Designs, specifications and reconstruction
Orders placed later in December with Master Shipwright Peter Pett (Snr) to build two frigates (Assurance and Nonsuch) at Deptford Dockyard and with his son Peter Pett (Jnr) to build one frigate (the Adventure) at Woolwich Dockyard. The two Master Shipwrights were individually responsible for the respective designs for the three vessels and for supervising their construction. While all three would be classed as Fourth rates and would each have eleven pairs of gunports on their gundeck (and five or six pairs on their quarterdecks), their individual dimensions and armament differed and are listed in the articles on the individual vessels. [2]
All three frigates were built as single-decked warships, with their main battery on the sole gundeck, with eleven pairs of gunports carrying a mixture of culverins and demi-culverins. Above this they each had a long quarterdeck with either five or six pairs of ports for a mixture of semi-culverins and sakers, but lacked any forecastle. The latter omission was soon corrected, with a forecastle (as an elevated structure over the forward part of the gundeck, but not carrying any guns) being built to "add very much to their strength". During 1649 a small poop was added to surmount the quarterdeck, and over the next couple of years a spar deck was added above the gundeck. Initially this did not carry any guns, but by 1654 this had altered to a full upper deck bearing an upper battery of guns, with the poop becoming a new quarterdeck and with a new quarterdeck above the upper deck. [3] They thus became two-deckers (although the upper deck remained without guns or gunports in the waist), and by June 1660 each of the three was established with 34 guns and 120 men (except for the Assurance with 32 guns and 115 men, just like the Constant Warwick).
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
