ly stopped), with orders for all the arrears due upon it to be paid.

To provide the necessary timber for the new ship, Phineas and his son went down into the north to survey the forests. They went first by water to Whitby; from thence they proceeded on horseback to Gisborough and baited; then to Stockton, where they found but poor entertainment, though they lodged with the mayor, whose house " was only a mean thatched cottage!" Middlesborough and the great iron district of the north had not yet come into existence. Newcastle, already of some importance, was the principal scene of their labors. The timber for the new ship was found in Chapley Wood and Brancepeth Park. The gentry did all they could to facilitate the object of Pett. On his journey homewards (July, 1635), he took Cambridge on his way, where, says he, "I lodged at the Falcon, and visited Emmanuel College, where I had been a scholar in my youth."

The Sovereign of the Seas was launched on the 12th of October, 1637, having been about two years in building. Evelyn, in his diary, says of the ship (19th July, 1641): "We rode to Rochester and Chatham to see the Soveraigne, a monstrous vessel so called, being, for burthen, defence, and ornament, the richest that ever spread cloth before the wind. She carried one hundred brass cannon, and was sixteen hundred tons, a rare sailer, the work of the famous Phineas Pett." Rearadmiral Sir William Symonds says that she was afterwards cut down, and was a safe and fast ship.*

The Sovereign continued for nearly sixty years to be the finest ship in the English service. Though frequently engaged in the most injurious occupations, she

* "Memoirs of the Life and Services of Rear-admiral Sir William Symonds, Kt.," p. 94.

continued fit for any services which the exigencies of the state might require. She fought all through the wars of the commonwealth; she was the leading ship of Admiral Blake, and was in all the great naval engagements with France and Holland. The Dutch gave her the name of The Golden Devil. In the last fight between the English and French, she encountered the Wonder of the World, and so warmly plied the French admiral that she forced him out of his three-decked wooden castle, and, chasing the Royal Sun before her, forced her to fly for shelter among the rocks, where she became a prey to lesser vessels, and was reduced to ashes. At last, in the reign of William III., the Sovereign became leaky and defective with age; she was laid up at Chatham, and, being set on fire by negligence or accident, she burned to the water's edge.

To return to the history of Phineas Pett. As years approached, he retired from office, and his "loving son," as he always affectionately designates Peter, succeeded him as principal shipwright, Charles I. conferring upon him the honor of knighthood. Phineas lived for ten years after the Sovereign of the Seas was launched. In the burial register of the parish of Chatham it is recorded, "Phineas Pett, Esqe. and Capt., was buried 21st August, 1647.”*

*Pett's dwelling-house at Rochester is thus described in an anonymous history of that town (p. 337, ed. 1817): "Beyond the victualling office, on the same side of the High Street, at Rochester, is an old mansion, now occupied by a Mr. Morson, an attorney, which formerly belonged to the Petts, the celebrated ship-builders. The chimney-piece in the principal room is of wood, curiously carved, the upper part being divided into compartments by caryatydes. The central compartment contains the family arms, viz., Or, on a fesse, gu., between three pellets, a lion passant gardant of the field. On the back of the grate is a cast of Neptune, standing erect in his car, with Triton blowing conches, etc., and the date 1650."

Sir Peter Pett was almost as distinguished as his father. He was the builder of the first frigate, the Constant Warwick. Sir William Symonds says of this vessel: "She was an incomparable sailer, remarkable for her sharpness and the fineness of her lines; and many were built like her." Pett "introduced convex lines on the immersed part of the hull, with the studding and sprit sails; and, in short, he appears to have fully deserved his character of being the best ship architect of his time."* Sir Peter Pett's monument in Deptford Old Church fully records his services to England's naval power.

The Petts are said to have been connected with shipbuilding in the Thames for not less than two hundred years. Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," says of them, "I am credibly informed that that mystery of shipwrights for some descents hath been preserved faithfully in families, of whom the Petts about Chatham are of singular regard. Good success have they with their skill, and carefully keep so precious a pearl, lest otherwise amongst many friends some foes attain unto it."

The late Peter Rolt, member for Greenwich, took pride in being descended from the Petts; but, so far as we know, the name itself has died out. In 1801, when Charnock's "History of Marine Architecture" was published, Mr. Pett, of Tovil, near Maidstone, was the sole representative of the family.

* Symonds, "Memoirs of Life and Services," p. 94.

CHAPTER II.

FRANCIS PETTIT SMITH,

PRACTICAL INTRODUCER OF THE SCREW PROPELLER.

"The spirit of Paley's maxim, that 'he alone discovers who proves,' is applicable to the history of inventions and discoveries; for certainly he alone invents to any good purpose who satisfies the world that the means he may have devised have been found competent to the end proposed."-DR. SAMUEL BROWN.

"Too often the real worker and discoverer remains unknown, and an invention, beautiful but useless in one age or country, can be applied only in a remote generation, or in a distant land. Mankind hangs together from generation to generation; easy labor is but inherited skill; great discoveries and inventions are worked up to by the efforts of myriads ere the goal is reached."-H. M. HYNDMAN.

THOUGH a long period elapsed between the times of Phineas Pett and "Screw " Smith, comparatively little improvement had been effected in the art of shipbuilding. The Sovereign of the Seas had not been excelled by any ship of war built down to the end of the last century.* At a comparatively recent date, ships continued to be built of timber and plank, and impelled by sails and oars, as they had been for thousands of years before.

But this century has witnessed many marvellous changes. A new material of construction has been in

*In the "Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects for 1860," it was pointed out that the general dimensions and form of bottom of this ship were very similar to the most famous line-of-battle ships built down to the end of the last century, some of which were then in existence.

troduced into ship-building, with entirely new methods of propulsion. Old things have been displaced by new, and the magnitude of the results has been extraordinary. The most important changes have been in the use of iron and steel instead of wood, and in the employment of the steam-engine in impelling ships by the paddle or the screw.

So long as timber was used for the construction of ships, the number of vessels built annually, especially in so small an island as Britain, must necessarily have continued very limited. Indeed, so little had the cultivation of oak in Great Britain been attended to, that all the royal forests could not have supplied sufficient timber to build one line-of-battle ship annually; while for the mercantile marine, the world had to be ransacked for wood, often of a very inferior quality.

Take, for instance, the seventy-eight gun ship, the Hindostan, launched a few years ago. It would have required four thousand two hundred loads of timber to build a ship of that description, and the growth of the timber would have occupied seventy acres of ground during eighty years.* It would have needed something like eight hundred thousand acres of land on which to grow the timber for the ships annually built in this country for commercial purposes. And timber ships are by no means lasting. The average durability of ships of war employed in active service has been calculated to be about thirteen years, even when built of British oak.

Indeed, years ago, the building of shipping in this country was much hindered by the want of materials. The trade was being rapidly transferred to Canada and

* According to the calculation of Mr. Chatfield, of her majesty's dockyard at Plymouth, in a paper read before the British Association in 1841 on ship-building.