The Autobiography of Phineas Pett
[102] _Monson Tracts_, ii. 140.
[103] _Miscell._, vol. x. pp. 257-262: _A large and particular
complaint against Phineas Pett relating to abuses in the Navy about
the end of the Queen's and beginning of King James's Reign._ _Cf._
Dr. Tanner's Introduction in _Hollond's Discourses of the Navy_
(N.R.S., vol. vii.). What is probably the same account is calendared
by the Hist. MSS. Commission (_Coke MSS_, vol. i. p. 36) as '1602 Oct
14, 1603 June 19 allegations by George Colyson of abstraction of sea
stores, and other frauds by Phineas Pett.'
[104] _Infra_, p. 18.
[105] _Infra_, p. 70.
[106] _Cott. MSS._, Julius F. 111--the depositions of Pett and
various witnesses; _S.P.D._ James I, xxxi. 51--memorandum drawn up
from the above; _S.P.D._ James I, xli.--report of the Commission,
drawn up by Sir Robert Cotton, with analytical draft and notes
attached.
[107] The capital of Spain from 1601 to 1606.
[108] _Pat. Roll_, 1771.
[109] The names were as follows: Henry, Earl of Northampton;
Charles, Earl of Nottingham; Lord Zouch; Lord Wotton, Comptroller
of the Household; Sir Julius Cæsar, Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Sir Thomas Parry, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; Sir Edward
Phillips and Sir John Doderidge, Serjeants-at-Law; Sir Henry Hobart,
Attorney-General; Sir Francis Bacon, Solicitor-General; Sir William
Waade, Lieutenant of the Tower; Sir Charles Parkins; Sir Robert
Cotton; Sir Thomas Crompton; and John Corbett, a Clerk of the Privy
Council. _Pat. Roll_, 1770.
[110] _Cott. MSS._, Julius F. 111.
[111] _S.P. Dom._ James I, xli. The 'book of reformation' referred to
at p. 37. Northampton also made a report direct to the King, which
deals, however, only in generalities.--_Royal MSS._ 18 A, xxxiv.
[112] Pp. lxiv and 29 _et seq._
[113] _Pipe Off. Dec. Accts._ 2247. 'New Building the Victory in dry
dock at Woolwich;' _ibid._ 2248, 'Shipkeepers attending the Victory,
now named the Prince Royal'; 'New Building the Victory now named the
Prince Royal.'
[114] The relative dimensions were: _Prince Royal_--length of keel
115 ft.; breadth 43 ft.; depth 18 ft. _Merhonour_--length of keel
110 ft.; breadth 37 ft.; depth 17 ft. Baker built the _Merhonour_ by
contract for £3600.
[115] The _Resistance_.
[116] The _Answer_. He does not include the _Anne Royal_, which had
just been finished.
[117] The _Moon_.
[118] 'There are two kinds of furring, the one is after a ship
is built, to lay on another plank upon the side of her (which is
called plank upon plank). The other, which is more eminent, and
more properly furring, is to rip off the first planks and to put
other timbers upon the first, and so to put on the planks upon
these timbers. The occasion of it is to make a ship bear a better
sail, for when a ship is too narrow, and the bearing either not
laid out enough, or too low, then they must make her broader, and
lay her bearing higher. They commonly fur some two or three strakes
under water and as much above, according as the ship requires,
more or less. I think in all the world there are not so many ships
furred as are in England, and it is a pity that there is no order
taken, either for the punishing of those who build such ships,
or the utter preventing of it, for it is an infinite loss to the
owners, and an utter spoiling and disgrace to all ships that are so
handled.'--Mainwaring, _Seaman's Dictionary_, s.v. Fur.
[119] Add^l. MS. 19889.
[120] _Harl. MS._ 309, f. 68.
[121] _S.P. Dom._, James I, xlv. 33.
[122] See note on p. lxviii. In this case pieces were laid upon the
outsides of the timbers to make the mould broader.
[123] See note on p. 37.
[124] The sweeps are the circular arcs of the mould; see the mould of
the _Sovereign_ on p. xcvi.
