At the time of Queen

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

, Richard Chapman (born 1520, and died c.1592) was the owner of a private shipyard at Deptford, had the title of 'Queen's Master Shipwright,' and had been involved in the construction of river defences along the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

, along with Peter Pett and Mathew Baker, two other important shipwrights of the time. Chapman was Master Shipwright of Woolwich and Deptford and built the first ''Ark Royal'' (initially ordered as a private venture as the ''Ark Ralegh'', but taken over for the Queen while still on the stocks). Chapman's father, John, was also a Master Shipwright and he also had strong ties to the important shipbuilding family, the Petts as his mother was Ann Pett and he was raised in the Pett household. The Chapman family itself, however, included several mariners whose origins appear to be in

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

and shipwrights who lived at Greenwich, working at this craft since the reign of the King

Edward I Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassal o ...

st (1239–1307). Richard's son, Edmund Chapman, became 'Chief Joiner' to the Queen and owned significant property in Greenwich. Edmund provided land for the almshouses named 'Queen Elizabeth College', founded in 1574, and himself lived at 'Swanne House.'

External links

Queen Elizabeth's College
Chapman, Richard Chapman, Richard 1590s deaths 16th-century English people {{England-bio-stub