profile with a long stem - a feature still existing on the Sovereign of the Seas -, a two-tier poop and a single-tier forecastle. Artillery is carried end-to-end on the lower deck – a forefront feature in 1600. The 500-ton galleon is the standard size for a unit of the West Indies Treasure Fleet owing to the sand banks at the mouth of Guadalquivir river which limit draught.  The depicted model displays 38 gun ports which is overabundant for a galleon of that size. The standard, if any, seems to be twenty guns for a 500-ton galleon, forty for a 1,000-ton one, a larger class meant to the trade with East Indies – only built by the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the Dutchmen.

¤ Ton is ambiguous as we all know. It may be a unit of weight or a unit of capacity for the ships. It measures displacement (equal to ship weight) in the first sense, or tonnage in the second.

¤ Ambiguity stems from the tun, a large cask originally containing 256 gallons, used for wine or oil, which weighs approximately one ton when filled with wine. Tunnage was the initial measure of capacity by the number of tuns a ship could stow. Being almost equivalent, a confusion between tun and ton, tunnage and tonnage, happened to settle in common language and in common mind. Tun still exists but solely names a large cask. Ton has replaced tun to measure ship capacity. It varied through the centuries as tun capacity which slightly decreased from to 256 to 252 then to 240 gallons. So, to sum up, ton:

- may be a unit of weight, that is 20 hundredweights of 8 stones each, of 14 pounds each, so 2,240 pounds ;

- or a unit of ship capacity, impossible to determine straight from the hull shape, even difficult to assess today for lack of calculus skills in the dockyards, but guesstimated by a simple formula :

originally worked out as [length from stem to sternpost] x [beam] x [hull depth] / 100, all measures in feet ;

lately redefined as [(length from stem to sternpost) - (3/5ths of beam)] x [beam] x [half beam] / 94. }

Actually many galleons displayed a higher poop than Fernandes’ one, especially the first-class ones – a lofty feature distinctive of the rank as a farthingale on aristocratic hips. The reason is that there is much stuff to house : passengers, officers, soldiers, charts, nautical books, navigation instruments, guns, muskets, swords, spades, without omitting fine wine and precious casket... The rigging for the large ships remained a four-mast pattern with two mizzens carrying lateens until the early years of our 17th century. This is also the time of appearance, weather permitting, of topgallants on yards set above the topsails. The topsails themselves expand. The square sails tend to become... squarer than the previous marked trapeze sails.

The next evolution happened in Britain under King James I (1603-25). Here are keel length, beam, depth, number of guns and tonnage of a late Elizabethan galleon, Warspite, and of three major warships of the new style of galleon in the beginning of this century :

length beam depth guns tonnage type

Warspite (1596) 90 36 16 36 650 great Elizabethan galleon

Prince Royal (1610) 115 43½ 18 55 1200 Royal ship

Defiance (1615) 97 37 15 40 700 great ship

Triumph (1623) 110 37 17 42 920 great ship

¤ We can see on the right the Royal ship Prince Royal (1610), having two mizzens, leading, from right to left, a middling ship, Bonadventure (1621), and two great ships, Defiance (1615) and St Andrew (1622). Phineas Pett built the first and the third, William Burrell (†1630), the second and the fourth ship. No ship displays any topgallant, which would be inappropriate for the season.

The so-called Royal, great and middling ships were galleon variants designed in England, new leading country in shipbuilding. What differences with an Elizabethan one? The bonadventure mizzen, i.e. the 4th rear mast, disappeared for a larger single mizzen. Another change, barely discernible, was the introduction, between forecastle and quarterdeck, of a spar deck which met the hull raised by the addition of rails and cloths or thin planks. Also, a major change appeared progressively : the yards of the square sails became fixed which changed the way of taking in reefs.  

Building a Royal ship – that is a genuine purpose-built first-rank warship – was risky and desperately costly, so limited to a few attempts. The Dutchmen and the Spaniards abstained. The Englishmen took the challenge with the 55-gun Prince Royal (1610), then with the ruinous Sovereign of the Seas (1637). The Swedes proved the most daring builders by virtue of King Gustavus Adolphus’ ambition with a series starting with the 72-gun Wasa (1628) – she foundered just after her launch –, her sistership Äpplet (1628), and the similar Kronan Ark (1633), Göta Ark (1634) and Scepter (1636). The Danes could not do less than reply the Swedes with the 70-gun Norske Løve (1643). On their own, the French built the 72-gun Couronne (1638).

In the first half of the century, the core of any fleet was composed of middling ships. There was almost no difference between such a warship and a large ocean-going merchant vessel as a British East Indiaman or a Spanish West Indiaman. They had the same size, between 400 and 500 tons, and similar weaponry. Of course, the merchant vessel did serve at war as a warship at that time.

