uns, and measured 1,739 tons. The _Royal Charles_ created
as much sensation in its day as did the famous ship built for Charles I.
There is a beautiful model of the _Royal Charles_ in the Museum.

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--The _Soleil Royal_. 1683.]

The following table gives the leading dimensions of the _Royal Charles_
and the _Britannia_:--

--------------+---------+----------+----------+----------+------------
| | | | |
Name of ship. | Length. | Breadth. | Depth of | Draught. | Complement.
| | | hold. | |
--------------+---------+----------+----------+----------+------------
| ft. | ft. in. | ft. in. | ft. in. |
Royal Charles | 136 | 46 0 | 18 3 | 20 6 | 780
Britannia | 146 | 47 4 | 19 7-1/2| 20 0 | 780
--------------+---------+----------+----------+----------+------------

Fig. 50 is an illustration after Vandevelde of a famous French
first-rate of the same period, named the _Soleil Royal_, of 106 guns.
She was destroyed in Cherbourg Bay the day after the battle of Cape La
Hogue, in 1692. Fig. 51 is a Dutch first-rate, named the _Hollandia_, of
74 guns. She was built in 1683, and took part in the battle of Beachy
Head as flagship of Admiral Cornelis Evertsen.

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--The _Hollandia_. 1683.]

The chief difference between the British and foreign builds of warship
of the latter half of the seventeenth century was that the English
vessels were always constructed with the rounded tuck before mentioned,
as introduced by Pett, while the Continental ships all had the
old-fashioned square tuck, which is well illustrated in Fig. 51. The
Dutch ships in one respect excelled all others, in that they were the
first in which the absurd practice of an exaggerated "tumble home," or
contraction of the upper deck, was abandoned. This fashion was still
carried out to a very great extent by the English, and to a less extent
by the French and Spaniards. The chain-plates in the English vessels
were also fixed extremely low, while the Dutch fixed them as high as the
sills of the upper-deck ports would allow. In consequence of the
shallowness of the Dutch harbours, the draught of their ships was also
considerably less than that of the English vessels of corresponding
force.

Most of the ships in a seventeenth-century fleet deemed fit to take
their