thumb|Plan of the 1741 rebuild of Royal Oak
HMS Royal Oak was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Jonas Shish at Deptford and launched in 1674. Life aboard her when cruising in the Mediterranean Sea in 1679 is described in the diary of Henry Teonge.
She was rebuilt at Chatham Dockyard in 1690 as a 70-gun third rate. The ship was the scene of an incident in January 1759 in which a French prisoner, Jean Manaux, told the warden that his fellow prisoners were forging passes. His fellow prisoners discovered this and, on 25 January, dragged him to a remote part of the ship, gave him approximately 60 strokes with a large iron thimble tied to a rope, then beat him to death after he struggled from his bonds. They dismembered his body in an attempt to dispose of it. At an inquest ashore the next day, one of the prisoners provided information on the murder, which resulted in the hanging of Charles Darras, Louis Bourdec, Fleurant Termineu, Pierre Pitroll and Pierre Lagnal on April 25 at Exeter.