The Sweepstake[1] and Mary Fortune were built in 1497, and were small craft, each with three lower masts, a main top-mast, and a sprit-sail on the bowspit.[2] One had eighty and the other sixty oars, for use as sweeps.
The Regent, the principal warship, bequeathed to Henry VIII. by his father, was, as will be seen later, burnt in the action off Brest, on August 10th, 1512, and it would appear that it was as a substitute for her that the famous Henry Grace à Dieu was laid down at Erith in the course of the autumn of the same year. On June 13th, 1514, the not extravagant sum of 6s. 8d. was offered at her "hallowing,"[3] from which fact it may be concluded that she was then launched; and in the course of the following year she seems to have been completed for sea. William Bond, the master-shipwright who built her under Brygandine's direction, is supposed to have been the first master-shipwright of the Royal Navy. A MS. Augmentation Office account, quoted by Charnock,[4] indicates that in November, or December, 1514, she was moved from Erith to Barking Creek by a party which included twenty-one seamen who had been discharged from the Lizard, each of whom received 8d. for his share of the work.
Several alleged representations of this interesting ship exist, and some of them are reproduced here. One is found in a picture which was long hanging in Canterbury Cathedral, and which was presented to Sir John Norris, Admiral of the Fleet, by the dean and chapter. It is still in the possession of Sir John's descendants, and was exhibited at the Royal Naval Exhibition, 1891. Another occurs in the picture by Volpe of the embarkation of Henry VIII. at Dover on May 31st, 1520, to meet Francis I. on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This picture, the property of the Crown, is at Hampton Court Palace. Another occurs in the well-known drawing preserved in the Pepysian collection at Cambridge. And there are two models in the museum at Greenwich. The authenticity of these last was, however, so much doubted by the models committee of the Naval Exhibition, that they were merely described in the catalogue as probably representing large ships of the sixteenth century. Upon the whole, Volpe's picture, long ascribed to
