But how difficult a matter it was for a builder to depart from tradition, is shown from Pett’s account of the inquisition to which he was subjected in connection with the building of this famous ship. His rivals took advantage of the “Commission of Enquiry into the abuses of the navy,” of 1608, to indict him for bad design, bad building, and peculation. So much hard swearing took place on both sides that at last King James himself decided to act as judge, and at Woolwich, with the wretched Phineas on his knees before him, opened his court of inquiry. “Much time,” says the diarist, “was spent in dispute of proportions, comparing my present frame with former precedents and dimensions of the best ships, for length, breadth, depth, floor, and other circumstances. One point of proportion was mainly insisted upon and with much violence and eagerness urged on both sides, which was the square of the ship’s flat in the midships, they affirming constantly upon their oath it was full thirteen feet, we as constantly insisting that it was but eleven foot eight inches.” In the end the king called in a mathematician and had the controversy settled by actual measurement. None of the charges brought against him being sustained, Phineas was acquitted and restored once more to royal favour, to his own delight and to that of his youthful patron, Prince Henry. The _Prince Royal_ marks a new epoch in ship design. She was such a departure from all previous forms that she made the fame of Phineas Pett secure. She became, indeed, the parent or type of all future warships down to the beginning of the nineteenth century; for (says Charnock), were the profuse ornaments removed, her contour, or general appearance, would not so materially differ from that of the modern vessel of the same size as to render her an uncommon sight, or a ship in which mariners would hesitate to take the sea. In her a final departure was made from the archaic form imposed on fighting ships by tradition. The picture Charnock gives of her is of a highly ornamented but low and flush-decked vessel armed to the ends with two tiers of heavy guns. The projecting beak-head, a relic from the galley days which had been so prominent a feature of Tudor construction, has almost disappeared: the bow curves gracefully upward to a lion close under the bowsprit. The wales have little sheer; the stern is compact and well supported, with beautiful lines. The quarter galleries are long, and are incorporated in the structure in a curious manner: in the form of indented, tower-like projections, with ornamented interspaces. The whole picture gives evidence of stout scantlings and invaluable solidity. Although in many respects the _Prince Royal_ was a masterpiece she was primitive in the variety of her armament. On the lower deck she carried two cannon-petro, six demi-cannon, twelve culverins; on her upper deck eighteen demi-culverins; and on quarter-deck and poop a number of sakers and port-pieces. Also,