HMS Lichfield was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, one of five such ships authorised on 16 November 1693 (three to be built in different Royal Dockyards and two to be built by commercial contract. The Lichfield was built by Master Shipwright William Stigant at Portsmouth Dockyard and launched on 4 February 1695. She was first commissioned in that year under Captain Lord Archibald Hamilton, for service in Home Waters.[1] [2]
She was paid off in February 1715 at Plymouth, and ordered to be rebuilt on 5 December 1718, but the work did not commence until November 1727 (although the ship was taken to pieces for that purpose on 28 May 1720), and she underwent a rebuild according to the 1719 Establishment by Master Shipwright Peirson Lock at Plymouth Dockyard for a cost of £11,342-3-2d, and she was re-launched on 25 March 1730. The Lichfield continued in service until 1744, when she was first nominally reduced to a 44-gun Fifth Rate (on 1 June), but then ordered to be taken to pieces instead ten days later (with a new ship ordered to be built in her stead at Harwich), which breaking-uo was completed in July.[3]