She was ordered on 1 April 1695 to be built at Plymouth Dockyard under the guidance of Master Shipwright Elias Waffe. She was launched on 5 August 1696. Her dimensions were a gundeck of with a keel of for tonnage calculation with a breadth of and a depth of hold of . Her builder’s measure tonnage was calculated as 384 tons (
burthen). The gun armament initially was four demi-culverins on the lower deck (LD) with two pairs of guns per side. The upper deck (UD) battery would consist of between twenty and twenty-two 6-pounder guns with ten or eleven guns per side. The gun battery would be completed by four 4-pounder guns on the quarterdeck (QD) with two to three guns per side. ==Commissioned service 1697==