The Master Shipwright's Secrets by Richard Endsor

Author:Richard Endsor
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781472838391
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

The new fourth rate built at Woolwich was constructed with one rowing oar scuttle between the gunports,656 and it may well be that the Deptford and Chatham ships had them as well, in common with many other fourth-rate ships of the period. King James II followed his late brother’s interest in the Navy and approved the launching of the Chatham- and Deptford-built ships for Tuesday 3 May and Wednesday 4 May 1687.657 He personally visited Chatham on the 3rd for the launch and named the ship the Sedgemoor. The event was attended by Edward Gregory, later Commissioner at Chatham, who wrote, ‘A crowd of friends both dined & supt with us.’658 The next day the festivities moved to Deptford for the launch of Shish’s ship, which James named the St Albans.659 On 15 March 1688, the guns belonging to the St Albans were listed as 20 fortified culverins (18-pounders) and 30 six-pounders, although she had no carriages to put them on.660

William Sutherland wrote about the ships he had sailed in: ‘The next ship was the Saint Albans, a ship of 50 guns built by John Shish at Deptford in 1688, her length of keel was 107 foot, on the deck 125 foot, beam 33 foot 6 inches, depth 13 foot 6 inches, she had an excellent character at that time and yet I am well assured her midship timber was described by one radius from the keel to the breadth and yet carried a stout sail and did every other office very well being coveted by most commanders for her sailing and especially when she went directly before the wind. Indeed when she went to windward the Dover would out do her.661

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