However, this MS. attracts our attention, because it gives us a most interesting and detailed account of the way ships in England were launched only twenty-two years after the Armada was fought and vanquished. There is, I believe, in existence no such satisfactory a picture of the time-honoured ceremony of sending a ship for the first time into the water that is to be her abiding support. I will, therefore, ask the reader to be so good as to accompany me down to Woolwich a few days before the end of September in that year 1610. Here, at last, after two years’ worry, work, and anxiety, Pett has finished his master-work, the biggest craft which even a Pett had ever fashioned. Even to-day, as then, the shipbuilder feels never so much anxiety as the day on which the launching of a great ship is to take place. A hitch--a difficulty in persuading the ship and water to become acquainted--may spoil the labour of many a month, besides being a source of great depression to all concerned, from the builder downwards and upwards.
[Illustration: EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH WEST INDIAMEN.
By a Contemporary Artist. These were the merchant ships which used to bring back to Holland the rich cargoes from across the Atlantic. Notice the exquisite carving.]
However, here we are arrived at the Woolwich yard, where the great _Prince Royal_ is seen towering high above other craft, and the last touches are being given alike to the ship and to the arrangements, for Royalty are coming to grace the launching ceremony. There was a great “standing sett up,” Pett informs us, “in the most convenient place in the yard for his Majesty, the Queen and the Royal Children, and places fitted for the Ladies and Council all railed in and boarded.” All the rooms in Pett’s own lodgings had been “very handsomely hanged and furnished.” “Nothing was omitted that could be imagined anyways necessary both for ease and entertainment.” Pett had been round the dockyard on Sunday, September 23, and then in the evening came a messenger to him with a letter ordering him to be very careful and have the hold of the _Prince Royal_ searched lest “some persons disaffected might have board some holes privilly an’ the ship to sink her after she should be launched.” Pett, however, was far too wide-awake not to have foreseen any such possibility.