Five ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Ark Royal:
HMS Ark Royal was built as Ark Raleigh in 1587, to the order of Sir Walter Raleigh. She was bought that year by Queen Elizabeth's navy and was renamed Ark Royal. She was the flagship of the English fleet during the Spanish Armada campaign of 1588. In 1608, under the new monarch James I, she was rebuilt and renamed Anne Royal. She was broken up in 1636.
HMS Ark Royal was a merchant ship converted on the building stocks to be a seaplane carrier and was Britain's second aircraft carrier. HMS Ark Royal was arguably the first modern aircraft carrier. She was launched in 1914, and served in the Dardanelles Campaign and throughout World War I. She was renamed HMS Pegasus in 1934, to free the name Ark Royal for a new ship, and was broken up in 1950.
This article includes a list of ships with the same or similar names. If an internal link for a specific ship referred you to this page, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended ship article, if one exists.