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, unfortunately, she was built of green timber, so her life was short.
In building a ship of unprecedented burthen Pett had the support of a large public opinion. The advantages attaching to large size were by this time generally appreciated: in the case of fighting ships, in respect of strength, artillery force, and sea endurance, in the case of merchant ships, in respect of carrying capacity and economy of crew. The growth in the size of merchant shipping during the reign was indeed remarkable. Trade followed the flag, and the Jacobean merchant made haste to profit by the conquests of the Elizabethan adventurer. For a short while after the war with Spain our mercantile marine was stagnant; at the accession of James I only small vessels of less than a hundred tons were being built, and English merchants were having strange recourse to the hiring of foreigners. But this state of things did not last for long. The story of the success of the Earl of Cumberland and his 800-ton _Scourge of Malice_, and the sight of the great Portuguese carrack captured in 1592, are said to have stimulated the merchants of London to possess themselves of vessels fit for the Eastern trade. It is said, again, that the appearance of two large Dutch ships in the Thames supplied the sudden impulse to build big. Be that as it may, “the idea spread like wild-fire.” Larger ships were laid down, and by the end of the reign the country possessed a considerable fleet of ships of 500 tons and above. In one instance, at least, the pendulum swung too far, and experience soon exposed the disadvantages of excessive dimensions: the reduction in strength, the unhandiness in shallow waters, the almost impossibility of graving and breaming, the risking in a single bottom of too great a venture. The _Trades Increase_, built for the new East India Company in 1605 by William Burrell and launched by the king at Deptford, was of no less than 1,100 tons burthen. On her first voyage to Java she was lost by fire, and no more ships of her size were ordered by the Company.