London was a 76-gun second-rate ship of the line in the Navy of the Commonwealth of England, originally built at Chatham Dockyard by Master Shipwright Captain John Taylor, and launched in June 1656.

[7] She was commissioned in 1657 under the authority of Rear-Admiral Richard Stayner and first put to sea in 1658 under the command of Captain William Whitehorne as acting commander-in-chief of Commonwealth forces in The Downs.

[9] On hearing of the loss, Samuel Pepys wrote on 8 March 1665 that: This morning is brought me to the office the sad newes of the London, in which Sir J(ohn) Lawson’s men were all bringing her from Chatham to the Hope, and thence he was to go to sea in her; but a little a’this side the buoy of the Nower, she suddenly blew up.

Another letter, this time to Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, passed on coffee-house gossip which blamed the easy availability of gunpowder ’20s a barrel cheaper than in London’ and therefore by implication suspect in provenance and quality.

[9] On 9 March, John Evelyn, the other famous diarist of the period, ‘went to receive the poor creatures that were saved out of the London frigate, blown up by accident, with above 200 men,’ for he had been appointed one of the Commissioners for sick and wounded seamen by Charles II.

"[13] Those guns continued to be the focus of administrative attention for 30 years afterwards: recoveries made in 1679 caused controversy when the salvor attempted to leverage their return as payment of an unrelated debt.

[14] The wreck of London was rediscovered in 2005, resulting in port authorities changing the route of the shipping channel to prevent further damage and to allow archaeologists from Wessex Archaeology led by Frank Pope to investigate.

The wreck is at on-going risk of loss through erosion, so between 2014 and 2016 a licensed programme of surface recovery and limited excavations (funded by Historic England) took place, with around 700 small finds recovered, almost half of which were made of wood.