Question: How many British ships were named Scipio the African?
Context: The Merchant Shipping Act 1988 c.12 was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom.  It aimed to prevent foreign fishing fleets from fishing in British territorial waters.  In the Factortame case, its provisions in Parts I and II, Registration of British Ships, were disapplied by the House of Lords when they were found to conflict with European Community law and the Common Fisheries Policy.  Part II dealt only with fishing vessels and was found to be repugnant by the European Court of Justice.  The subsequent definition of British Ships is found in the Merchant Shipping Act 1995. The Battle of Bishops Court, also known as The Defeat of Thurot, was a naval engagement that took place 28 February 1760, during the Seven Years' War, between three British ships and three French ships.  The French force under famed commander François Thurot were brought to battle in the Irish sea between the Isle of Man and the coast of Ireland at 9 am.  After a close-fought action, Thurot's force was battered into submission, with his ships dismasted and reduced to a sinking condition.  Thurot was shot through the heart and died during the action.  The British took all three French ships, completing victory. HMNZS "Waikato" (F55) was a "Leander" Batch 2TA frigate of the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN).  She was one of two "Leander"s built for the RNZN, the other being the Batch 3 HMNZS "Canterbury" .  These two New Zealand ships relieved British ships of the Armilla patrol during the Falklands conflict, freeing British ships for deployment. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236–183 BC), also known as Scipio the African, Scipio Africanus-Major, Scipio Africanus the Elder and Scipio the Great, was a Roman general and later consul who is often regarded as one of the greatest generals and military strategists of all time.  His main achievements were during the Second Punic War where he is best known for defeating Hannibal at the final battle at Zama in 202 BC, one of the feats that earned him the agnomen "Africanus".  Prior to this battle (near modern Zama, Tunisia) Scipio also conquered Carthage's holdings in the Iberian peninsula, culminating in the Battle of Ilipa (near Alcalá del Río, Spain) in 206 BC against Hannibal's brother Mago Barca. The Action of 25 September 1806 was a naval battle fought during the Napoleonic Wars off the French Biscay port of Rochefort.  A French squadron comprising five frigates and two corvettes, sailing to the French West Indies with supplies and reinforcements, was intercepted by a British squadron of six ships of the line that was keeping a close blockade of the port as part of the Atlantic campaign of 1806.  The British ships, under the command of Commodore Sir Samuel Hood, spotted the French convoy early in the morning of 25 September, just a few hours after the French had left port, and immediately gave chase.  Although the French ships tried to escape, they were heavily laden with troops and stores, and the strong winds favoured the larger ships of the line, which caught the French convoy after a five-hour pursuit, although they had become separated from one another during the chase. Two ships of the British Royal Navy have borne the name HMS "Scipion", after the French term for the Roman general Scipio Africanus: Operation Rubble (January 1941) was a British blockade running operation in which five Norwegian merchant ships escaped from Sweden to Britain.  The ships involved were Norwegian steamships "Elizabeth Bakke" (5,450grt), "John Bakke" (4,718grt), "Tai Shan" (6,962grt), "Taurus" (4767grt) and "Ranja" (6,355grt).  In addition to their cargoes also on board were many British and Norwegian sailors who had been in Sweden following the failure of the Allies' Norwegian Campaign.  The ships left Gothenburg on 23 January 1941 and ran the German blockade of the Skagerrak.  They narrowly avoided being intercepted by the two German battleships "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" who were just starting Operation Berlin in the Kattegat.  The ships navigated the North Sea with various warships being dispatched from the UK to act as escorts.  These escorts included HMS "Naiad", HMS "Aurora", HMS "Edinburgh" and HMS "Birmingham" and the destroyers HMS "Escapade", HMS "Echo", HMS "Electra".  "John Bakke" and "Ranja" were both under attack from the Luftwaffe when the cruisers found them.  The ships reached Kirkwall in Orkney on 25 January 1941. The Action of 6 November 1794 (Known in French as the Combat du 16 Brumaire an III) was a naval engagement during the French Revolutionary Wars.  Two British ships of the line, HMS "Alexander" and HMS "Canada" were intercepted while returning to Britain through the Celtic Sea by a large French squadron.  The French squadron had sailed from Brest in search of an inward bound British convoy in October, but instead encountered the two British ships returning from escorting an outward-bound convoy.  There had been no warning of the French approach as the British force assigned to watch Brest was absent at Plymouth due to the policy of operating a distant blockade. The "Nassau" class were a group of four German dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Navy.  They were the German response to the introduction of the "all big gun" British HMS "Dreadnought" .  The class was composed of "Nassau" , "Rheinland" , "Posen" , and "Westfalen" .  All four ships were laid down in mid-1907, and completed between May and September 1910.  Compared to their British contemporaries, the "Nassau"-class ships were lighter and had a wider beam.  They were two knots slower, because the German ships retained vertical triple-expansion engines as opposed to the high-power turbine engines adopted by the British.  The ships also carried smaller main guns—11-inch (280 mm) guns rather than the 12-inch (305 mm) guns mounted on the British ships. The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after Britain outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves.  The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron.  Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves.  A notable exception was the United States, which refused such permission.  The 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves technically abolished the intercontinental slave trade in the United States but the ban was not widely enforced and many of the slave ships which escaped the blockade were destined for the southern United States.
Answer: Two ships of the British Royal Navy