The Royal Navy of the late 17th century was the greatest enterprise in the country, and in 1777, with Samuel Pepys as Secretary of the Navy, the House of Commons voted to fund the building of 30 new ships, the largest single shipbuilding project up to this point. This new history by award-winning naval historian Richard Endsor describes the history of this great endeavour, and seeks to recreate architectural plans of these ships based on detailed measurements and calculations left behind by Edmund Drummer, an assistant to master shipwright Sir Anthony Deane and later Surveyor of the Navy from 1692 to 1699.

Using Drummer's surviving notebook, supported by the official specification dimension list for the ships, large-scale, artistic drawings and several surviving models, The Lost Ships of Charles II's Navy contains dimensioned and accurate architectural plans for several named ships alongside numerous other illustrations, including contemporary Van de Velde drawings of the ships.