It does not appear that any further novelties, or improvements, worth alluding to were introduced into the practice of shipbuilding till the accession of the House of Stuart in 1603. All the monarchs of this family paid particular attention to the development of the Royal Navy. King James I. had in his service an educated naval architect of the name of Phineas Pett, who was a Master of Arts of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a member of a famous family of shipbuilders who had been employed for two centuries previously, from father to son, as officers and architects in the Royal Navy. Some time after the accession of James, a Royal Commission inquired into the general state and management of the navy, and issued a report in 1618, which was in effect "a project for contracting the charge of His Majesty's Navy, keeping the coast of England and Ireland safely guarded, and his Majesty's ships in harbour as sufficiently guarded as now they are, provided that the old debts be paid, ... and certain assignments settled for the further payment of the navy quarterly." At the time the report was issued there were only seventeen vessels in the navy which had been built during the reign of James. The most important of these was the _Prince Royal_, built in 1610, and, at the time, considered to be one of the finest men-of-war in the world. Fig. 47 is an illustration of a man-of-war of the period, which, there is strong evidence for believing, was this very vessel. It was designed and built under the superintendence of Phineas Pett at Woolwich Dockyard, and was given by the king to his son Henry, Prince of Wales, in honour of whom it was named the _Prince Royal_. It was in many respects a remarkable departure from the prevailing practice of the times, and, if stripped of its profuse carved work, was very similar in outline to the men-of-war built as recently as the commencement of the last century. The designer was bold enough to abandon some of the time-honoured features of ship construction, such as the beak, or prow, derived from the old galleys, and the square buttock, or tuck. The latter feature, however, continued to appear in the ships of most other European countries for some time afterwards. The length of keel of this vessel was 114 ft., and the beam 44 ft. The reputed burthen was 1,400 tons, and the vessel was pierced for 64 guns, whereof she carried 55, the vacant portholes being filled in action from the opposite side, a custom which prevailed down to the last century and was adopted in order to lessen the dead weight carried aft. The great difference between the shape of the quarter galleries and forecastle in this ship and in the earlier types will be noted. The armament of the _Prince Royal_ consisted of the following guns: On the lower deck six 32-pounders, two 24-pounders, and twelve 18-pounders. The bow and aftermost ports were empty, and in case of necessity the former was filled by an 18-pounder from the opposite side, and the latter by a