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Further Reading

Sovereign of the Seas 1637

HMS Sovereign of the Seas was a 17th century British Royal Navy first-rate ship of the line of 100 guns, later known as just Sovereign and then Royal Sovereign. As the second three-decked first-rate (the first three-decker being Prince Royal of 1610), she was the predecessor of Nelson's Victory, although Revenge, built in 1577 by Mathew Baker, was the inspiration providing the innovation of a single deck devoted entirely to broadside guns.

The Sovereign of the Seas was built for King Charles I by Peter Pett (later a Commissioner of the Navy), under the guidance of his father Phineas, the king's master shipwright, and was launched at Woolwich dockyard on October 13, 1637. At the time, the Sovereign of the Seas was the larger and the more powerful than any other ship. This mammoth warship was not only the largest ship in the world (168 - 172' long and a beam of 46'), she was also the most lavashly decorated with topsides overlaid from steam to stern with carvings, paintings and gilded ornamentation. So magnificant a sight, and such a formidable adversary with her 100 cannon on three decks, the Dutch called her the 'Golden Devil'.

No expense was spared in her construction. Thomas Heywood, who executed the carved work, described her in an elaborate treatise. "She has three flushe decks and a forecastle," he tells us, a "halfe-deck, a quarter-deck, and a round house. Her lower tyre hath thirty ports, which are furnished with demi-cannon and whole cannon throughout. Her middle tyre hath also thirty ports, for demi-culvern and whole culvern. Her third tyre hath 26 ports for other ordnance. Her forecastle hath 12 ports and her halfe-decke 14 ports. She hath 13 or 14 ports more within board for murdering pieces .... besides a great many loopholes out of the cabins for musket shot. She carries, moreover, 10 pieces of chase-ordnance right forward, and 10 right aft."

Heywood dilates on the gorgeous decorations of the ship. Her sides, he tells us, were "carved with trophies of artillery and types of honour, as well belonging to sea as land, with symbols appertaining to navigation, also their two sacred Majesties' badges of honour, arms with several angels holding their letters in compartments, all which works are gilded over and no other colour but gold and black. Upon the beak-head sitteth King Edgar on horseback, trampling on seven Kings," there being also at the bows "a Cupid bridling a lion," with allegorical figures, and at the stern a carved Victory " in the midst of a frontispiece," with other startling devices. From the keel to the poop lanterns - of which she had five, the largest of them so roomy that "ten people could stand upright in it" - the Sovereign measured 75 feet.

In a list of the year 1652, the Sovereign, or, as subsequently named, Royal Sovereign, stands at 1141, in one of 1677, at 1543, and in one corrected up to 1740, at 1683 tons ; a difference principally, if not wholly, attributable to the various methods of casting the tonnage in use at those several periods.

However, it is an account of the ship's armament which we most require, and that Mr. Heywood himself has been at the pains to record. " She has," says he, " three flush-deckes, and a forecastle, an halfe-decke, a quarter-decke, and a round-house. Her lower tyre hath thirty ports, which are to be furnished with demi-cannon and whole cannon throughout, being able to beare them. Her middle tyre hath also thirty ports, fordemi-culverin and whole culverin. Her third tyre hath twenty-sixe ports for other ordnance. Her forecastle hath twelve ports, and her halfe- decke hath fourteen ports. She hath thirteen or fourteen ports more within-board for murdering pieces, besides a great many loopholes out of the cabins for musket-shot. She carried, moreover, ten pieces of chase-ordnance in her right forward, and ten right aft, that is, according to land-service, in the front and the reare." Numbering the guns, we find 126 as the establishment of this first-rate of the seventeenth century.

She is first mentioned in August 1634, when the Masters of the Trinity House volunteered the opinion that she was an impossible dream ; that a three-decker was a thing "beyond the art or wit of man to construct." In January, 1635, an estimate was called for for a vessel of 1,500 tons-"the king: with his own hand hath set down the burden" - and in March Phineas Pett was ordered to prepare a model of "the ship royal." A month later he, Pennington, Mansell, and Wells met and agreed on the dimensions afterwards substantially adopted : gross tonnage, by depth, 1,466 tons ; by draught, 1,661 tons ; and by beam, 1,836 tons - no explanation given of method of arriving at the figures. Pett's estimate of cost, £13,680 - actual cost, £40,833, exclusive of guns.

Keel laid at Woolwich, in presence of Charles, on January 16th, 1636 ; launched October, 1637. Pett had recommended that she should not be launched until the spring, as she would grow foul lying in the river through the winter, but Charles had annotated "I am not of your opinion." It was intended to give her 90 guns, but here again we read : " His majesty has since altered his resolution, both in respect of the number and nature of pieces." In the end, 102 brass guns were required, at an estimated cost of £24,753 8s. 8d., thus divided : lower tier, 20 cannon drakes and 8 demi-cannon drakes ; middle tier, 24 culverin drakes and 6 culverins ; upper tier, 24 demi-culverin drakes and 2 demi-culverins ; fore-castle, 8 demi- culverin drakes ; half-deck, 6 ditto ; quarter-deck, 2 ditto ; bulkhead abaft the fore-castle, 2 culverin drakes. The guns were engraved, at a cost of £3 each, with the rose and crown, sceptre and trident, and anchor and cable, and the motto, "Carolus Edgari sceptrum stabilivit aquarum" - "being a scutcheon and motto appointed by his majesty."

Renamed the Royal Sovereign when Charles II came to the throne in 1660 she fought in several battles during the Second and Third Dutch Wars between 1666-1673. The Sovereign was, in Blake's time, cut down a deck, to a 90-gun ship, and had her fourth mast removed. In 1684, on being renovated throughout, she was re-named Royal Sovereign. The Nine Years War against France broke out in 1689 and Royal Sovereign was present at the Battles of Beachy Head in 1690 and Barfleur in 1692 when the Royal Navy fought alongside the Dutch. Her career came to an abrupt end when she accidentally caught fire at Chatham on 27 January 1696.