HMS Anne (1678)


HMS Anne was a 70-gun third rate ship of the line of the English Royal Navy, built by Phineas Pett II at Chatham Dockyard and launched in 1678. Commissioned in 1687, she was burnt to avoid capture, having been run aground after being dismasted during the Battle of Beachy Head in the Nine Years' War.

Design and construction

Anne was one of twenty new third rate ships of the line ordered in April 1677 under the naval programme of that year, known as the Thirty Ships Programme, which was requested by Samuel Pepys in response to the Dutch and French navies surpassing England in the total number of ships of the line despite the English victory in the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
She had a length of at her gundeck, a beam of, and a hold depth of. She measured 1,051 tons burthen and had a draught of. She carried 70 guns with 13 gunports on the sides of each deck and had a crew of 460 men, reduced from a planned 470. According to the 1685 gun establishment, on her lower gun deck, Anne carried 22 demi-cannon and four culverin guns. Her upper deck originally had twenty-six twelve-pounder guns. There were 14 sakers on the forecastle and the quarterdeck, as well as four 3-pounders on the roundhouse.
Built under the supervision of naval architect Master Shipwright Phineas Pett II at Chatham Dockyard, Anne, possibly named after James II of England's daughter the future Queen Anne, was launched in November 1678, part of the first batch of twelve third rates of the 1677 programme.

Service

Anne was commissioned in 1687 under the command of Cloudesley Shovell as the flagship of the Duke of Grafton was part of the fleet that escorted the Queen of Portugal Maria Sophia of Neuberg to Plymouth. During the Nine Years' War, she participated in the Battle of Beachy Head on 30 June 1690 under the command of Captain John Tyrrell as part of the English rear. Dismasted in the battle, Anne was run aground near Winchelsea on 6 July and burnt to avoid capture. She was the only English ship lost during the battle. The remains, on the low water mark of the beach near Pett Level, East Sussex, were designated under the British Protection of Wrecks Act on 20 June 1974. The wreck is owned by the Nautical Museums Trust.