They confirm, besides, the profuseness of the ornamentation which was massed on her--the trophies, angels, emblems, mouldings--which made her the occasion of loud complaints against ship-money, and “a miracle of black and gold.” The _Sovereign of the Seas_ had a distinguished career. When cut down a deck she proved to be an exceptionally serviceable unit, taking part in all the great actions of the Dutch wars and crowning her work at La Hogue, where she engaged, crippled, and forced to fly for shallow water the great _Soleil Royal_, 104, the French flagship. At length, when laid up at Chatham in 1696 in order to be rebuilt, she was set on fire by negligence and destroyed. § By the outbreak of the first Dutch war the modern ideas introduced by Phineas Pett had received a general embodiment in the navy. Blake found to his hand ships well suited to the intended warfare, nor was he much concerned to add either to their number or their magnitude. Only in one feature did the new vessels built show any difference from older construction: their depth in hold was reduced, probably to render them more suitable for work among the shallow waters of the coast of Holland.[15] In other important respects improvement had preceded the opening of hostilities. The lofty stern with which it had been the custom to endow the sailing ship was a feature which had survived from ancient times. In the galley, whose armament was concentrated in the bows, the after part was not devoted to military fittings, but was appropriated chiefly to the accommodation of the officers. So it was in the galleon or sailing ship. With the desire and need for increased accommodation the extra space was obtained by prolonging aft the broad horizontal lines of the vessel and terminating them in a square frame. To give more space, quarter galleries were then added, outside the vessel. Then extra tiers of cabins were added, also with quarter galleries, each storey, as in the case of domestic architecture, projecting over that beneath it, and the whole forming, with its surmounting taffrails, lanterns and ornaments, an excessively weighty and top-heavy structure. Similarly, at the fore end of the ship there remained the survival of the ancient forecastle.