“The _Royal Sovereign_ was the first great ship that was ever built in England; she was then designed only for splendour and magnificence, and was in some measure the occasion of those loud complaints against ship-money in the reign of Charles I.; but being taken down a deck lower, she became one of the best men-of-war in the world, and so formidable to her enemies that none of the most daring among them would willingly lie by her side. She had been in almost all the great engagements that had been fought between France and Holland; and in the last fight between the English and the French, encountering the _Wonder of the World_, she so warmly plied the French Admiral, that she forced him out of his three-decked wooden castle, and chasing the _Royal Sun_ before her, forced her to fly for shelter among the rocks, where she became a prey to lesser vessels, that reduced her to ashes. At length, leaky and defective herself with age, she was laid up at Chatham to be rebuilt; but being set on fire by negligence, she was, on the 27th of this month, devoured by the element which so long and so often before she had imperiously made use of as the instrument of destruction to others.” Charles, in spite of his troubles, either rebuilt or added eighteen vessels to the Royal Navy, leaving it not merely numerically stronger, but improved in all other particulars. The immense square sterns and full bows originally copied from the Dutch (who built their ships apparently on their own model) gave place to more shapely sterns and sharper bows. Extremely high poops and forecastles—copied, one would think, from the Chinese—were abandoned as increasing the dangers of seamanship. Tonnage and number of guns were largely increased. A “first rate” advanced from fifty to sixty, and afterwards to a hundred guns.