Pett dynasty
family of shipwrights
The so-called Pett dynasty was a family of shipwrights who prospered in England between the 15th and 17th centuries. It was once said of the family that they were "so knit together that the Devil himself could not discover them". This saying refers to the era during which Samuel Pepys was much involved in getting royal aid for Ann Pett, widow of Christopher Pett. The Petts Wood district of south-east London is named for the family.
The Pett Family Tree
The four Peter Petts
Peter Pett, Master Shipwright of Deptford, was granted a coat of arms in 1563. His son, Joseph Pett of Limehouse, succeeded his father as Master Shipwright before Peter's death in 1605. Joseph surveyed the timber for the construction of a ship named Sovereign of the Seas, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Hoborn, another shipwright and churchwarden at Chatham. Joseph died in 1652, aged about 60. Joseph's son, the second Peter Pett, carried on the private family business of shipbuilding at Wapping. Joseph's other son, also named Joseph, became the master carpenter employed at Chatham in 1643 by the then Earl of Warwick.
“Pett dynasty” enters the record as family of shipwrights. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pett, dynasty and family can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7179269. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1563, 1605, 1652 and 1643.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pett dynasty” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.