Santísima Trinidad (officially named Nuestra Señora de la Santísima Trinidad by royal order on 12 March 1768, nicknamed La Real, sometimes confused with the galleon Santísima Trinidad y Nuestra Señora del Buen Fin) was a Spanish first-rate ship of the line with 112 guns. This was increased in 1795–96 to 130 guns by closing in the spar deck between the quarterdeck and forecastle, and to 136 guns around 1802 (plus 4 small guns on the poop), thus creating what was in effect a continuous fourth gundeck although the extra guns added were actually relatively small. She was the heaviest-armed ship in the world when rebuilt, and bore the most guns of any ship of the line outfitted in the Age of Sail. Design and construction She was built at Havana, Cuba, to a design by Irish naval architect Matthew Mullan (domiciled in Spain under the name Mateo Mullán), originally intended as a ship of 112 guns. He died on 25 November 1767, and the construction of the ship was continued by his son, Ignacio Mullán. and the ship was launched in March 1769 and completed in August 1769 as a 116-gun three-decker. She was considerably larger than her British contemporary Victory and somewhat bigger than the French Bretagne. There is no complete plan of the ship in existence, but there are of the 112-gun ship from 1765, from which the original dimensions of the ship may be found. Here, the units of length are the Spanish Burgos foot (27.86 cm) and the SI metre (100 cm), respectively: length = 213 (59.53); keel = 182 (50.82); beam = 57 (16.09); draught = 28 (8.06). She was reputed to be the largest warship in the world, for which she was nicknamed El Escorial de los mares by the Spanish, until surpassed in sheer size by the new type French 120-gun ships such as Océan (1790) and Orient (1791). In 1795, her forecastle was joined to her quarterdeck to create a fourth deck containing a battery of eight pounder guns, giving her a total of 130 guns. Her armament seems to have been quickly reduced to 130 from 136 guns, but she still carried more guns than any other ship of her time. The weight of the additional guns, so high above her waterline, made her poor sailing qualities even worse, leading to her nickname, El Ponderoso. It was even suggested by some