HMS Ruby was a 50-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Joseph Allin the elder at Deptford Dockyard to the 1706 Establishment, and launched on 25 March 1708.[1]
She achieved an unwelcome notoriety in March 1741 when her captain, Samuel Goodere, was convicted of murder at Bristol and subsequently hanged; he had enticed his elder brother, Sir John Dineley Goodere, 2nd Baronet, on board, and had caused him to be strangled in the purser's cabin.[2]
Ruby was renamed HMS Mermaid in 1744, and was sold out of the service in 1748.[1]