We have already referred to the great influence for good exercised on the English Navy by Dutch and French naval architects. Among the points of superiority which the smaller French craft possessed over ours was that their lower guns were as much as four feet above the water, an improvement that made for greater safety. They could also stow four months’ provisions, whereas our frigates were narrower and sharper, and carried their guns little more than three feet clear of the water, having space only for ten weeks’ provisions. It was as improvements on these defects that the _Resolution_ and _Rupert_ had been built by Sir Anthony Deane. During the reign of Charles II., also, Sir Philip Howard made an invention for sheathing his Majesty’s ships with lead in preference to using wooden boards with a layer of tar and hair between the sheath and the ship, the whole having been covered outside with a composition of sulphur, oil and other ingredients. The old method of sheathing with elm boards had been introduced by Hawkins during Elizabeth’s reign, but it does not appear to have been successful, for in a report dated October 12, 1587, the chief shipwrights state that the _Bonaventure_, which had been treated according to Hawkins’ method, had decayed timbers under her sheathing. But the reader will recollect that as far back as the reign of Edward VI. the ships that voyaged to the North-East under Chancellor and Willoughby had part of their underbody covered with thin sheets of lead, while the ancients of the time of Caligula and even before, had also adopted this method of preserving the hulls of ships. So Howard was really a reviver rather than an inventor. Still, since complaint had been made that Hawkins’ method necessitated frequent cleaning, and the roughness of the wood-sheathed bottom interfered with the sailing abilities, Howard’s plan was adopted. The first experiment of using his milled lead sheathing was made on the _Phœnix_ at Portsmouth in 1670-71, and afterwards on the _Dreadnought_, the _Henrietta_, and others in 1672. The _Phœnix_ was careened at Sheerness in 1673, after two voyages to the Straits, and inspected by the King himself. In the same year Howard’s new method was finally adopted for the Navy by the Lords of the Admiralty. Considerable opposition was made by some critics, who rightly pointed out that the action of the lead was to corrode very rapidly the iron nails and rudder-irons of the ship, and eventually in 1682 the Navy Board reported against a further use of this sheathing.