[125] 'The Harpings of a Ship is the breadth of her at the bow: also
some call the ends of the bends, which are fastened into the stem,
the Harpings.'--Mainwaring, _Seaman's Dictionary_.
[126] Overhang.
[127] Holes cut through the timbers over the keel to allow the bilge
water to run to the pump.
[128] See note on p. 60.
[129] _I.e._ the overlap of the joint was not sufficient.
[130] The inside planking upon the floor timbers, sometimes called
'seeling' or 'ceiling.'
[131] The rungheads at the ends of the floor timbers, where these
begin to curve upward into the lower (or runghead) sweep.
[132] _I.e._ shortened the futtock sweep.
[133] The moulds fore and aft in which the lower sweeps become
concave instead of convex exteriorly.
[134] Add^l. MS. 18037.
[135] At Hinchinbrook, Hampton Court, and Windsor Castle. See R.
C. Anderson, '_The Prince Royal_ and other Ships of James I,' in
_Mariner's Mirror_, vol. iii. (1913), in which these pictures are
reproduced.
[136] Pepysian MS. 2820.
[137] Add^l. MS. 9299, f. 206.
[138] _Coke MSS. (Hist. MSS.)_, I. 114. See also pp. 124, 125,
_infra_.
[139] Add. MSS. 9294 f. 409 and 9300.
[140] _I.e._ in 1621.
[141] Appendix V, p. 207.
[142] It need scarcely be pointed out that the illustrations in
Charnock's _Marine Architecture_ do not remotely resemble the real
ship.
[143] Burrell quarrelled with the Company in 1626 and was dismissed
their service. He died in 1630.
[144] See especially Playfair, _The Scourge of Christendom_; Corbett,
_England in the Mediterranean_, vol. i., chap. viii.; and Oppenheim,
_Monson Tracts_, vol. iii. p. 94 _et seq._
[145] _S.P. Dom._, James I, cxxxiv. 60.
[146] _I.e._ his wages as captain of the _Mercury_.
[147] _Infra_, pp. 139, 141.
[148] About 1631. In January 1634 he is stated to have been dead
three years.
[149] He refers especially to his loss on the _Destiny_. For this
use of 'main' in the sense of considerable,' _cf._ 'a very main
loss.'--_N.E.D._
[150] _Infra_, p. 154. The above account has been collected from the
_S.P. Dom._, James I, ccxv. p. 98; ccxxviii. f. 14, 84_a_; ccxxi. 45;
ccxxxii. 27; ccxxxiii. 10; ccxxxviii. 89; ccxlii. 3, 36; ccxlvii. 84;
ccli. 18; cclix. 10.
[151] Appendix VI, p. 210.
[152] App. VII, p. 212.
[153] _Infra_, p. 126.
[154] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I., ccli. 74.
[155] _Infra_, p. 153.
[156] It was 252_l._ 6_s._ 9_d._
[157] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I, cclx. 108, ccxxviii. f. 122.
[158] Appendix VIII, p. 214.
[159] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I, cclxiv. ff. 67_a_, 87_a_.
[160] Storekeeper at Deptford. He seems to have had some knowledge
of design, for in 1626 and 1627 he had been associated with Pett,
Stevens, Lydiard, and Gunter, the mathematician, in drawing up new
rules for ship measurement.
[161] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I, cclxxxvi. 44.
[162] The transverse section at the greatest breadth.
[163] The curves passing through the ends of the floor timbers, as
referred to the plan and elevation respectively.
[164] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I, cclxxxvi. 105.
[165] Add. MSS. 9300 f. 64; 9336 f. 53. _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I,
ccclxviii. 121. In this list, which is dated September 1637, the ship
is not named. The keel length is given as 127 ft., depth from breadth
to top of keel as 19 ft. 4 ins., and breadth as 46 ft. 6 ins.
[166] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I, cccvi. 83.
[167] _Diary_, Jan. 31, 1663.
[168] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I, ccxcviii. 20.
[169] _S.P. Dom._, Chas. I, ccxcix. 2, 12.
[170] _Hist. MSS. Report_, v. 33.
[171] _Hist. MSS. Report_, v. 46.
