Howe, 120-gun Ship of the Line Robert Seppings, 48 years old, previously Master Shipwright at Chatham dockyard, now Surveyor of the Navy for two years, applied his system of diagonal bracing to the whole hull of a new ship, Howe, a tremendous 120. He also used iron knees in substitution for grown timbers, so difficult to find within sparse woods. Howe was the first of a class of three to be laid down in 1808 and is structurally different from her two sisterships, Nelson and