HMS Torbay was a 90-gun second rate also associated with the name Neptune. Officially, the Navy traced her to a 1677 building program and an authenticated 1683 launch, making her more than seventy years old when Duncan joined her. Rebuilds in 1710 and 1730 had replaced enough structure to complicate any simple claim that she remained the same physical vessel. Her history separates the Navy's administrative identity for a warship from the physical continuity of its timbers.
Notable Point · 14:30-17:16
HMS Torbay and the identity of a rebuilt warship
Torbay's claimed seventeenth-century origin shows how repeated rebuilding let the Royal Navy preserve a warship's institutional identity across generations.