It was under Henry VII. that the bounty system for encouraging shipbuilders was introduced. It was during his reign, too, that Portsmouth Dockyard was founded, and that at this port the first dry dock was built in England, and the _Sovereign_ was the first ship known to have gone into it. We find among the Naval Accounts of Henry VII., a record that on the tenth of October in the first year of his reign, the _Grace à Dieu_ was docked at Hamble, or, as it was then known, Hamill. But Mr. Oppenheim points out that this docking here meant merely getting the ship high and dry on to the mud and then surrounding her with a fence of brushwood. The popularity which, during the fifteenth century, Hamble had shared with Southampton, was decreasing as soon as ships of the size of the _Regent_ and _Sovereign_ were built. Perhaps it was owing to the lack of water in this river that the Portsmouth dry dock was made. [Illustration: FIG. 44. A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY CARAVEL.] All the time the unhappy Wars of the Roses had been wasting England’s energy and finances, the people in the south-west corner of Europe were prospering exceedingly. Whilst England was at a standstill as regards development, Spain and Portugal were going rapidly ahead in maritime matters. They had acquired an immense amount of nautical knowledge from the Venetians and Genoese, and until the time came for England to wake up and set her house in order, Portugal was taking the lead in voyages of exploration. When Columbus set forth in 1492 on the voyage that led to the discovery of the West Indies, his fleet comprised his flagship, the _Santa Maria_, and two other caravels named respectively the _Nina_ and the _Pinta_. We find that the _Santa Maria_ proved to be “a dull sailer and unfit for discovery.”[64] This statement is entirely borne out by Captain D. V. Concas.[65] For from historical data, a replica of the _Santa Maria_ was built at Carraca by Spanish workmen in 1893, for the Chicago Exhibition. She was sailed across the Atlantic on her own bottom the same year with a Spanish crew. The course taken was exactly that followed by Columbus on his first voyage. The time occupied was thirty-six days, and the maximum speed obtained was about 6½ knots. Captain Concas, who was in charge of her, reported that she pitched horribly. The illustration in Fig. 43 represents a caravel of this period, and will give the reader a general idea of the ships of this time. This is from a photograph of a model made by Mr. Frank H. Mason, R.B.A., and exhibited in the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908. It has since been presented by Lloyd’s to the South Kensington Museum. The colouring of the underbody is quite correct, for we find mention of the “white bellies” of the Spanish ships of the sixteenth century being seen coming over the billows. The yard on the bowsprit for the spritsail should not be shown as a fixture for another hundred years later. The yards of the lower courses will be