[172] Firth, _Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum_, i. 27.
[173] He was buried in Chatham Church on August 21.
[174] _Pipe Office Dec. Accts._ 2286.
'Phineas Pett, Esq., another of the said Commissioners and one of the
principal officers of the Navy, for his salary at 200_l._ per annum,
8_d._ per diem for one clerk and 6_l._ per annum for paper, pens
etc., due to him for the same time ended as the former [i.e. _the
year ended September 29, 1647_]
217_l._ 3_s._ 4_d._
'Thomas Smith, Esq., now one of the Commissioners of the Navy in
the room and place of (_blank_) for the entertainment of himself at
200_l._ per annum and two clerks at 16_d._ per diem and 6_l._ per
annum for paper money due to him for 34 days begun the 28th of August
1647 and ended the 30th of September following
22_l._ 9_s._ 4_d._'
[175] Smith, who had been Northumberland's secretary, had been
appointed Secretary of the Admiralty by Ordinance of the same date
as the one by which Pett had been re-appointed a Commissioner of the
Navy in 1642.
[176] _Infra_, p. 71.
[177] See Christy, _Voyages of Foxe and James_ (Hakl. Soc.) and
Asher, _Henry Hudson the Navigator_ (Hakl. Soc.).
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF PHINEAS PETT
I, Phineas[178] Pett, being the son of Mr. Peter Pett of Deptford
Strond[179] in the County of Kent, one of her Majesty's Master
Shipwrights, was born in my father's dwelling house in the same town
one All Saints' day in the morning, being the first day of November
in the year of our Lord 1570, and was baptized the 8th of the same
month and year aforesaid in the parish church of Deptford Strond
aforesaid.
I was brought up in my father's house at Deptford Strond until I
was almost nine years of age, and then put out to a free school at
Rochester in Kent, to one Mr. Webb, with whom I boarded about one
year, and afterward lay at Chatham Hill in my father's lodging in the
Queen's House, from whence I went every day to school to Rochester
and came home at night for three years space. Afterwards, by reason
of my small profiting at this school, my father removed me from
thence to Greenwich to a private school kept by one Mr. Adams, where
I so well profited that in three years I was made fit for Cambridge.
In the year 1586 at Shrovetide, against bachelor's commencement, I
was sent to the University of Cambridge, and by the means of one Mr.
Howell,[180] a Minister in Essex, I was placed in Emanuel College
with a reverend tutor, President of the house, called Mr. Charles
Chadwick, where I was allowed 20_l._ per annum during my father's
life, besides books, apparel, and other necessaries.
In the year 1589, about the 6th day of September, it pleased God[181]
to call to his mercy my reverend loving father, whose loss proved
afterward my utter undoing almost, had not God been more merciful
unto me; for leaving all things to my mother's directions, her fatal
matching with a most wicked husband, one Mr. Thomas Nunn,[182] a
Minister, brought a general ruin both to herself and whole family.
Some two months after my father's decease or thereabouts, my eldest
sister Rachel was married to one Mr. Newman, Minister of Canewdon in
Essex, a man of most dissolute life, with whom she not long enjoyed,
for God, of his great mercy, took her and delivered her from a most
miserable and slavish life wherein she lived with him; by whom he had
two children, but both died.
By reason of my mother's cross matching, my means of maintenance
being wholly taken from me, and having no hopes of exhibition from
any friend, I was forced after four years continuance in Cambridge,
my graces for Bachelor of Art being passed both in house and town, to
abandon the University presently after Christmas in anno 1590.
At Candlemas after, I, by the instant persuasion of my mother, was
contented to put myself to be an apprentice to become a shipwright
(my father's profession) and was bound a covenant servant[183] to
one Mr. Richard Chapman of Deptford Strond in Kent, one of her
Majesty's Master Shipwrights, and one whom my father had bred of a
child to that profession, my allowance from him to find myself tools
and apparel being bare but 46 shillings and 8 pence per annum. This
man I served almost two years altogether at Chatham in the Queen's
Majesty's Works, and then he died; where I spent all that time, God
he knoweth, to very little purpose.