HMS Restoration 1703
Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Restoration | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1703 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Age of Sail | derived from year |
| Ship type | third-rate | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | Storm or weather | Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence |
| Nationality / flag | Kingdom of England | Wikidata P8047 country of registry |
| Operator | Royal Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Sea / ocean | North Sea | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | England | official dataset |
| Position | 51.2605, 1.5004 | Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3) |
| Protected Wreck | List entry 1000057 | Historic England |
| Designated | 1981-06-08 | Historic England |
| Restricted area | 28.26 ha | Historic England |
| Grid reference | TR 44317 57082 | Historic England |
About the wreck
HMS Restoration was a 70-gun third rate of the Kingdom of England built at Harwich Dockyard in 1677/78. After a ten-year stint in Ordinary she was commissioned for the War of the English Succession in 1690. She fought in the Battles of Beachy Head and the Battle of Barfleur. She was rebuilt at Portsmouth in 1699/1702. She was lost on the Goodwin Sands during the Great Storm of November 1703.
This was the first vessel to bear the name Restoration in the English and Royal Navy.
HMS Restoration was awarded the Battle Honour Barfleur 1692.
Diving & visiting
This is a designated Protected Wreck under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. Under the Act, diving on or otherwise interfering with the wreck inside its restricted area requires a licence; see the Historic England list entry for details.
Local divers found the wreck site in 1980. The initial designation was of 50 around what is now known as the South Mound; the North Mound was discovered in 1999 and the area was amended under Statutory Instrument number 2004/2395 as a 300 m radius around 51° 15.6302' N, 01° 30.0262' E. It is believed that the Restoration lies under the North Mound and the South Mound is the fourth rate HMS Mary wrecked in the same storm, but this is not known for certain. The site lies 100 m to the west of the Goodwin Sands off Deal, near the wrecks of HMS Stirling Castle and HMS Northumberland which also sank in the storm.
The site was investigated by Wessex Archaeology on 25 June 2006. They found copper-clad timbers, a cannon, lead pipes and hearth bricks.
Location
- Recorded position: 51.2605, 1.5004 (Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: North Sea
- Nearest coast: England
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Restoration (1678) (revision 1327502095), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Wreck”; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Protected Wreck data © Historic England 2026. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- HMS Mary 1703 · 0 km
- HMS Northumberland 1703 · 0 km
- HMS Stirling Castle 1703 · 2 km
- Rooswijk 1740 · 5 km
- Goodwins & Downs 8 6 km
- Unknown Wreck (GAD8; previously known as the 'Goodwins Cannon Site') 6 km
Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off England · North Sea · Age of Sail