HMS General Wolfe, also known as Wolfe, was a Lord Clive-classmonitor which was built in 1915 for shore-bombardment duties in the First World War. Her class of eight ships was armed by four obsolete Majestic-classpre-dreadnoughts which had their 12-inch guns and mounts removed, modified and installed in the newly built monitors. Wolfe spent her entire war service with the Dover Patrol, bombarding the German-occupied Belgian coastline, which had been heavily fortified. In the spring of 1918 she was fitted with an 18-inch (457mm) gun, with which she made the longest-range firing in the history of the Royal Navy - 36,000-yard (20mi) - on a target at Snaeskerke, Belgium.[1] After the war, she was laid up before being stripped and put up for sale in 1920. She was finally scrapped in 1923.
The outbreak of the First World War and the rapid fall of Belgium into German hands meant that for the first time in decades the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Europe would not be wholly surrounded by friendly or neutral powers. In order to harass the Germans occupying the Belgian coast, and to prevent the use of ports by Imperial German Navy warships, vessels were needed which could traverse the shallow coastal waters and bombard the enemy. At this time aircraft were still relatively primitive and therefore orders were placed for shallow-draught vessels with long-range guns, the Abercrombie-class monitors.
I propose as a basis of discussion, that in addition to the 4 Schwab monitors, we prepare 8 more at a cost of not more than £700,000 apiece. These vessels should be armed with 13.5-inch (343mm) or 15-inch (381mm) guns, two or four in each as convenient.[2]
There were however no spare usable guns. Three 13.5-inch guns and mountings were free after the sinking of HMS Audacious, but there were no turrets available. Although 15-inch guns and turrets would later be re-allocated to monitors, at this time it was not thought to be a feasible option while the Queen Elizabeth class and Revenge-class battleships were being completed. It was then suggested that the 12-inch (305mm) guns and barbettes of the obsolete pre-dreadnoughtMajestic-class battleships be removed and placed in the monitors while the older ships were utilised as transports and hulks. Admiral Percy Scott, the foremost gunnery expert in the navy was consulted, who recommended that if the elevation of the guns was increased from their then limit of 13.5° to 30° then a comfortable range of 21,000-yard (19km) could be reached.
Five of the monitors were allocated to the firm of Harland and Wolff, to be constructed at their Belfast and Govan yards. Another, which became HMS Prince Rupert was built at William Hamilton & Company of Port Glasgow and another at Scotts' shipyard at Greenock. This left the monitor provisionally named M9. Initially the order for her went to Fairfield's on 23 December 1914. Due to a mass re-allocation of resources caused by the halting of capital ship construction, the construction of the former battleship, now the battlecruiserHMSRenown building at Fairfield was speeded up, while capacity at Palmer's in the North of England had been increased by the transfer of HMS Repulse to Clydebank. The order for M9 was therefore given to Palmer's Hebburn-on-Tyne yard on 6 January 1916 who also received the order for its two 4-cylinder triple-expansion engines.
Before M9 was laid down at Hebburn, it was decided from which ship she would receive her main-armament. On 1 January 1915 it was decided that HMS Victorious would surrender one of her two 12-inch turrets, which was converted in situ by the Elswick Ordnance Company on Tyneside and then removed by crane - waiting dockside at Elswick until the monitor was launched and ready to have it fitted.[3] The hull form was similar to the Abercrombie class, except that due to the lighter main armament the hull could be made slighter narrower and shorter, which meant that even with 15-foot (5m) bulges she would be able to berth in most docks - a severe handicap for most monitors.[4]
M9, so named as it was the ninth monitor laid down for the Royal Navy, was originally intended to be named simply Wolfe after the victor of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, James Wolfe.[5] On 15 February 1915 she was renamed Sir James Wolfe[5] before receiving the name she would be launched under, General Wolfe, on 8 March.[5] In common with all her sister-ships, which were named for famous British soldiers, the title was most often dropped leaving the name only, hence "Wolfe".[3]
Early career
