On the accession of James I. a general peace ensued so far as England was concerned. All in all, the rest was beneficial to the navy, and many defects were remedied and reforms inaugurated. In one of the earliest reports presented to the king on the condition of the navy, after enumerating certain pressing needs, we find the estimate for its _annual_ expenditure placed at rather less than £21,000—an amount which a single ironclad would have swallowed up entirely, and got considerably into debt. James caused one fine vessel to be constructed, in 1610, in which every improvement known at the time was introduced. She was christened the _Prince Royal_. Stow describes her as follows:—“This year the king builded a most goodly ship for warre, the keel whereof was 114 feet in length, and the cross beam was forty-four feet in length; she will carry sixty-four pieces of ordnance, and is of the burthen of 1,400 tons. This royal ship is double built, and is most sumptuously adorned, within and without, with all manner of curious carving, painting, and rich gilding, being in all respects the greatest and goodliest ship that ever was builded in England; and this glorious ship the king gave to his son Henry, Prince of Wales; and the 24th September, the king, the queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and the Lady Elizabeth, with many great lords, went unto Woolwich to see it launched; but because of the narrowness of the dock it could not then be launched; whereupon the prince came the next morning by three o’clock, and then at the launching thereof the prince named it after his own dignity, and called it the _Prince_.” Phineas Pett, one of a family of leading naval constructors of those days, was its builder. A well-known authority(4) says, “Were the absurd profusion of ornament with which the _Royal Prince_ is decorated removed, its contour or general appearance would not so materially differ from the modern vessel of the same size as to render it an uncommon sight, or a ship in which mariners would hesitate at proceeding to sea in, on account of any glaring defects in its form, that in their opinion might render it unsafe to undertake a common voyage in.” A very large number of superior vessels were added to the royal navy during this epoch, but the commercial marine was in a bad way until late in James’s reign. What its conviction was at this time may be gathered from the fact that in 1615, half way in the reign, there were not more than ten vessels of 200 tons burthen each in the port of London. Less than seven years afterwards, such was the improvement, that Newcastle alone could boast more than a hundred, each of which exceeded that tonnage.