Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
Sir Anthony Deane (1638–1721) was a 17th century mayor of Harwich, naval architect, shipbuilder and member of Parliament.
Born in Harwich in 1638, he was the son of a master mariner, he was apprenticed to Christopher Pett, the Master Shipwright at Woolwich Dockyard, and in 1660 he was the Assistant Master Shipwright there. In August 1662 he first met Samuel Pepys, the Clerk of the Acts and member of the Navy Board, who found him intelligent and knowledgeable, and became his patron. In October 1664 he was appointed Master Shipwright at Harwich Dockyard on Pepys's recommendation. Deane was one of the earliest to apply scientific principles to the building of Naval vessels, and between 1666 and 1675 he designed and built 25 vessels for the Royal Navy.
Harwich Dockyard was closed in 1668, following the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and Deane was appointed Master Shipwright at Portsmouth. In 1672 he was promoted to become Commissioner at Portsmouth, thus becoming a member of the Navy Board. No longer responsible for shipbuilding at Portsmouth, he still was able to build several ships as a private contractor, mainly at Harwich but also at Rotherhithe.
In 1673 he was knighted and appointed Controller of the Victualling Accounts. In the same year, as an alderman of Harwich, he funded the construction of a new gaol and guildhall in the town.[1] He was also an alderman of the City of London.[2]. He became Mayor of Harwich in 1676, and he and his patron Samuel Pepys were the MPs for Harwich in Charles II's third parliament (which sat from 6 March 1678 and formed part of the Cavalier Parliament). They were returned for the 1679 Parliament despite both being accused of leaking naval intelligence to France, and being on 9 July 1679 brought before the King's Bench at Westminster on a charge of treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London, but bailed to appear for trial at a later date. The charges were not pressed, and on 14 February 1680 the pair were released from their bail. For the next few years Deane continued his successful career as a private shipbuilder.
He and Pepys were also MPs for Harwich in James II's first parliament from 19 May 1685.
His written work includes a Doctrine for Naval Architecture, published in 1670, now seen as one of the most important texts in the history of naval architecture. He was also a mentor of Peter the Great during his Grand Embassy.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ Coller, Duffield William (1861) The People's History of Essex. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008.
- ^ Carr, Cecil Thomas (ed.) (1970) Select Charters of Trading Companies, A.D. 1530-1707. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008.
- ^ Hoving, A.J. (1994) Nicolaes Witsens Scheeps-Bouw-Konst Open Gestelt, p. 28.
- Brian Lavery (ed.), Deane's Doctrine of Naval Architecture, 1670, Conway Maritime Press, 1981 and 1986, ISBN 0-85177 180 7.
[edit] External links
- Dictionary of National Biography entry for Sir Anthony Deane
- British History Online
- British History Online
- R. McCutcheon, "Pepys in the Newspapers of 1679-1680", American Historical Review, 1926, p61-64
| Parliament of England | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir Capel Luckyn Thomas King (MP) | Member for Harwich 1679 With: Samuel Pepys | Succeeded by Sir Thomas Middleton Sir Philip Parker, Bt |
| Preceded by Sir Thomas Middleton Sir Philip Parker, Bt | Member for Harwich 1685–1689 With: Samuel Pepys | Succeeded by John Eldred Sir Thomas Middleton |
Annotations
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“Anthony Deane, [31.7.1662] Assistant-Shipwright at Woolich, was to become a distinguished naval architect and a close friend of Pepys.” L&M: iii.151.n.1.
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From Assistant-Shipwright under Christopher Pett at Woolwich in 1662, “Anthony Deane rose to become Master-Shipwright (Portsmouth) in 1668, and Navy Commissioner and knight in 1675….The 30 ships he built under the act of 1677 Pepys regarded as the best in the world: Naval Minutes, p. 227.” L&M, iii.170.n.1.
A short biography of Sir Anthony Deane
http://www.rina.org.uk/showarticle.pl?id=5831Portrait of Sir Anthony Deane
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/mag/pages/mnuExplore/PaintingDetail.cfm?lettera=g&ID=BHC2645&name=John%20Greenhill&action=ArtistTitle -
from L&M Companion
(?1638-1721). Shipwright and friend. Charles II and James II, as well as Pepys, looked on him as the most skilful designer of his day. (Even Louis XIV engaged him to design two of his yachts.) Pepys’s admiration, clear from the diary, is even clearer in their correspondence (virtually continuous from the ’60s until Pepys’s death) and in Pepys’s ‘Naval Minutes’. Appointed the assistant at Woolwich in 1660, he became Master-Shipwright at Harwich (his native town) in 1664, and at Portsmouth in 1668. He was Navy Commissioner at Portsmouth 1672-5, and a member of the Navy Board 1675-80, and was Pepy’s principal ally both in the shipbuilding programme of 1677-8 and in the work of the Special Commission of 1686-8. Like Pepys, he fell under the unjust suspicion during the Popish Plot scare of selling naval secrets to France, and was briefly imprisoned with him in 1679. In June 1680 both were discharged before being brought to trial. In two parliaments—those of 1679 and 1685-7—he shared the representaton of Harwich with Pepys. He was a pall bearer at Pepys’s funeral.Pepys kept in his libary a portrait drawing of Deane, as well as several volumes of his manuscript calculations and drawing, including the ‘Doctrine of Naval Architecture’ written at Pepys’s request in 1670.
[He was about five years younger than Sam]
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shows Sam how to use a sliding ruler similar to Sam’s purchase passed. [5 /5/63]
References in the diary