5. Rebuilt multiple times, garnering both praise and notoriety during her almost one century of service, HMS Ramillies sank off the coast of Devon in 1760 along with more than 800 of her crew.
Launched in 1664 as HMS Royal Katherine, serving in and seeing action during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Third Anglo-Dutch War, and the War of the Grand Alliance, in 1702 the second-rate ship of the line underwent reconstruction in Portsmouth. Increased in gun capacity and modernized, the vessel was rechristened HMS Ramillies in 1706 in honor of the British victory at the Battle of Ramillies that same year. Rebuilt again in 1742, HMS Ramillies served as the flagship of Admiral John Byng during the Seven Years’ War, ignobly unsuccessful in defending the island of Minorca for which Byng was controversially executed for “failing to do his utmost”.
Reassigned to other duties, on February 15, 1760, HMS Ramillies mistakenly approached the Devon shore. Wrongly identified as safe waters by the ship’s navigator, in the face of a strong onshore wind anchors were ordered dropped in a vain attempt to hold the ship until she could escape back into the open seas. Unable to find purchase in the sandbanks beneath, HMS Ramillies continued to drift towards the treacherous rocks surrounding the coast. Striking the cliffs beneath Bolt Tail, the ill-fated warship quickly sank. Of her crew of 850 men, just twenty-six seaman and one midshipman survived.