English ship Sovereign of the Seas

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Sovereign of the Seas was a 17th-century warship of the English Navy. She was ordered as a 90-gun first-rate ship of the line, but at launch was armed with 102 bronze guns at the insistence of the king. She was later renamed Sovereign under the republican Commonwealth, and then HMS Royal Sovereign at the Restoration of Charles II. The elaborately gilded stern ordered by Charles I of England led the Dutch to nickname her as the "Golden Devil". She was launched on 13 October 1637, and served from 1638 until 1697, when a fire burnt the ship to the waterline at Chatham.

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