Part 6

These criticisms of the English shipwrights are no doubt well founded, but the step from critic to artist is a long one, and Waymouth never took it. Nevertheless he was a more competent critic than Pett would have us believe. An anonymous seventeenth-century MS., entitled, 'A most excellent briefe and easie Treatize,' containing, among other matters, 'A most excellent mannor for the Buildinge of Shippes,' exists in the Scott collection, and this, by the kindness of the owner, has been placed at the disposal of the editor, who, after a careful examination, has no doubt that it is the work of Waymouth, written after he had built the ship which Pett calls a 'bable and drowne divell,' and of which a midship section is given. Unfortunately, except in this one instance, the treatise is purely theoretical and throws no light on the problems of the Prince Royal, or the methods of the royal shipwrights, but as a theoretical treatise it is far in advance of the 'Jewell of Artes,' and indeed of anything that the English shipwrights of that century produced, and is sufficient to explain why Waymouth's opinions were accorded so much respect.

[Sidenote: Inquiry by Nottingham, Worcester, and Suffolk.]

After Waymouth's futile visit to Woolwich, the King seems to have been much perplexed, and since there was no independent expert, for they had all taken sides, he handed the matter over to a committee composed of the Lord High Admiral and two of the great officers of State. In theory, no doubt, the selection of the Admiral to superintend such an inquiry was the natural course to be followed, but in this case he was sitting in judgment on one of his own protégés, and could hardly condemn him without indirectly condemning himself and justifying Northampton. The result in such circumstances--and with such a man--was a foregone conclusion, for the other two members, having no professional experience of the matter, would naturally follow his direction. The technical arguments of Baker and Stevens would be lost on Worcester and Suffolk, even if Nottingham could appreciate them, which may be doubted; and--judging by his writings, and allowing for their ignorance of the mathematical side of the questions at issue--it is not surprising that Waymouth bored them beyond endurance, with the result that in the end 'they found the business in every part and point so excellent.'

Northampton's anger at the result was not unnatural, and the King found that there was no other course open to him but to hold an inquiry in person. This was fixed for the 8th May, and during the first week of that month Baker, Waymouth, and their associates took the dimensions of the ship at Woolwich and set out their objections in the following document:[121]

_Imperfections found upon view of the new work begun at Woolwich._

First her mould is altogether unperfect, furred[122] in divers places; she hath too much floor;[123] the lower sweep[124] and the upper are too long, and the middle sweep too short.

Her depth is too great and her side too upright, so that of necessity she must be tender sided and not able to bear sail.

Her breadth lieth too high, and so she will draw too much water, and thereby dangerous and unfit for our shoal seas.

Her harpings[125] are too round and lie too low, which maketh a cling at the after end of it, and makes the bow flare off[126] so much that the work is not only misshapen but the ship dangerous to beat in the sea either at an anchor or under sail.

Her workmanship is very ill done, and thereby the ship made weak, as first the limber[127] holes are cut so deep in the midship floor timbers that they are less thickness upon the keel than toward the rung head; whereas they ought to be thicker and stronger in the midst, to bear the weight on ground.

The futtocks[128] have not scarph[129] enough with the floor timbers, but at the lower end of them are divers short clogs of timber put in which serve to no purpose for strength but to fill up the room. Every mean owner in the Thames will assuredly tie the carpenter to allow a great scarph and to have his timber come whole within a foot of his kelson.

Some of the timbers abaft and afore are left so deep by the kelson that the footwales[130] and outside not being well trenailed together will be a great weakness to the ship, and the rather for that the rung,[131] being cut out of right and old grown timber, cannot be brought to a lesser scantling, they will break in sunder at the cross grain.

The provision of timber was not fitting such a chargeable work for that much of the same is overgrown and many pieces of them cross grained, as cut to a roundness out of straight timber, which cannot be strong enough to bear a ship on ground of so great weight as this is; as may be seen both in the ship and yard.

To shew his weakness in art and the imperfection of the mould, Pett himself, after workmen had seen her, hauled down his futtocks[132] 2 foot as soon as the lords were gone, and cut off some of the heads of them, whereby they have made her more imperfect than she was and put all things out of order that she can hardly be ever amended.

MATHEW BAKER. W. BRIGHT. NYCHOLAS CLAY. EDWARD STEVENES. JOHN GREAVES. RICHARD MERYETT. GEORGE WAYMOUTH.

All these being Shipwrights (saving Capt. Waymouth) have taken their oath, and answered before us, both upon their conscience to God, their duty to the King and their love to their country that this declaration is true. And Cap^n. Waymouth also affirmeth that all which the said Shipwrights have declared to be imperfections are so to be accounted. But the error of the limber holes he did not look into, supposing that no man affecting the name of a workman would err in so gross an absurdity.

