PDA

View Full Version : HMS Royal Oak and HMS Bristol 1664



Redcoat
10-09-2018, 05:05
HMS Royal Oak was a 100-gun first rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched in 1664 at Portsmouth Dockyard. Royal Oak was built by John Tippets, Master-Shipwright at Portsmouth 1660-8, who later became Navy Commissioner and subsequently Surveyor of the Navy (Knighted 1672). Historian Brian Lavery quotes an entry in the "Calendar of State Papers, Domestic" series (the records of the English, and later, the British, governmental proceedings, dating back to the reign of Henry VIII; also known as the "British State Papers", and now held by the National Archives) from 9/3/1665 that reports: the King (i.e., Charles II) "...is very much pleased with the new frigate built at Portsmouth, the Royal Oak, and has ordered Tippets, the shipwright who built her, to build just such another, and not to mend her in any part, being assured that anything which is not just so cannot be so good..." The career of Royal Oak in the Royal Navy was brief, but highly eventful. According to John Charnock's Bibliographia Navalis, Admiral Sir Christopher Myngs was her captain in 1664. The ship fought in most of the major battles of the Second Anglo-Dutch War: Lowestoft, the Four Days' Battle, and the St. James' Day Fight.At the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir John Lawson, Royal Oak was the flagship of the Van Division of the Duke of York's Red Squadron; Sir John later died of the wounds he received in the battle. After the defeat administered to the Dutch Navy in the 1666 battle on St. James' Day, the English made the mistake of deciding to save money and leave the fleet in ordinary during the ensuing fighting season,a decision ultimately resulting in Royal Oak being burnt by the Dutch during their Raid on the Medway in 1667.

HMS Bristol was a British 44-gun fourth-rate frigate, originally built for the navy of the Commonwealth of England during the 1650s. She was taken over by the Royal Navy after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and was thereafter styled HMS Bristol. The ship participated in multiple battles during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1654–60, and the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars. Bristol was the first ship in the Navy to be named after the eponymous port. Part of the 1651 Naval Programme, the ship was ordered on 27 February 1652. She was built at Portsmouth Dockyard under the direction of Master Shipwright John Tippetts, and was launched in 1653 at a cost of £4,256. Bristol was commissioned that same year under the command of Captain Roger Martin and spent the winter of 1653–54 in the Western Approaches. She was present at the battles of Lowestoft, the Four Days Battle, and the St. James Day Fight during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and Solebay in the Third Anglo-Dutch War. She was involved in the wars against North African corsairs in the later 1670s and early 1680s, as well as escorting convoys to North America. In 1693, Bristol was rebuilt at Deptford as a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line. On 24 April 1709 she was captured by two French ships off Plymouth, but was recaptured the following day and foundered in the English Channel.

sources: Wikipedia

40223

40224

40225

40226

40227

40228

40229

40230

40231

40232

40233

40234

40235

40236