HMS Sussex, an eighty-gun third-rate ship of…

HMS Sussex, an eighty-gun third-rate ship of the line and the pride of the Royal Navy, was launched at Chatham Dockyard on April 11, 1693.

As the flagship of Admiral Sir Francis Wheler, she had set sail from Portsmouth on December 27 1693, escorting a fleet of forty-eight warships and one hundred and sixty-six merchant ships to the Mediterranean.

After a short stopover in Cadiz, the fleet entered the Mediterranean, looking to harass the Spanish Navy.

On February 27, a violent storm hits the flotilla near the Strait of Gibraltar and in the early morning of the third day, Sussex sinks.

Of the five hundred crew aboard, all but two "Turks" drown.

Besides Sussex, twelve other ships of the fleet sink.

There are approximately twelve hundred casualties in total, in what remains one of the worst disasters in the history of the Royal Navy.