H. NORTHAMPTON. CH. PARKINS. E. ZOUCH. RO. COTTON. JOHN CORBETT.

Cap^n. Waymouth further saith, touching the imperfection of the mould, that the Hollowing Moulds[133] are not good neither before nor abaft, for in the Hollowing Moulds afterward he hath taken away too much timber from the hooks, whereby it hath much weakened the ship, that when she cometh to lie on ground she will complain in that place, which will be a great impediment to the ship. And concludeth that she being so deep and her moulds so unperfect, with these gross errors and absurdities she can never be made strong and fit for service, and least of all for our seas.

EDWARD STEVENES. GEORGE WAYMOUTH. MATHEW BAKER. W. BRIGHT. NYCHOLAS CLAY. JOHN GREAVES. RICHARD MERYETT. H. NORTHAMPTON. E. ZOUCH. CH. PARKINS. RO. COTTON. JOHN CORBETT.

This indictment cannot be lightly set aside. Baker was the most prominent shipbuilder of that day, and Bright and Meryett (or, as the name is more usually written, Meritt) were Government shipbuilders of long experience, while Clay, Greaves, and Stevens were private builders of considerable standing in their profession. Unfortunately we have hardly any authentic details of the ship; certainly not sufficient to enable us to form any independent opinion upon the question of her design. We have, from the careful survey[134] taken in 1632, the following dimensions:

Feet. Ins. Length of keel 115 0 Breadth 43 0 Mean breadth 36 0 Depth (presumably from the breadth to top of keel) 18 0 Depth from the seeling 16 3 Tonnage (old measurement) 1186·80 Tonnage (new measurement) 1330

and from the arguments during the inquiry it appears that the breadth of the floor was 11 feet 8 inches. This is all we know of the shape of the hull below water, and the pictures of the ship that can be considered authentic representations[135] do not add to this knowledge.

It would seem that Pett had made one or two slight alterations in the accepted rules, as followed by his predecessors, in the design of the hull. For example, his floor was slightly wider than the amount allowed by Baker in his scheme for plotting the midship section, given in the 'Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry,'[136] according to which it should have worked out at 10 feet 3 inches; but as Waymouth had, as we have already seen, been advocating a broader floor, a change that subsequently took effect, it is difficult to understand why he, at any rate, should have objected to this. To a later age, which has seen much greater ships of deeper draught navigate 'our shoal seas' in safety, the objection to the deep draught of water may seem somewhat uncalled for, but it must be remembered that at that date the King's ships, when not on service, lay in the Medway above Upnor, and an undated MS.[137] written about 1640 shows that difficulty was experienced in finding safe moorings for the Sovereign and the Prince in this position. On the whole, it seems probable that the objections on the score of design were not well founded. We never hear of the ship having been crank or unseaworthy on this account, and there is no such disgraceful episode as that connected with the Unicorn, built by Edward Boate in 1633, to be brought up against her.

On the charge of insufficiency of material, however, the evidence is against Pett. There can be little doubt but that much of the timber was unsuitable; some was green and unseasoned; some too old and in incipient decay; while the curved timbers, which should have been cut from trees crooked by natural growth, had been cut from straight trees, with the result that the grain did not run round, but across, the curves, to the detriment of their strength. In December 1621 the Navy Commissioners expressed their feelings on the subject to Buckingham in a letter, of which the following draft is preserved in the Coke MSS.:[138]

Her weakness is so great that all we can do unto her at this time with above 500_l._ charge will but make her ride afloat and be able to go to sea upon our own coast rather for show than for service, and that to make her a strong and perfect ship will require at least 6,000_l._ charge and time till monies and fit provisions may be had. This we write to your Honour with grief and some just indignation, seeing a ship which so lately cost His Majesty near 20,000_l._ and was boasted to be of force to fight for a kingdom, so suddenly perish, and that no other reasons are given thereof but her first building of old red and decaying timber and that fallen in the sap, and her double planking with green and unseasoned stuff, wherein the improvidence of the officers and unfaithfulness of the workmen cannot be excused, such faults tending to the dishonouring and disarming of the state cannot with duty be either coloured or concealed.

Perhaps this was stated a little too strongly, for in 1623, after a refit costing under 1000_l._, she made the voyage to Spain and back in safety. Nevertheless, as pointed out by Mr. Oppenheim, she 'was never subjected to any serious work,' and in 1641 she was entirely rebuilt at Woolwich by Peter Pett at an estimated cost of 16,019_l._, to which must be added 2160_l._ for launching and transporting her to Chatham.[139]

[Sidenote: The Inquiry before James at Woolwich.]

Having been forced by the circumstances to take the matter into his own hand, James seems to have conducted the inquiry with moderation and skill, and if he had remained content with weighing the evidence, and had not attempted to decide some of the technical points in dispute himself, his decision might have received universal acceptance.

