and twenty-six on the
upper deck; the forecastle had twelve, and the half-deck fourteen ports.
She also carried ten chasers forward, and as many aft. She was provided
with eleven anchors, of which one weighed two tons.

The _Royal Sovereign_ may fairly be taken as representing the
commencement of a better school of ship construction. Her merits were
due to the talents of Phineas Pett, who, though not uniformly successful
in his earlier designs, was a great innovator, and is generally regarded
as the father of the modern school of wooden shipbuilding.

Very little is known, unfortunately, of the character and rig of the
smaller classes of trading vessels of the end of the sixteenth and the
commencement of the seventeenth centuries. It is, however, tolerably
certain that cutter-rigged craft were used in the coasting and Irish
trades as far back as 1567; for there is a map of Ireland of that date
in existence on which are shown two vessels rigged in this manner.

With the description of the _Royal Sovereign_ we close the account of
mediaeval naval architecture. Thanks to the fostering care of Charles I.,
to the genius of Pett, and to the great natural advantages conferred by
the superiority of English oak to other European timbers, England at
this period occupied a high place in the art of shipbuilding. The
position thus gained was maintained and turned to the best advantage in
the period of the Commonwealth, when successful naval wars were
undertaken against the Dutch and other European States. These wars
eventually resulted in establishing England, for a time, as the foremost
maritime power in Europe.

CHAPTER V.

MODERN WOODEN SAILING-SHIPS.

The naval wars which followed the establishment of the Commonwealth
contributed in a very large degree to the progress of shipbuilding. In
1652 war broke out with the United Provinces, headed by the Dutch, who
were, prior to that period, the foremost naval and mercantile power in
the world. The struggle lasted about two years, and during its
continuance the British fleet increased from fifty-five first, second,
and third rates, to eighty-eight vessels of corresponding classes, while
a proportionately larger increase was made in ships of smaller
denominations, and, in addition, the vessels lost in the war were
replaced. The war with the Dutch was an exceptionally severe struggle,
and ended in the complete victory of this country, which then stepped
into Holland's pla