Kingfisher was a 46-gun fourth-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Phineas Pett III at Woolwich Dockyard and launched in 1675.

[1] She was specially designed to counter the attacks of Algerine corsairs, or pirates, in the Mediterranean by masquerading as a merchantman, which she achieved by hiding her armament behind false bulkheads.

James II, at the time Duke of York, commissioned an oil painting from Willem van de Velde the Elder depicting the moment when the leading Algerine ship entered the battle and engaged with Kingfisher.

[6][7] Although it bears the inscription "Capt Kempthorne's Action in the Mary Rose a small Frigate with seven Algerines in the Mediterranean in 1669", this inscription was probably added in the late eighteenth century, according to Geoffrey Callender and Michael S. Robinson, and is erroneous; there is no correspondence between this image and Hollar's eyewitness version, but in the centre of the painting is a small enemy boat that corresponds directly to one referred to in an account of the 1681 action in the Kingfisher.

[3] In 1685, during the rebellion of Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll, against King James, Kingfisher bombarded Carrick Castle, badly damaging the keep, which lost its roof.