Princesa was a 70-gun, two deck, ship of the line of the Spanish Navy, one of three ordered in 1748 to the specification laid down by Ciprian Autran and designed and built at Havana by Pedro de Torres. She was laid down on 11 May 1748 and launched on 15 September 1750. She and her sisters Infante and Galicia were commissioned together on 15 August 1751, and left Havana (together with the equally new 80-gun Rayo) on 1 March 1752 as a squadron under the overall command of Jefe de escuadra Francisco Ponce de Leon, arriving at Cadiz on 30 April.[1]
She fought at the Battle of Cape St Vincent on 16 January 1780, where she was captured by a squadron under the command of Admiral George Rodney of the Royal Navy. She was then recommissioned in England as the third rate HMS Princessa.
On 12 April 1782 she was the flagship of the blue squadron at the Battle of the Saintes with Admiral Francis Samuel Drake on board (but under overall control of Admiral George Rodney of the white squadron).[2]
From 1784 she was employed as a sheer hulk, and she was broken up in 1809.