Wolfe was launched at Hebburn on 9 September 1915, and commissioned for service on 9 November under Commander Neston William Diggle, who had been appointed to her on 27 October. She was the last of her class to complete, and arrived at Dover for service with The Dover Patrol on 12 November.[6] Her sister-ships had already performed a number of shore bombardments, and Wolfe had to wait until 25 January 1916, when Marshal Foch of the French Army requested a demonstration of the monitors. Wolfe went to sea under Captain John Alfred Moreton, and flew the flag of Vice-Admiral Reginald Bacon, the patrol's commander-in-chief, who had served with Moreton in the submarine service. Anchored off the Belgian coast in the afternoon of the 26th, Wolfe and six other monitors bombarded the German artillery batteries at Westende, between Nieuport and Ostend, each of the larger monitors firing about eleven rounds with spotting (observation of the fall of shot) provided by aircraft.[7]
On 24 April 1916, Wolfe and her sister-ship Prince Eugene were detailed to cover the laying of a net barrage twelve miles off the Belgian coast, stretching twenty miles from Nieuport to Zeebrugge. Wolfe was spotted by the Tirpitz battery (four 11-inch (279mm) guns) and straddled at a range of 32,000-yard (18mi). She steamed out of range, only to be ineffectively attacked by German aircraft, which Wolfe responded to with shrapnel shell. She then provided cover for British destroyers when the Germans attempted to press home a torpedo-boat attack.[8] Afterwards, up until September when the weather turned wintry, Wolfe and the other 12-inch monitors patrolled the Belgian coast along with other monitors, destroyers and drifters to prevent the Germans breaking out or laying more mines, or sweeping up British minefields. By dint of their enormous beam and large guns, the 12-inch monitors were thought to be invulnerable to all warships but cruisers.
During the build-up to the reopening of the Somme offensive on 15 September 1916, the Dover Patrol was asked to tie-down the enemy forces on the coast of Belgium. From 8 September to 15 September all the monitors of the patrol were engaged, and the 12-inch monitors, including Wolfe, fired two hundred of the three hundred heavy rounds fired in this period. They also acted as aiming marks for the larger 15-inch gunned monitors.[9] For the next twelve months, weather permitting, the monitors continued the unglamorous task of patrolling. In July 1917, Wolfe with a number of her sister-ships was taken off patrolling in preparation for Operation Hush, a planned landing on the Belgian coast by the 1st Division. She and General Craufurd would have been tasked with towing one of three 540-foot-long (160m) pontoons, each of which would have been capable of landing hundreds of men as well as tanks, guns and transport. The landing had been designed to coincide with Allied success at the 3rd Battle of Ypres which opened on 31 July 1917. This offensive faltered, however, so it was deemed too dangerous to attempt an assault on the coast. The monitors, which had been training at South West Reach in the River Thames without leave since July, were ordered to Portsmouth on 2 October. Wolfe arrived on 4 October and was dry-docked for maintenance. [10]
18-inch monitor
Starboard quarter view of Wolfe showing her 18-inch gun to good effect.
In the new year of 1918, Wolfe was selected to be converted to take an 18-inch (457mm) gun along with Lord Clive and Prince Eugene.[10] The mounting for the gun, the largest in service with any navy, was named the "15-inch B C.D.". "15-inch B" was the code name for the 18-inch gun itself, and C.D., for "Coast Defence" reflected the possible usage of the mount on land. The mounting was designed and produced by the Elswick Ordnance Company and due to labour troubles, although ordered in October 1917, it was not completed until May, and finally arrived in Portsmouth for installation on Wolfe on 20 June 1918.[11]Wolfe had been taken in hand by Portsmouth Dockyard on 5 April for the structural modifications required to take the weight of the 18-inch gun and mounting on her quarterdeck.[10] The total weight of the mounting was 384 tons, not including the weight of sixty shells and seventy-two full charges of cordite.[11] The gun itself, which was fixed to starboard, had been intended for "A" turret of the large light cruiser HMSFurious and was fitted on 9 July.[12]Wolfe was ready for gun trials on 7 August, which took place off the Isle of Wight and were successful. The mounting, with its large box-shaped shield, so disfigured the stern of the ship that it earned Wolfe the nickname of "Elephant and Castle".[12] On 15 August the monitor returned to the Dover Patrol, the first of the 18-inch monitors to re-enter service. She had a new commanding officer, Commander S.B. Boyd-Richardson. The rest of August and most of September she saw no action.
