Four ships of the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 have borne the name HMS Rochester, after the town of Rochester on the River Medway

River Medway

The River Medway, which is almost entirely in Kent, England, flows for from just inside the West Sussex border to the point where it enters the Thames Estuary....

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was a 48-gun fourth rate launched in 1693. She was rebuilt in 1715, and again as a hospital ship

Hospital ship

A hospital ship is a ship designated for primary function as a floating medical treatment facility or hospital; most are operated by the military forces of various countries, as they are intended to be used in or near war zones....

 in 1744. She was renamed HMS Maidstone after the second rebuild and was broken up in 1748. was a 50-gun fourth rate launched in 1749 and sold in 1770.

• HMS Rochester
  HMS Hero (1759)
  HMS Hero was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, designed by Sir Thomas Slade and launched on 28 March 1759 from Plymouth Dockyard. She was the only ship built to her draught....
  
   was a prison ship
  Prison ship
  A prison ship, historically sometimes called a prison hulk, is a vessel used as a prison, often to hold convicts awaiting transportation to penal colonies. This practice was popular with the British government in the 18th and 19th centuries....
  
  , launched in 1749 as the 74-gun third rate . She became a prison ship in 1793, was renamed HMS Rochester in 1800 and was broken up in 1810. was a Shoreham-class
  Shoreham class sloop
  The Shoreham-class sloops were a class of eight small British warships built in the early 1930s.Developed from the Bridgewater-class sloops, with a longer hull, the Shoreham-class sloops were laid down between 1929 and 1931 at Chatham and Devonport Naval Dockyards.-Ships:*HMS Shoreham was launched...
  
   sloop
  Sloop-of-war
  In the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, a sloop-of-war was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. As the rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, this meant that the term sloop-of-war actually encompassed all the unrated combat vessels including the...
  
  launched in 1931 and sold in 1951.