An inspection of the list of witnesses on either side shows that the weight of authority was against Pett: the seamen appearing against him were of much greater importance than those for him, and, with the exception of Burrell, who subsequently[140] reported against the ship, the same may be said of the shipwrights. In considering the result of the inquiry we cannot do better than follow James' division into the three points of art, sufficiency of materials, and charge. As regards art, it is obvious that Pett was treading the path of progress experimentally with his new design; the criticisms indicate that he had introduced modifications into the methods followed by Baker and the older shipwrights (_e.g._ in the width of the floor and the shape of the bows), while the subsequent furring of the mould and the alterations to the futtocks show that he was uncertain where he was going, and modified his plans during the building. For the settlement of the much disputed point of the flat of the floor, which seems to have been the determination of the actual point at which the lower sweep commenced (obtained, presumably, by finding the geometrical centre of that sweep and dropping a perpendicular from it on to the floor), James chose Briggs, who was an eminent mathematician, and Chaloner, who, notwithstanding that he was a court official, was of some eminence as a scientist. Their verdict in favour of Pett must therefore be accepted as final.

On the whole, it seems that as regards 'art' Pett was in the right; but as regards the second point, 'material,' sufficient has been already said to show that his opponents were justified in their criticism. As regards the third point, 'charge,' _i.e._ costs, facts showed subsequently that the claim that 'the charge of the building of this ship should not exceed other ships that had been built in her Majesty's times ... allowing proportion for proportion, the garnishing not exceeding theirs,' was entirely unfounded; for even allowing for the lavish decoration, the cost of building was much greater proportionately than that of any of those ships. The exuberance of the decoration may be seen from the entries in the Declared Accounts, printed in the Appendix,[141] which are of additional interest from the information they give as to constructive details. It will be observed that these agree with such details as can be made out in the Hampton Court and Hinchinbrook pictures.[142]

[Sidenote: The Commission of 1618.]

The Commission of Inquiry of 1618 found the management of the Navy in much the same state as it was in 1608, with the same abuses still unremedied. But although in its Report it did not pillory Pett as the earlier Commission had done, it seems, by the reforms which it instituted, to have made him very uncomfortable. The actual shipbuilding was concentrated at Deptford, and Phineas was employed at Chatham in the work of improving and enlarging that yard. Wm. Burrell, who had been one of Pett's chief supporters in the Prince Royal Inquiry, was made one of the Commissioners, and although he remained the chief shipbuilder of the East India Company,[143] the whole of the new construction, which amounted to two ships yearly for the next five years, was placed in his hands, all the ships being built under contracts made between Burrell and the Commissioners. Naturally this arrangement, however efficient it might be from the national point of view, did not coincide with Pett's interests, and in his usual hyperbolical style he describes Burrell and Norreys (the Surveyor) as his 'greatest enemies,' and attributes the necessary reforms of the Commissioners to a plot to 'ruin' himself.

[Sidenote: The Algiers Expedition.]

The story of the Expedition to Algiers, which was as much a diplomatic move in support of the Elector Palatine as an attempt to suppress the Algerine pirates, has been amply dealt with by historians,[144] but there remains something to be said about Pett's connection with it, and his financial troubles that arose from it. It will be noted that he does not utter a word as to what happened between the time of his joining Mansell's fleet at Malaga in the Mercury on the 8th February and his return to the Downs on the 19th September. This silence was, no doubt, intentional, and arose from his unwillingness to put on record anything that might give offence to his friend Mansell or to higher authorities.

Part of the fleet was fitted out at the expense of the London merchants, who entered into a contract with Phineas for the construction of two pinnaces, of 120 and 80 tons respectively, subsequently named the Mercury and the Spy. It was the habit of the Master Shipwrights to exceed their instructions in building ships for the Navy; partly, perhaps, from a desire to do greater things than they were asked to do, and to outrival their colleagues, but largely because the greater the ship the greater the profit to themselves. When Pett attempted to play this trick upon the merchants (increasing one pinnace from 120 tons to 300, and the other from 80 tons to 200), 'upon some hopes of thanks and reward,' he got bitten badly, for the merchants, disdaining the precedents of the royal dockyards, insisted upon holding to their contract, and left Pett to make the best of a bad bargain. His appeal to the Council for redress was referred to the Committee of Merchants, who in their reply[145] of 2nd December 1622 pointed out that their 'chief desires and endeavours have been and ever shall be to do right unto all and (as fast as money can be gotten in) to give satisfaction where any just demands can be made unto us.' They added that 'at our last meeting Captain Pett sent his brother and son unto us, with whom we have conferred and have agreed that Captain Pett shall bring in his accompt, and if it appear that he hath not received as much or more than any way can be due unto him, either for making the two pinnaces or his entertainment, we will make present payment of the remainder, as we have formerly offered before your Lordships.'