Otherwise, they kept (1) the high narrow poop, (2) the marked forecastle adequate to housing chase guns and soldiers, (3) the steep tumblehome of their flanks, (4) a marked sheer as a compensation to hull bending owing to the excess of load against the buoyant forces in the ends, and (5) a quite long bow which stretched out very low above water surface. As formerly, their flanks still left blanks for extra gun ports which are glaringly missing for an eye of today used to seeing continuous lines of ports all along the hull.

¤ Stability was then and is still chiefly credited to the depth of the centre of gravity, hence this belief that retracting flanks is beneficent as it diminishes weight of hull tops. Yet doubts have arisen about relevance of excessive tumblehome which therefore stabilized at a decent value in the beginning of our century.

¤ The 470-ton galleon Revenge (1577) was the first warship displaying gun ports all along the hull, as Fernandes’ model. It was a weird one-off feature as broadside firing was still to be invented to replace boarding in melee more than seventy years later. She had 24 gunners for 46 guns of seven or eight calibres. She was the flagship of Francis Drake (†1596) when fighting the first Spanish Armada (1588) and when leading the English counter-Armada (1589).

Those ships may appear old-fashioned and somewhat plump by now. In their days, they seemed to be streamlined. Most of them nevertheless were a bit sluggish as a consequence of their short hull – the ratio length to beam was 2½ for Defiance but already 2¾ for Saint-Andrew – but they turned easily, quid pro quo – a trump card for ships meant to finding their way to an opponent in a melee and to boarding it, or vice-versa to evading adverse manoeuvre.

Artillery was not as important as it is today. Musketry came first. Boarding was the ultimate goal. Here are the crews in 1624 for four warships :

guns mariners gunners soldiers

Prince Royal (1610) 55 340 40 120

Defiance (1615) 40 150 30 70

Bonadventure (1621) 34 130 20 50

St Andrew (1622) 42 150 30 70

As a comparison, aboard the French Couronne, in 1638, there was a small team of three gunners every four guns, which makes 54 men altogether.

A fraction of the mariners certainly gave a hand to gunners for moving and reloading the gun but it is impossible that any ship could fire a full broadside at once. Firing all guns on a single side on Defiance would have required some 120 or 150 servants, while she had only 30 gunners. The rate of fire was therefore quite low. It completed the reasoning that boarding was decisive.

There was no war-experience-founded reason for this preference for musketry and boarding against battering adverse ship with heavy artillery but this one : light weaponry easily settled in a general-purpose ship, possibly overnight. Yet, none of the main battles of Spain in the period, i.e. the battles of the Spanish Armada (1588) against England, of Cape Saint-Vincent (1606), of Gibraltar (1607) and of the Downs (1639) against the Dutch, and of Cartagena (1642) against the French, demonstrated the primacy of boarding, only achieved on already damaged ships. Said battles did prove instead the decisive role of fireships against static fleets – the only clear-cut lesson understood by everyone.

Heightening Galleon to get a Three-Decker of sorts

This was without any tactical reference that England tackled next evolution. It came to transform its ships to endow them with heavier armament, likely under the influence of leaders coming from land forces and aware of artillery value in defensive. This transformation was carried out in the years 1647-52. Ironically, prior to this enhancement, there was some pressure to cut the great ships down to single-deckers as they appeared useless under their original features during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639-53). The fear of a possible invasion preserved them from mutilation and gave them a role of bulwark against a potential enemy. The transformation consisted of making the embryonic spar deck a genuine deck so the former great ships developed as short three-deckers or, more properly, two-and-a-half-deckers. They were also crewed with extra gunners.

For instance, the great ships St George and St Andrew (1622) carried 42 guns originally ; after their transformation, they carried 52 guns, and the extra guns were heavy demi-cannons, 32-pounders.  The venerable Rainbow (1617) inflated from 40 to 56 guns, and the Triumph (1623) from 42 to 64. They were fatally overloaded, of course, so rather slow, ponderous and submerged in a seaway. Those drawbacks did not appear at war : they were fortunate enough to fight against weak opponents, moreover under friendly conditions.  

Emergence of the Frigate & Inflation to a Two-Decker

The privateer ships built in the Spanish Netherlands at Dunkirk, Ostend, Nieuwpoort, built for race, could easily outrun the slow warships of the previous sorts and could practice predation on commerce with impunity.