In cooperation with Allied forces attacking on the coast of Belgium, the monitors were used on a protracted shore bombardment. In the night of 27/28 September, the seven monitors available to the Patrol bombarded targets near Ostend and Zeebruge, using their sub-calibre (smaller) guns, to trick the Germans into thinking that a night landing by Allied forces might be made there (following the earlier Ostend and Zeebrugge Raids in April).
By dawn the monitors had arranged themselves in three divisions off the West Deep, where they could harass German lines of communication far inland. Wolfe was in Division III with the new-completed coast defence ship HMS Gorgon.[13]Wolfe was anchored parallel to the coastline, and at 0732 opened fire on the railway bridge at Snaeskerke (four miles south of Ostend) at a range of 36,000-yard (32,918m) away. She therefore fired the heaviest shell from the largest gun at the longest range up to that time, and at the longest range any Royal Navy ship has fired in action. During the rest of the day Wolfe fired fifty-two 18-inch shells out of her supply of sixty at Snaeskerke, all landing close to the target.[14]
For the next two weeks, Wolfe and the other monitors of the patrol kept up an intermittent bombardment of the Belgian coast, interrupted by bad weather or lack of air support for spotting the fall of shot. In mid-October the Germans evacuated the Belgian coast and the monitors returned to Sheerness when the Armistice was signed. Wolfe paid off on 19 November 1918.[15]
Post-war fate
General Wolfe was placed on the sale list by Admiralty order on 7 April 1920.[16] It had been announced on the 6th that she, in company with the other monitors lying at Immingham being tended by care and maintenance parties, would travel singly to the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard to have guns and other useful fittings removed, after which they would then return to the Humber.[17] In December 1920 her 18-inch gun was removed and placed into storage; it was scrapped in 1933.[18] The ship was sold to Thos. W. Ward on 9 May 1921[19] and broken up at Hayle in 1923.[20]
Buxton, Ian (2008) [1978]. Big Gun Monitors. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-84415-719-8.
Colledge, J. J.; Wardlow, Ben & Bush, Steve (2020). Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy from the 15th Century to the Present (5thed.). Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-5267-9327-0.
Dittmar, F.J.; Colledge, J.J. (1972). British Warships: 1914–1919. Shepperton: Ian Allan Ltd. ISBN0-7110-0380-7.
Gilbert, Martin (1972). Winston S. Churchill Companion, Parts 1 and 2. Vol.III. London: Heinemann.
Preston, Antony (1985). "Great Britain and Empire Forces". In Gray, Randal (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. pp.1–104. ISBN0-85177-245-5.
A monitor is a relatively small warship that is neither fast nor strongly armored but carries disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s, during the First World War and with limited use in the Second World War.
HMS Erebus was a First World War monitor launched on 19 June 1916 and which served in both world wars. She and her sister ship Terror are known as the Erebus class. They were named after the two bomb vessels sent to investigate the Northwest Passage as part of Franklin's lost expedition (1845–1848), in which all 129 members eventually perished.
HMS Venerable (1899) was a member of the London class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the British Royal Navy. The Londons were near repeats of the preceding Formidable-class battleships, but with modified armour protection. Venerable's main battery consisted of four 12-inch (305-mm) guns, and she had top speed of 18 knots. The ship was laid down in January 1899, was launched in November that year, and was completed in November 1902. Commissioned that month, Venerable served in the Mediterranean Fleet until 1908, and was subsequently recommissioned into the Channel Fleet. Following a major refit in 1909, she served with the Atlantic and Home Fleets.
HMS Gorgon and her sister ship Glatton were two monitors originally built as coastal defence ships for the Royal Norwegian Navy, as HNoMS Nidaros and Bjørgvin respectively, by Armstrong Whitworth at Elswick. She was purchased from Norway at the beginning of the First World War, but was not completed until 1918 although she had been launched over three years earlier. She engaged targets in Occupied Flanders for the last several months of the war and fired the last shots of the war against such targets on 15 October 1918. She was used as a target ship after several attempts to sell her had fallen through before being sold for scrap in 1928.
HMS Terror was an Erebus-class monitor built for the Royal Navy during the First World War in Belfast. Completed in 1916, she was assigned to the Dover Patrol where her primary duties involved bombarding German targets on the coast of occupied Belgium, particularly at the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend. In October 1917 Terror was hit by three torpedoes, taking severe damage to the bow, and had to be towed into Portsmouth for repair. In April 1918 she participated in the Zeebrugge raid and provided gunnery support for the Fifth Battle of Ypres in September of the same year.
