Peter Pett

Who was Peter Pett?

Peter Pett, was an English Master Shipwright, and Second Resident Commissioner of Chatham Dockyard. He is noted for the incident concerning the protection of his scale models and drawings of the King's Fleet during the Dutch Raid on the Medway, in Kent in June 1667, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

Pett was the son of the King's Master Shipwright Captain Phineas Pett. He was introduced to King Charles I of England in 1634 and was ordered to construct a new Third Rate ship of 500 tons at Woolwich Dockyard, to be named the Leopard. With the construction of the Leopard underway, Charles decided that he would have a ship built larger and more ornate than any of her predecessors.

In June 1634 whilst at Woolwich and on the Leopard with the King, Phineas Pett, Peter's father, relates: "His Highness, calling me aside, privately acquainted me of his princely resolution for the building of a great new ship, which he would have me undertake...."

Under the watchful eye of his father Phineas, who had drawn up the plans for this great ship Peter Pett so built HMS Sovereign of the Seas at Woolwich Dockyard.

One of the largest in the world at that time, the Sovereign was a ship of 1,637 tons and was launched on 12 October 1637, after about two years in construction.