This is the reason why Master Shipwright Peter Pett drew from a unique Dunkirker, that is a privateer from Dunkirk, captured by chance, a copy of sorts, the 340-ton Constant Warwick (1645), the first English frigate endowed with much finer lines than a middling ship which made her an outstanding sailer in her days. Lightly built as per the British standard of the day, swift and agile, she became the basis for a new generation of warships.

For comparison – length of the keel, beam, depth, number of guns, tonnage of basic men-of-war active around 1650 :

length beam depth guns ton type

Antelope (1618) 92 32 12½ 32 450 middling ship

Bonadventure (1621) 96 32½ 13½ 34 500 middling ship

Constant Warwick (1645) 85 27 12½ 32 340 prototype of the English frigate

Dragon (1647) 96 28½ 14 38 470 standard frigate

Mary (1650) 116 34½ 14½ 50 730 ex-Speaker, so-called frigate, a two-decker actually

The frigate generated a craze. A secondary feature twenty years earlier, speed had become everything. Furthermore, the frigate was cheap in comparison with any former ship carrying similar armament. That consideration, a boon for the decision-makers, overshadowed the original concept of a scout, of a dispatch ship, or of a hunter. Five years after her appearance, the frigate had inflated to the double of the original model to become a two-decker and formed the backbone of the new English fleet.

Merger of the Two Types into the Ship-of-the-Line

The definite game-changer was the invention of the line by two generals at sea, George Monck, 58 years old by now, 45 then, and Robert Blake (†1657), 55 then. The Englishmen had somehow come to recognise the prime importance of broadside artillery against musketry which prevailed previously, developed it accordingly and found immediately afterwards the tactic which gave it full effect.

It happened in 1653 at the battle of the Gabbard bank during the first Anglo-Dutch war (1652-54). The Dutch were late by a revolution in warfare. They gathered a force nearing a hundred vessels but most of them were lightly armed flutes. Actually they came with small fry into shark teeth. It was a massacre. The English force overwhelmed them by massive volleys of cannonballs fired from their broadsides by the line of vessels. The power balance was very much in favour of the English fleet :

Dutch British

Ships >80 guns 1

Ships 60-80 guns 3

Ships 50-60 guns 1 8

Ships 40-50 guns 6 25

Ships 30-40 guns 25 55

The Englishmen had largely increased the number of gunners and the rate of fire as a consequence. The light Dutch ships could not get through the wall of incoming projectiles to attempt boarding. They lost 18 ships this single day and tens were seriously damaged. The battle of Scheveningen a bit later gave the same outcome. The Dutch were smashed once again.

The ship fit for the line of battle split from the merchant vessel, no longer a match for serious warfare. The high seas merchant ship remained a 300- to 500-tonner in general while the man-of-war was evolving towards a 700- to 1,500-ton ship fitted with two or three gun decks ideally. The lesson was understood throughout Europe at once.

¤ Merchant vessels may nevertheless reach amazing tonnages exceeding 1,000 tons. It was the case of a few Portuguese carracks from the late 16th century onwards. This is today the case of a few Manilla galleons of the Spanish Treasure fleet which do the to and fro trade with Acapulco. This feature can also be found in a few Portuguese galleons sailing between Lisbon and Goa and Macau. The retourships, i.e. the mighty vessels of the Dutch East India company which bring back the Eastern precious goods from Batavia to Amsterdam, may exceed 1,000 tons and carry 40 guns as the Wapen van Amsterdam (1654) or the Prins Willem (1650).

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IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

NOTE A - About Royal Sovereign’s fate.

She escapes the disaster of the Medway (1667) in the second Anglo-Dutch war by chance, being at Portsmouth for some reason. Otherwise, she participates in every battle of the second and third Anglo-Dutch wars. She is rebuilt once more in 1685. She participates in the battles of the beginning of the Nine Years war. She will be burnt by accident in 1696.

NOTE B - About the old ships still existing in 1660.

The Royal Ship Prince Royal, built in 1610, will be rebuilt in 1641, then in 1663. She is finally burnt by the Dutch in 1667.

Great Ships of the 1610s and of the 1620s - Rainbow, Lion, Vanguard, Victory, Swiftsure, St George, St Andrew, Triumph - will still sail in the 1660s after their heightening in semi three-deckers.

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SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frank Howard – Sailing Ships of War 1400-1860 – London, 1979

Brian Lavery – The Ship of the line – London, 1983

Peter Goodwin – The Construction and Fitting of the Sailing Man of War 1650-1850 – London, 1987

William Cuthbert Brian Tunstall – Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail – London, 1990

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CREDITS

Sovereign of the Seas - © Pinterest

Model of a Galleon - © Pinterest

Hendrick Cornelysz Vroom – The Return of Prince Charles from Spain – oil on canvas, 1623 - © Royal Museums Greenwich