The Erebus class of warships was a class of 20th century Royal Navy monitors armed with a main battery of two 15-inch /42 Mk 1 guns in a single turret. It consisted of two vessels, Erebus and Terror, named after the two ships lost in the Franklin Expedition. Both were launched in 1916 and saw active service in World War I off the Belgian coast. After being placed in reserve between the wars, they served in World War II, with Terror being lost in 1941 and Erebus surviving to be scrapped in 1946.
The Zeebrugge Raid on 23 April 1918, was an attempt by the Royal Navy to block the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge. The British intended to sink obsolete ships in the canal entrance, to prevent German vessels from leaving port. The port was used by the Imperial German Navy as a base for U-boats and light shipping, which were a threat to Allied control of the English Channel and southern North Sea. Several attempts to close the Flanders ports by bombardment failed and Operation Hush, a 1917 plan to advance up the coast, proved abortive. As ship losses to U-boats increased, finding a way to close the ports became urgent and the Admiralty became more willing to consider a raid.
The Lord Clive-class monitor, sometimes referred to as the General Wolfe class, were ships designed for shore bombardment and were constructed for the Royal Navy during the First World War.
The BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun was a breech-loading naval rifle used by the Royal Navy during World War I. It was the largest and heaviest gun ever used by the British. Only the Second-World-War Japanese 46 cm/45 Type 94 had a larger calibre, 18.1 inches (46 cm), but it fired a lighter shell. The gun was a scaled-up version of the BL 15 inch Mk I naval gun and was developed to equip the "large light cruiser" Furious. Its barrel length of 60 ft (18 m) was just 40 calibres, slightly limiting its muzzle velocity.
The Second Ostend Raid was the later of two failed attempts made during the spring of 1918 by the United Kingdom's Royal Navy to block the channels leading to the Belgian port of Ostend as a part of its conflict with the German Empire during World War I. Due to the significant strategic advantages conferred by the Belgian ports, the Imperial German Navy had used Ostend as a base for the U-boat campaign during the Battle of the Atlantic since 1915.
HMS Marshal Ney was the lead ship of her class of two monitors built for the Royal Navy during the First World War. Laid down as M13, she was renamed after the French field marshal of the Napoleonic Wars Michel Ney. After service in the First World War, she became a depot ship and then an accommodation ship. Between 1922 and 1947, she was renamed three times, becoming successively Vivid, Drake and Alaunia II. She was scrapped in 1957.
HMS Prince Eugene was one of eight Lord Clive-class monitors built for the Royal Navy in 1915 to conduct shore bombardments during the First World War. The ship was assigned to the Dover Patrol for the duration of the war and provided cover for the Inshore Squadron during the First Ostend Raid. She was sold for scrap in 1921.
HMS General Craufurd was the one of eight Lord Clive-class monitors built for the Royal Navy during World War I. Their primary armament was taken from obsolete pre-dreadnought battleships. The ship spent the war in the English Channel bombarding German positions along the Belgian coast as part of the Dover Patrol. She participated in the failed First and Second Ostend Raids in 1918, bombarding the defending coastal artillery as the British attempted to block the Bruges–Ostend Canal. Later that year General Craufurd supported the coastal battles during the Hundred Days Offensive until the Germans evacuated coastal Belgium in mid-October. The ship was decommissioned almost immediately after the war ended the following month, but she was reactivated in 1920 to serve as a gunnery training ship for a year. General Craufurd was sold for scrap in 1921.
HMS Lord Clive was the lead ship of her class of eight monitors built for the Royal Navy during World War I. Their primary armament was taken from obsolete pre-dreadnought battleships. The ship spent the war in the English Channel bombarding German positions along the Belgian coast as part of the Dover Patrol, often serving as a flagship. She participated in the failed First Ostend Raid in 1918, bombarding the defending coastal artillery as the British attempted to block the Bruges–Ostend Canal. Lord Clive was one of two ships in the class fitted with a single 18-inch (457 mm) gun in 1918, but she only fired four rounds from it in combat before the end of the war in November. The ship conducted gunnery trials after the war and was sold for scrap in 1927.
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