HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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only in preserving to them their original position, but in contracting the upperdecks of their ships so ridiculously, as might almost be said to render themeasure necessary.

Holland, after the conclusion of her contest with England, which ended in 1673,applied herself, with avidity, to the construction of larger ships than she had everbefore possessed ; and though the square tuck and stern appears most rigidly ad-hered to in the Hollandia *, one of the largest and most powerful vessels hermarine architects ever built, yet they had courage enough to deviate considerablyfrom the general practice of contracting the upper deck; and the chain-plates arefixed as high as the sills of the upper deck ports would allow. The artists ofLouis, in his celebrated ship, the Soleil Royal, (Fig. 2.) appear to have dividedthemselves between the customs of the two nations. The contraction, thoughless immoderate than that of England was, and in all probability that of Spainwould have been, had she possessed a ship of the same description, was never-theless more apparent than in that of Holland, and the chains were, as isobservable, fixed between the middle and lower decks.

In the Spanish ship of fifty guns, which, according to that time, was cer-tainly among the largest which the country possessed, the ruling passion ofinflexion is carried to a most violent extent; nor, indeed, is it much less so inthe Speaker, its cotemporary. But to preserve the comparison still closer be-tween the different nations by ships built some years later, the stem and sideview of the Royal Charles, built by Sir Anthony Deane, at Portsmouth, in theyear 1673, will more clearly evince the fashion and character, if the term beallowed, of the British first rate at that time in use, than the most copious de-cription in words possibly can -j-. Of the force of the Spanish marine, enoughhas been already said, with regard to its insignificance, to render a farther detailneedless. Precise information of the actual state in which the naval or militarypower of any country has been, even at a remote period, is extremely difficult toobtain with any decided authenticity : such records are kept with the mostscrupulous and jealous care ; and, generally speaking, the labours of the mostdiligent historian must very indeterminately rest, after the most tedious research,

* It was the flag-ship of admiral Evertzen at the time of the revolution.

f Though Britain had spiritedly broken through the trammels of prejudice in one, and that by nomeans an inconsiderable, instance, yet, in the peculiarity of ornament, and shape of the upper part ofthe stern, her ships, built even so late as the conclusion of the reign of Charles the Second, might,without much stretch of imagination, have passed for those of Venice, or of Spain, built nearly onehundred years before them.

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