Their Majesties' Ship Roebuck 1689 - 1701

Author/s Sexton, R.T.

Year of publication 2004

Report Number: No. 266

No portrait, plans, or dockyard model of the Roebuck have ever been found, and two views of a battle scene which must include the vessel as a fireship are too small to yield useful information. Nevertheless, with access to primary documents already gathered by the Museum and their continuing encouragement and active support, it has been possible to locate and bring together a range of material of specific or parallel significance unequalled, it is believed, for any other English ship from the seventeenth century. Archival records supplementing Dampier's own published account of the voyage include the master's logbook, legal papers, and Navy Board documents including lists of naval ships and, above all, the contract with Edward Snellgrove for construction of the ship. Plans obtained included Keltridge's drawings of sixth-rate ships of 1684, and two versions of the draught of the fireship Griffin, evidently drawn in preparation for her being totally rebuilt in 1701. In turn this led to the identification of the outstanding fireship model in the Rogers Collection, held by the United States Naval Academy  Museum, as representing the Griffin in her later years. It has therefore been possible to reconstruct plans showing the possible details of the Roebuck based on firm facts and guided by not only contemporary texts on shipbuilding but  drawings-supplemented by a model-of the Griffin which show how another shipbuilder completed a fireship in accordance with the same contract document.