English ship Dreadnought (1573)

Dreadnought was a 41-gun galleon of the English Navy Royal, built by Mathew Baker and launched in 1573. Like HMS Dreadnought of 1906, she was a radical innovation over contemporary ships. When John Hawkins became Treasurer of the Navy in 1577, he had sailed all over the world, and his ideas contributed to the production of a new race-built series of galleons - of which the Dreadnought was the second (following the Foresight of 1570) - without the high fore- and after-castles prevalent in earlier galleons; these "marvels of marine design" could reputedly "run circles around the clumsier Spanish competition."

Dreadnought took part in many of the naval engagements in the naval conflicts between Britain and Spain in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Under Captain Thos. Fenner, she was part of Drake's fleet which "singed the King of Spain's Beard" with the raid on Cadiz in Spring 1587. She was part of the English fleet which destroyed most of the Spanish Armada in 1588. She was rebuilt for the first time in 1592. In 1596, with Sir Alexander Clifford as her captain, she was part of the Anglo-Dutch fleet which captured Cadiz. In 1599 she was in the Western Channel under George Fenner, while in 1601 under Sir Henry Palmer she was on the Thames.

On 2 June 1602, captained by Ed. Manwaring, Dreadnought was part of Leveson's fleet which succeeded in capturing the Portuguese carrack Sao Valentinho at Cezimbra Roads In 1603, as hostilities with Spain concluded, she was in the Channel under captain Hamphrey Reynolds.

Dreadnought was rebuilt again at Deptford in 1614 as a middling ship of 32 guns.

In 1625, with renewed hostilities against Spain, Dreadnought took part in yet another expedition to Cadiz, this time under a captain named Plumleigh, as part of a fleet commanded by Viscount Wimbledon. In 1628 she took part in the unsuccessful attempt to relieve the Siege of La Rochelle by sea.

In 1637, she was part of the Earl of Northumberland's fleet in the North Sea, commanded by Captain Henry Stradling and then by Thomas Kirke.

The Dreadnought was broken up in 1648, but there is a non-floating reproduction of the Dreadnought built by Mike Breza at the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha, Wisconsin.