Ten 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 Serpent, after the synonym for snake

Snake

Snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...

, whilst another two were planned, and one appears to have been a spurious report:
was a 60-ton pinnace captured in 1562 and last recorded in 1653. was a 12-gun bomb vessel

Bomb vessel

A bomb vessel, bomb ship, bomb ketch, or simply bomb was a type of wooden sailing naval ship. Its primary armament was not cannon —although bomb vessels carried a few cannon for self-defence—but rather mortars mounted forward near the bow and elevated to a high angle, and projecting their fire in a...

 launched in 1693 and wrecked in 1694. She ran aground in Gibraltar Bay during a storm and was wrecked; 15 men died. was a 4-gun bomb vessel launched in 1695 and captured by a French privateer

Privateer

A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...

 in 1703. was a bomb vessel (carrying 2 mortars and 8 guns) launched in 1742 and wrecked in 1748. She was Heading for Barbados when she ran aground on the island. Despite efforts to lighten her, her crew had to abandon her and were ferried ashore over a three-day period; seven drowned when their boat overturned. The loss was blamed on strong currents.

• HMS Serpent was a 12-gun bomb vessel reported as being built in 1771, but no such vessel was built.
• HMS Serpent was to have been a 16-gun ship-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...
  
  . She was laid down in February 1783 and cancelled in October of that year when the builder (Phineas Jacobs of Sandgate) went out of business. was a 16-gun ship-sloop launched in 1789 and foundered in September 1806 on the Jamaica station. was a French gun-boat taken at Toulon in 1793, and in September commissioned and given a crew of 26 men from Victory
  HMS Victory
  HMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765. She is most famous as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805....
  
   under the command of Lieutenant John Davie; she was sunk at the evacuation of the city on 18 December. was a 4-gun gun vessel, formerly a Dutch hoy
  Hoy (boat)
  A hoy was a small sloop-rigged coasting ship or a heavy barge used for freight, usually displacing about 60 tons. The word derives from the Middle Dutch hoey. In 1495, one of the Paston Letters included the phrase, An hoye of Dorderycht , in such a way as to indicate that such contact was then...
  
   purchased in 1794. She paid off in 1796 and is believed to have been sold around 1802.
• HMS Serpent was to have been an 18-gun sloop, laid down in 1810 and cancelled later that year. was a 16-gun brig-sloop launched in 1832. She was used as a target from 1857 and was broken up in 1861. was a wood screw gunvessel
  Gunboat
  A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.-History:...
  
   launched in 1860 and sold in 1875. Surveyed Pratas Island in 1867. was a torpedo cruiser launched in 1887 and wrecked in November 1890 near Camariñas
  Camariñas
  Camariñas is a municipality in the province of A Coruña, autonomous community of Galicia, Spain. An important fishing center, it is renowned all over Spain by the bobbin lace work of its women ....
  
  with the loss of 173 of her crew of 176 men. The cause was an error of judgement on the part of those responsible for the ship's navigation. Still, her officers and men obeyed orders and maintained good discipline to the end.