The first ship in the Royal Navy to be named in honour of the famous Cromwellian 'General-at-Sea' Robert Blake (1599-1657) was also the nameship of two 'Blake' class '74s' ordered in July 1805. The order for the second vessel, San Domingo, went to Woolwich but Blake was laid down at Deptford in April 1806, launched on 23rd August 1808 and thence towed to Woolwich where she was completed by October the same year. Measured at 1,822 tons, she was 180 feet in length with a 48 foot beam, carried a main armament of 28-32pdrs. on her lower deck, and was manned by a crew of 640 officers and men.

First commissioned in the autumn of 1808, from December that year (until 1812) she was commanded by Captain Sir Edward Codrington, the future 'victor' of Navarino (in 1827). Flagship to Admiral Lord Gardner during the operations off Walcheren in 1809, Blake was afterwards sent to the Mediterranean in May 1810. Returning home, she was then laid up at Portsmouth prior to temporary employment as a prison ship from December 1813 – January 1814. Returning to sea soon after under Captain George Forbes, during which period she apparently visited the Caribbean, she was, somewhat surprisingly given that she was barely eight years old, sold for breaking in October 1816.