Superbly researched and expertly illustrated, this study offers one of the most detailed building and career histories of a ship ever written, the third rate of Charles II's Restoration Navy. The author focuses on HMS Lenox, a 44-gun two-decker third rate built in 1677 during the Anglo-Dutch Wars and also in response to Louis XIV's massive naval expansion program. After twelve years of research and writing, Richard Endsor provides a comprehensive history of seventeenth-century ship design and construction techniques and the armament and fitting of the vessel. He offers a broad picture of the day-to-day workings of the Deptford dockyard where the Lenox was built and details of the techniques, trade, and tools of the shipwrights along with a keen insight into the workings of a naval administration under Samuel Pepys.