list of the same year, her guns are stated at 32 : a difference to be explained, perhaps, by one being the lowest, the other the highest, number of guns assigned to the ship in her new employ. *

The English were always fond of over-gunning their vessels; and it generally happened, when an English ship of war was taken by the French, that the latter, before they sent her forth as a cruiser; reduced, sometimes by a full sixth, the number of her guns. One instance may suffice. The Pembroke, when captured by the French, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, mounted 64 guns ; but, when recaptured shortly afterwards, had on board only 50 guns, and these as the whole of her establishment. �

An addition of six guns to the Constant-Warwick's original number was, perhaps, no improvement; but what shall we say to an increase of 20, or, at all events, of 16 guns? Our suspicion that this had taken place was excited by seeing the name of the Constant-Warwick, as one of the six fourth-rate 42-gun ships, enumerated at No. 30 in the abstract of 1677. � There the ship, having her two bow-ports filled, carries 20, instead of 18 demi-culverins on, what is now, in truth, the first gundeck ; and, having her quarterdeck bulwark continued forward on each side to her stem, readily finds room for a second whole tier of guns. The number first mounted on this second deck was probably 20, the same as on the deck below. Afterwards, 18 were considered enough ; especially as the guns were not sakers, but demi-culverins, the same as on the first gundeck. The poop, by this new operation, and, perhaps, by a little extension forward, becomes the quarterdeck, and is armed, at first probably, with six, but afterwards, with four minions; making 46 guns as the temporary, and 42 as the permanent, establishment of the ship.

When, to the increased weight of the, guns, their carriages and shot, is added the weight of wood and iron, consumed as well in the barricade to the second gundeck, as in strengthening the ship in every part, we may well give credit to a writer of 1665, who, in complaining that ships of the British navy are "over-gunned," instances, among others, "the Constant-Warwick, from 26 gunns and an incomparable sayler, to 46 gunns and a slugg." � The worst is, that the Constant-Warwick, although thus changed in her form and qualifications, although, from an "incomparable sayler," converted to a "slugg," was allowed to retain her original appellation. So that, according to the loose accounts handed down to us, "the first frigate built in England" was an over-gunned, top-heavy, two-decker, instead of, as a little investigation now proves her to have been, a properly armed, snug, one-decker.

* See this explained at p. 6

� See Charnock, vol. ii., p. 18

� See Appendix No. 1.

� "Gibson's Observations on Military Management," as copied into Charnock's second volume.