The first trials were disappointing, but Sir William was not to be beaten: and having made a few alterations he again started 'The Experiment,' as the ship was called, on a trial sail. 'It is,' says Pepys, 'about thirty ton in burden, and carries thirty men with good accommodation (as much more as any ship of her burden), and so as any vessel of this figure shall carry more men with better accommodation by half than any other ship. This also carries ten guns of five tons weight.'[1]
The Committee of the Royal Society, consisting of Lord Massereene, Sir Peter Pett, Sir A. Morgan and others, 'could not think of a better expedient to call together all such who were conversant with boats and the water, than on a holy-day to propose a match, and to make a free offering of a flag of silk charged with a gilded harp and a wreath of laurel above, and a scroll beneath with this inscription, "Prœmium Regalis Societatis Velociori," and this to be given to any boat that should outsail Sir William Petty's vessel, in such a course as should be set. The contest, in which three prime boats with the best sailors of the harbour of Dublin entered, ended in the triumph of Sir William's vessel, whose crew 'took down the premium and bore it at the main-top as "Admiral of the Cylynders."'
The fame of the double-bottomed vessel now was great, and was still further increased on her winning a wager of fifty pounds in a sailing match between Dublin and Holyhead with the packetboat; 'the best ship or vessel the King had there,' according to Pepys.[2] In coming back from Holyhead they started together. Sir William's vessel arrived first, at five at night; the packet not till eight next morning; the crew not thinking that the other could have lived in such a sea.' The success which attended these trips naturally made Sir William anxious that
- ↑ Pepys's Diary, iii. 233. See, too, Birch, History of the Royal Society, i. 124, 131, 141, 183.
- ↑ Pepys, iii. 233. In the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and in the MS. volume at the British Museum, in the Sloane Collection, containing the Register Book of the Royal Society, vol. i., a picture of the vessel is to be found. See, too, the MS. minutes of the Royal Society of Dublin, i. 3, now at the British Museum, and Birch, History of the Royal Society, i. 183 et seq.
