HMS Essex (1679)

HMS Essex was a 70-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched at Blackwall Yard in 1679.

She was rebuilt at Rotherhithe in 1700, retaining her 70-gun armament. She underwent a second rebuild in 1713, and on 20 May 1736 she was ordered to be taken to pieces and rebuilt at Woolwich as a 70-gun third rate to the 1733 proposals of the 1719 Establishment. She was relaunched on 21 February 1740.

Essex was wrecked on the Four Shoal in 1759, eighty years after she was first launched, while chasing the French flagship Soleil Royale after the Battle of Quiberon Bay.