In the whole history of shipbuilding there is no name which stands out so prominently as Pett. From the time of Henry VIII right down till that of William and Mary, one or more members of this family were busy building ships for the State. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the finest and largest ship which had ever been in the British Navy was the _Prince Royal_, of 1200 tons. She was designed and built by Sir Phineas Pett, and her keel was laid down in 1608, and the first attempt to launch her was made on the 24th of September in 1610. Among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum is a quaint volume of a hundred and thirteen pages, entitled “The Life of Phineas Pette, who was borne Nov. 1^{st}, 1570,” and the account continues down to the year 1638. It is a curious record, in which the most intimate domestic matters are mixed up with the most interesting facts concerning the building of ships. For example: “In the beginning of August, I was summoned to Chatham with my fellow master shipwrites there to take a survey of the Navy according to the yearly Custom.... The 6th. of this Month of Aug^t. my wife was delivered of her 5th. son at Woolwich.” However, this MS. attracts our attention, because it gives us a most interesting and detailed account of the way ships in England were launched only twenty-two years after the Armada was fought and vanquished. There is, I believe, in existence no such satisfactory a picture of the time-honoured ceremony of sending a ship for the first time into the water that is to be her abiding support. I will, therefore, ask the reader to be so good as to accompany me down to Woolwich a few days before the end of September in that year 1610. Here, at last, after two years’ worry, work, and anxiety, Pett has finished his master-work, the biggest craft which even a Pett had ever fashioned. Even to-day, as then, the shipbuilder feels never so much anxiety as the day on which the launching of a great ship is to take place. A hitch--a difficulty in persuading the ship and water to become acquainted--may spoil the labour of many a month, besides being a source of great depression to all concerned, from the builder downwards and upwards. [Illustration: EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH WEST INDIAMEN. By a Contemporary Artist. These were the merchant ships which used to bring back to Holland the rich cargoes from across the Atlantic. Notice the exquisite carving.]