Note 586 — Chapter VIII · CHARLES I. NAVY—continued.

The Sovereign of the Seas was the largest ship hitherto built for the navy; it was 127 feet long in the keel, 46½ feet in breadth (inside measurement), and 19 feet 4 inches in depth; the tonnage was by the “new rule” 1552 tons, by the “old rule” 1823 tons. She was also by far the most expensive. Her cost was £40,833, 8s. 1½d., besides her guns, which were estimated to cost, with engraving, £25,059, 8s. 8d. State Papers, Dom., ccclxi. 71; ccclxix. 44; ccclxxiv. 30; ccclxxxvii. 87. See also Oppenheim, Hist. Administration Royal Navy, 260. In 1637 a “description” of the ship was published by Thomas Heywood, dedicated to the king, and with a frontispiece representation of it: “A True description of his Majestie’s Royall Ship Built this yeare 1637 at Wool-witch in Kent. To the great glory of our English Nation and not paraleld in the whole Christian World. Published by Authoritie, London, 1637.” The description, apart from the verse, occupies a few pages at the end, the work dealing chiefly with the ships of the ancients. A second edition was published in 1638: “A True Discription of his Majestie’s royall and most stately ship called the Soveraign of the Seas, built at Wol-witch in Kent 1637 with the names of all the prime officers in her,” &c. Prynne (Brief Animadversions, &c., p. 123) says that Charles claimed and maintained the dominion of the seas by increasing the navy, &c., and “by giving the name of the Edgar (with this motto engraven on it, Ego ab Edgaro quatuor maria vendico) and of the Soveraign of the Sea to the Admiral of his fleet.”