HMS ''Romney'' was a 50-gun

fourth rate In 1603 all English warships with a compliment of fewer than 160 men were known as 'small ships'. In 1625/26 to establish pay rates for officers a six tier naval ship rating system was introduced.Winfield 2009 These small ships were divided i ...

ship of the line of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

, launched at

Blackwall Yard Blackwall Yard is a small body of water that used to be a shipyard on the River Thames in Blackwall, engaged in ship building and later ship repairs for over 350 years. The yard closed in 1987. History East India Company Blackwall was a sh ...

on 23 October 1694. Commanded by Captain William Coney,James Herbert Cooke, The Shipwreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell on the Scilly Islands in 1707, From Original and Contemporary Documents Hitherto Unpublished, Read at a Meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, London, 1 Feb. 1883
/ref> ''Romney'' was wrecked on the

Scilly Isles The Isles of Scilly (; kw, Syllan, ', or ) is an archipelago off the southwestern tip of Cornwall, England. One of the islands, St Agnes, is the most southerly point in Britain, being over further south than the most southerly point of the ...

on 26 October 1707Ships of the Old Navy, ''Romney''. when a disastrous navigational error sent Admiral Sir

Cloudesley Shovell Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell (c. November 1650 – 22 or 23 October 1707) was an English naval officer. As a junior officer he saw action at the Battle of Solebay and then at the Battle of Texel during the Third Anglo-Dutch Wa ...

's fleet through dangerous reefs while on their way from Gibraltar to Portsmouth. Four ships (''Romney'', ''Association'', ''Firebrand'' and ''Eagle'') were lost, with nearly 2,000 sailors. ''Romney'' hit Bishop Rock and went down with all but one of her crew. The sole survivor was George Lawrence, who had worked as a butcher before joining the crew of ''Romney'' as quartermaster.HMS Association (+1707) on www.wrecksite.eu
/ref> The Scilly naval disaster was one of the greatest

maritime Maritime may refer to: Geography * Maritime Alps, a mountain range in the southwestern part of the Alps * Maritime Region, a region in Togo * Maritime Southeast Asia * The Maritimes, the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prin ...

disasters in British history. It was largely as a result of this disaster that the

Board of the Admiralty The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of i ...

instituted a

competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indiv ...

for a more precise method to determine

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east– west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lette ...

Notes

References

*Lavery, Brian (2003) ''The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850''. Conway Maritime Press. . *Michael Phillips
''Romney'' (54) (1694)
Michael Phillips' Ships of the Old Navy. Retrieved 7 November 2008. Maritime incidents in 1707 Ships of the line of the Royal Navy Shipwrecks of the Isles of Scilly 1690s ships Archaeology of shipwrecks Ships built by the Blackwall Yard {{UK-line-ship-stub