The matter drifted on until 1624, and two further remonstrances, from the Admiralty, brought forth a reply from the merchants that they were

sorry to observe your Lordships' displeasure contained against us upon the suggestions of those whom nothing but their own demands can satisfy.... Your Lordships may please to be advertised that we contracted with him to build two pinnaces for twelve hundred and seventy pounds, and have paid to his workmen and lent to himself divers great sums of money over and above our contract and his wages,[146] by reason whereof we conceive he is more indebted to us than his wages demanded amounts unto, in a great sum of money, and also we lent him two hundred pounds upon his own bond yet unsatisfied. Notwithstanding, as formerly we have certified your Lordships, and sundry times offered to Capt. Pett, that we were ready to accompt with him that satisfaction might be given if ought were due to either party, and we are still ready to perform the same, yet because he rejects this motion and that we are desirous your Lordships may be fully satisfied of our honest intentions and proceedings and may be no further troubled herein, we are therefore emboldened to become suitors to your Lordships that the Commissioners of the Navy, or whom else your Lordships shall please to appoint, may have the examination of the account depending, and if upon their report anything be found due we will take present order for payment thereof.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth Pett.]

Apparently Pett never received the balance of the money, but his troubles did not end there. He was indebted to his brother Peter for materials for these ships to the value of 325_l._ While his brother lived Phineas does not seem to have troubled about repayment, although, according to Elizabeth Pett, his sister-in-law, Peter had been 'often arrested on this account,' and Phineas himself had, as he tells us, been arrested and imprisoned in 1628 at the suit of 'one Freeman,' by whom the timber seems to have been originally supplied.[147]

After Peter's death,[148] his widow endeavoured to recover the debt from Phineas, but could not enforce judgment on account of the latter's position as the King's servant. She therefore petitioned the Admiralty in January 1633 for 'leave to have the benefit of law against him.' Pett was ordered to satisfy her or show cause why the law should not take its course. Pett explained his loss on the transaction, and asserted that, 'notwithstanding this great loss and main other[149] befallen me, yet according to my poor abilities I have endeavoured to make satisfaction for the debt due to my brother,' and he promised to pay it off in instalments. Elizabeth, who had herself been 'taken in execution' for the debt, pressed for a larger amount down, because she was 'almost utterly undone through want of the said sum so long time, being the greater part of her maintenance.'

In May Phineas wrote to Nicholas protesting that he could not help defaulting in his payments because his son fell dangerously sick, and he could not get his arrears due from the Exchequer, and asserting his intention to settle the matter 'before the end of this term.' In June Nicholas told him that the course of justice could not be stayed any longer, and Pett again promised that the instalment due should be paid. In October, Pett was still in default, and he was ordered by the Admiralty to give immediate satisfaction or show cause within a week why proceedings should not be taken. He managed still to hold out, and on Sunday the 8th of December he was arrested as he was going to St. Dunstan's Church 'to hear a brother of his preach.' The officers let him go when they heard that he was the King's servant, and subsequently excused their action on the ground that Mrs. Pett's daughter had assured them that Phineas 'lay skulking in obscure places and then ... lay at a chandler's shop in Tower Street, being ... an old sea captain and ready to go to sea presently.' Upon this Pett petitioned the Admiralty, complaining that he had offered part of the debt, which was 'utterly rejected, and her implacable spirit will receive no other satisfaction but present payment of the whole debt,' and he asked the Lords to summon Mrs. Pett and her abettors before them for daring to arrest him without leave, 'so that he can go about his business without fear of arrest and that she may be enforced to accept her debt at such reasonable times as he is able to pay.' The remainder of the story is not to be found in the State Papers, but Pett tells us[150] that the matter was fought out at law, to his 'great charge,' so that presumably he was ultimately compelled to pay the money.

[Sidenote: The Destiny]

A little before the time when Elizabeth first began to press him for the payment of the debt due to her late husband, Phineas was being pursued by an anchor-smith named Tayte, who asked the Admiralty for permission to proceed against him for a debt of 250_l._ due on account of ironwork supplied for the construction of the Destiny, which Pett built for Sir Walter Ralegh in 1617. Phineas does not mention this in the manuscript, but as it gave rise to the interesting letter to Nicholas and petition to the Admiralty printed in the Appendix[151] it seems worthy of passing reference. On the return of Ralegh from his disastrous expedition, the Destiny was confiscated by the Crown, her name being changed to Convertive. Pett was therefore unable to recover against the ship the 700_l._ which was due to him, and presumably had no power to recover it from Ralegh's estate; possibly, however, this was another case in which he had exceeded the contract and had no legal remedy against the owner for the difference.

[Sidenote: The Voyage to Spain.]