1647 Programme Group

Class overview
Name	1647 Programme (Group of English warships)
Builders	Woolwich Dockyard Deptford Dockyard Chatham Dockyard
Operators	Kingdom of England Commonwealth Of England  Royal Navy
Preceded by	1646 Programme
Succeeded by	1649 Programme
Built	1647
In service	1647 - 1709
Completed	4
Lost	2
Retired	2
General characteristics
Type	32 to 34-gun Fourth rate
Tons burthen	370 tons bm (design)
Sail plan	ship-rigged
Complement	150 in 1652, 160 in 1653
Armament	32 to 34 guns initially, later up to 42 guns

The 1647 Programme of four additional Fourth rate vessels for the English Navy Royal was approved by Parliament on 9 January 1647, following a recommendation on 31 December 1646 by the Admiralty Committee that four new frigates should be built, each to be of 370 tons and to carry 32 guns. Like the three vessels built in the previous year under the 1646 Programme, each vessel would have eleven pairs of gunports on its sole gundeck, with further ports on the quarterdeck above.[1]

While nominally built for the Kingdom of England, and thus nominally the property of the Stuart King, their construction during the English Civil War was actually ordered by the Parliamentary side, and with the execution of King Charles I in January 1649 these ships (and preceding vessels) passed under the control of the new Commonwealth of England, and remained as such until the Stuart Restoration in 1660.

Designs, specifications and reconstruction

Orders placed later in January 1747 with Master Shipwright Henry Goddard to build one frigate (the Dragon) at Chatham Dockyard, with Peter Pett (Snr) to build two frigates (the Elizabeth and Tiger) at Deptford Dockyard and with his son Peter Pett (Jnr) to build another frigate (Phoenix) at Woolwich Dockyard. The three Master Shipwrights were individually responsible for the respective designs for the four vessels and for supervising their construction. While all four 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 four 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, and by June 1660 all four were each established with 38 guns and 130 men.

Ships of the 1647 Programme

As with most vessels of this time period only the years of their launch are available. All four ships served the navy of the Commonwealth of England from 1647 to 1660, when they became part of the Royal Navy following the Stuart Restoration.

Name	Builder	Launch year	Remarks
Dragon	Chatham Dockyard	1647	Rebuilt at Deptford in 1689-90 Rebuilt at Rotherhithe in 1706-07 Wrecked on the Casquets (near Alderney]] on 26 March 1712
Elizabeth	Deptford Dockyard	1647	Burnt in action with two Dutch warships off Jamestown, Virginia on 5 June 1667
Phoenix	Woolwich Dockyard	1647	Wrecked at Gibraltar in a storm on 3 December 1664
Tiger	Deptford Dockyard	1647	Rebuilt at Deptford in 1682 Rebuilt at Rotherhithe 1702-03 Rebuilt at Sheerness 1718-22 Wrecked 12 January 1742

Citations

1. Winfield
2. Winfield 2009
3. Brian Lavery, The Ship of the Line, Vol.1:The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850 (Conway Maritime Press, 1983)

References

• British Warships in the Age of Sail (1603 – 1714), by Rif Winfield, published by Seaforth Publishing, England © Rif Winfield 2009, EPUB ISBN 978-1-78346-924-6, Chapter 4, The Fourth Rates - 'Small Ships', Vessels acquired from 24 March 1603, 1647 Programme
• Ships of the Royal Navy, by J.J. Colledge, revised and updated by Lt-Cdr Ben Warlow and Steve Bush, published by Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, Great Britain, © the estate of J.J. Colledge, Ben Warlow and Steve Bush 2020, EPUB ISBN 978-1-5267-9328-7