A monitor is a relatively small warship which 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 Raglan was a First World War Royal Navy Abercrombie-class monitor, which was sunk during the Battle of Imbros in January 1918.
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 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 Roberts class of monitors of the Royal Navy consisted of two heavily gunned vessels built during the Second World War. They were the Roberts, completed in 1941, and Abercrombie, completed in 1943.
HMS Abercrombie was a First World War Royal Navy Abercrombie-class monitor.
HMS Sir Thomas Picton was a First World War Royal Navy Lord Clive-class monitor. Sir Thomas Picton was the only Royal Navy ship ever named for Sir Thomas Picton, a British general of the Peninsular War who was killed at the Battle of Waterloo. The ship's original 12" main battery was stripped from the obsolete Majestic-class battleship HMS Mars.
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.
HMS Marshal Soult was a Royal Navy Marshal Ney-class monitor constructed in the opening years of the First World War. Laid down as M14, she was named after the French general of the Napoleonic Wars Marshal Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult. She served in both World Wars and was decommissioned in 1946.
HMS Prince Rupert was a First World War Royal Navy Lord Clive-class monitor named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, an important Royalist commander of the English Civil War and key figure in the Restoration navy. Although she is the only ship of the Royal Navy to have ever had this precise name, other ships have been named after Prince Rupert as HMS Rupert. Her 12" main battery was stripped from the obsolete Majestic-class battleships.
HMS General Wolfe, also known as Wolfe, was a Lord Clive-class monitor 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-class pre-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 (457 mm) gun, with which she made the longest-range firing in the history of the Royal Navy - 36,000-yard (20 mi) - on a target at Snaeskerke, Belgium. After the war, she was laid up before being stripped and put up for sale in 1920. She was finally scrapped in 1923.
HMS Sir John Moore 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 was sold for scrap in 1921.
HMS Humber was a Humber-class monitor of the Royal Navy. Originally built by Vickers for Brazil as Javary, she was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1914 on the outbreak of the First World War along with her sister ships Severn and Mersey.
HMS Abercrombie was a Royal Navy Roberts-class monitor of the Second World War. She was the second monitor to be named after General Sir Ralph Abercrombie.
Rear Admiral Anthony Follett Pugsley was a British naval officer. During the Second World War he served as a successful destroyer captain, landed the 3rd Canadian Division on D-Day, and planned and executed the amphibious landings on Walcheren during a critically important phase in the Battle of the Scheldt in late 1944.
HMS Garth was a Type I Hunt-class destroyer of the Royal Navy built by John Brown & Company on the River Clyde, and launched on 28 December 1939. She was adopted by the Civil Community of Wokingham, Berkshire, as part of the Warship Week campaign in 1942.
United Kingdom