HMS Royal Oak (1664)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Royal Oak.

HMS Royal Oak was a 100-gun first rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched in 1664 at Portsmouth Dockyard.^[1] Royal Oak was built by John Tippetts, Master-Shipwright at Portsmouth 1660-8, who later became Navy Commissioner and subsequently Surveyor of the Navy (Knighted 1672).^[2]

History
England
Name	HMS Royal Oak
Namesake	Royal Oak
Builder	Tippetts, Portsmouth Dockyard
Launched	1664
Fate	Burnt by Dutch during the Medway raid, 1667
General characteristics [1]
Class and type	100-gun first rate ship of the line
Tons burthen	102121⁄94 (bm)
Length	121 ft (37 m) (keel)
Beam	39 ft 10 in (12.14 m)
Depth of hold	17 ft 1+1⁄2 in (5.2 m)
Propulsion	Sails
Sail plan	Full-rigged ship
Armament	Gundeck: 28 32 pounder cannon Middle Gundeck: 28 24 pounder guns Upper Gundeck: 28 12 pounder guns Quarter deck: 12 4 pounder guns Fo'castle: 4 6 pounder guns

Historian Brian Lavery quotes an entry in the "Calendar of State Papers, Domestic" series (CSPD; 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 Tippetts, 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..."^[1]

The career of Royal Oak in the Royal Navy was brief, but highly eventful. According to John Charnock's Bibliographia Navalis,^[3] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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;^[4] 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,^[5] a decision ultimately resulting in Royal Oak being burnt by the Dutch during their Raid on the Medway in 1667.^[1]

See also

• Royal Oak, Frindsbury – a pub possibly named after the ship, rumoured to contain a beam from the ship.^[6]

Citations

1. Lavery 2003, p. 160.
2. Pepys 1926, p. 258.
3. Charnock, Esq. 1794, p. 119.
4. Fox 1996.
5. Archibald 1984, p. 28.
6. Jordan, Nicola (21 March 2016). "Beam inside threatened Frindsbury pub could be from famous ship HMS Royal Oak". Kent Online.

References

• Lavery, Brian (2003). The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-252-8.
• Pepys, Samuel (1926). Joseph Robson Tanner (ed.). "Samuel Pepys's Naval Minutes ". London: Navy Records Society, Vol. 60. pp. xx, 513. Retrieved 3 June 2012.
• Charnock, Esq., John (1794). "BIOGRAPHIA NAVALIS; or, Impartial Memoirs of the Lives and Characters of Officers of the Navy of Great Britain, From the Year 1660 to the Present Time" - Volume 1. London: R. Faulder, Bond Street.
• Fox, Frank L. (1996). "A Distant Storm: the Four Days' Battle of 1666". Rotherfield, East Sussex: Press of Sail Publ. p. 440. ISBN 0-948864-29-X.
• Archibald, E.H.H.; illustrated by Ray Woodward (1984). The Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy AD 897-1984 (Reprinted with minor revisions, 1987. ed.). London: Blandford Press (Original; reprint, Military Press, New York; dist. by Crown Publishers). ISBN 0-517-63332-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)