HMS Exeter (1680)
HMS "Exeter" was a 70-gun third rate ship of the line of the English Royal Navy, built by contract of 20 February 1678 by Henry Johnson at Blackwall Yard and launched in March 1680. She was involved in the Battle of Beachy Head against France in 1690. However, the ship suffered damage from an explosion the next year and was hulked in 1691. She was broken up at Portsmouth in 1717. Design and construction. "Exeter" was one of six new third rate ships of the line ordered on 20 February 1678 under the 1677 naval programme , 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. Unlike most previous ships of the program, she was built by a private yard as Royal Navy dockyards had fallen behind schedule with the earlier ships. She had a length of at her gundeck, a beam of , and a hold depth of . She measured 1,031 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, "Exeter" 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 Sir Henry Johnson at Blackwall Yard, "Exeter" was launched in March 1680, part of the second batch of eight third rates of the 1677 programme. Service . "Exeter" was commissioned on 8 June 1679 while incomplete under the command of Captain John Perryman (who also commanded five of her sisters) so that she could be moved to Chatham Dockyard. She was paid off when this process was completed on 15 June 1680. The ship was recommissioned by 1689, when Captain Lawrence Wright held command. Captain Matthew Tennant took command later that year and was succeeded by Captain George Mees in 1690. The "Exeter" fought in the Battle of Beachy Head on 30 June of the latter year during the Nine Years' War as part of the English  rear (the blue squadron). At Plymouth, she was damaged in an accidental explosion on 12 September 1691 and subsequently hulked at Portsmouth before being broken up there in 1717.