Scale: 1:48. A block design model of the ‘Princessa’ (1730), a Spanish 70-gun, two-decker, third-rate ship of the line. The model is made to moulded beam. The name ‘Princessa’ is marked on the starboard broadside.

The ship was built in Santander in 1730. Its dimensions were 165 feet by 50 feet, and it weighed approximately 1714 tons burden. Its complement was 630 men. It carried twenty-eight 32-pound guns on its gun deck, twenty-eight 18-pounders on its upper deck, ten 9-pounders on its quarterdeck and four 9-pounders on its forecastle. It was a powerful vessel and was highly prized by the Royal Navy when it was taken in 1740, albeit requiring the combined force of three British 70-gunners (including the ‘Kent’ SLR0421) to do so. The ‘Princessa’ was larger and heavier than British 70-gunners of the period, and it was important in the navy’s development of the larger 74-gun third rates that replaced the ‘70s’ from the 1740s.

In British service, the ‘Princessa’ was stationed in the Mediterranean from 1743 to 1746 and took part in the Battle of Toulon in February 1744. It then spent two years on the Leewards Islands station, then two at Louisbourg, before returning to the Mediterranean in 1747–48. The ‘Princessa’ was hulked at Portsmouth in 1761, and sold in 1784.