 "Sovereign of the Seas")
This website is dedicated to the English warship Sovereign of the Seas - The most magnificent ship in the Royal Navy
Sovereign of the Seas, later named Royal Sovereign after a re-fit, was a 102 gun, three deck warship built in 1637. Known by the Dutch as the "golden devil" because of her all black and gold appearance, Sovereign of the Seas was the most magnificent ship of her era.
The ship was designed in 1634 by Phineas Pett and was the first ship to have three full gun decks, carrying 102 guns on the orders of King Charles I instead of the 90 originally planned. No expense was spared in her construction. All her guns were made from bronze instead of cast iron which meant their construction was four times more expensive. Most impressive was her gilded and carved decoration costing over £6,600 - the equivalent cost of the entire hull for a two decked ship! Sovereign of the Seas was so large that two smaller ships were built from her waste timbers.
The construction of Sovereign of the Seas was part of Charles I's plan to overawe possible enemies, primarily the Dutch and Spanish, with England's naval power. Her first engagement was the Battle of Kentish Knock during the First Dutch War on 28 September 1652 when it is alleged that Sovereign of the Seas destroyed a Dutch ship with a single broadside.
Renamed the Royal Sovereign when Charles II came to the throne in 1660 she fought in several battles during the Second and Third Dutch Wars between 1666-1673. The Nine Years War against France broke out in 1689 and Royal Sovereign was present at the Battles of Beachy Head in 1690 and Barfleur in 1692 when the Royal Navy fought alongside the Dutch. Her career came to an abrupt end when she accidentally caught fire at Chatham on 27 January 1696.
About this site:
I've just started to set this site up so there's still a lot to do. If you click on the "Book" link on the sidebar though you will see the text and images from a 1933 Practical Mechanics publication on making a model of the Sovereign of the Seas. This was a comprehensive 62 page book written by Harold T. Bodkin who was, at the time, the Charter President of the Ship Model Club of Chicago. I still have to finish transposing the last 10 pages of the book but all of the scanned pages are there and are quite legible You can find them by clicking on the "Next" link at the bottom of each page.
This book has been in my family since my father bought it as a teenager. He started making his own model of the Sovereign of the Seas but never got around to finishing it. I felt that the book was still of great interest and decided to set up this website as a way of keeping the information contained within it accessable to the public. The copy of the book I have is in quite poor condition, but each and every page is completely readible and I hope that it becomes a worthwhile resource to model ship builders around the world.
The "History", "Gallery" and "Links" pages are still to be done, but this will happen fairly shortly. Until then, stay tuned...