English ship Speaker (1650)
1650 Speaker-class frigate
The English ship Speaker was a 50-gun third-rate. Speaker was built for the navy of the Commonwealth of England by Christopher Pett at Woolwich Dockyard and launched in 1650. At the Restoration she was renamed HMS Mary. She was the prototype of the Speaker-class.
In 1688, HMS Mary was rebuilt by Thomas Shish at Woolwich Dockyard as a 62-gun third-rate ship of the line. The ship was wrecked on the Goodwin Sands in the Great Storm of 1703. Almost all who were aboard were drowned, including Rear-Admiral Basil Beaumont.
Description and early history
The English ship Speaker was a 50-gun third-rate and the name ship of the Speaker-class. She was built by Christopher Pett, as one of a pair of flagships for the Winter Guard of the navy of the Commonwealth of England. Built at Woolwich Dockyard, she was launched in 1650.
The public source identifies “English ship Speaker (1650)” as 1650 Speaker-class frigate. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around English, ship and Speaker.
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This entry incorporates text from “English ship Speaker (1650)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.