High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Warspite was a great ship (later classed as a second rate) of the English Royal Navy, built at Deptford Dockyard by the master shipwright Edward Stevens, and launched about 1 March 1596. She carried a crew of 300 when at sea, of whom 190 where classed as `mariners`, manning the guns and fighting the ship; 80 as `sailors`, working the sails and ancestors of present-day seamen, and 30 `gunners`, the armament specialists.