The proposed ship carried 170 guns on roughly 3,000 tons, an extreme but not physically impossible Royal Navy project. Joseph Tucker may have designed it, although later writers also suggested that the attribution enhanced his reputation. Producing a detailed model and drawings would be an elaborate way to manufacture credit for an already respected designer. The uncertainty also shows why innovations are often credited to the first person who builds or preserves them when earlier conversations and experimental drawings have disappeared.
Notable Point · 2:48:37-2:52:01
The 170-gun Duke of Kent proposal and uncertain attribution
A model and drawings make the enormous Duke of Kent proposal credible as a design, but they do not settle who originated every idea within it.