
Polly Cornthwaite
Senior Cataloguer
This auction has ended. View lot details



Sold for £35,580 inc. premium
Our Marine Pictures & Works of Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialist
Senior Cataloguer

Head of Sale
Provenance
With Jays, Fine Art Dealers, Cambridge.
Private collection, UK.
HMS Sovereign of the Seas was in service for nearly 60 years and was known as the best ship in the English fleet. Built in the Royal Dockyard, Chatham by Phineas Pett, she was the largest ship ever built and measured 168 feet along the gun deck with 102 guns and 48 feet in the beam with a tonnage of 1141 burden. The sheer cost and size of the building of this ship generated a lot of interest at the time. Sovereign was launched on 13 October 1637 and served from 1638 until 1697, when a fire burned the ship to the waterline at Chatham.
Known as 'The Golden Devil' by the Dutch due to her highly ornate design, during the First Anglo-Dutch War the States-General of the Netherlands in a secret session determined the reward money for the crews of fireships that succeeded in destroying an enemy vessel, with the Sovereign being singled out and an extra prize of 3000 guilders promised 'in case they should ruin the ship named the Sovereign'. Although repeatedly occupied by the Dutch during some engagements the Sovereign was retaken every time.