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2 shafts, reciprocating steam engines, 2 boilers, 2,310 hp
Speed
6.5 knots (12.0km/h)
Complement
194
Armament
Originally two BL 12 inch Mk VIII in a single turret, two QF 3-pounder guns. Lord Clive and General Wolfe had an additional single BL 18 inch Mk I in 1918 installed aft. Similar work on Prince Eugene was not completed because of the end of the war.
Armour
Belt: 6 inch
Turret: 10.5 inch
Barbette 8 inch
Deck 2 inch
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 slow progress of the war led to the need for more shore bombardment ships and various schemes for using spare heavy guns were considered. Heavier guns such as 13.5-inch and 15-inch weapons had no available mountings so the main armament consisted of a single twin 12-inch (305mm) gun turret taken from decommissioned Majestic-classpre-dreadnought battleships.
The ships were ordered after the Abercrombie class had begun building and the hull form was a near repeat of that design. Extra quick-firing artillery for protection from destroyers and torpedo boats was also fitted in most ships and consisted of up to four six-inch guns.
The stern of HMS Lord Clive; showing her BL 18 inch gun on its fixed mounting, November 1918On board Lord Clive; her BL 18 inch gun is at its full elevation. November 1918
Three of the ships, HMS General Wolfe, Lord Clive and Prince Eugene, were to be converted to take the BL18-inch guns that had originally been allocated to HMSFurious. The guns were mounted aft, permanently arranged to fire over the starboard beam. The mounting consisted of two massive side girders parallel to the barrel, between which the gun was slung. At the forward end was a support about which the gun could train in a limited arc, with a hydraulic cylinder providing ten degrees of traverse each side of the mounting center line. The gun was loaded at the fixed angle of 10 degrees, but firing was only allowed between 22 degrees and 45 degrees of elevation, to distribute the large firing forces evenly between the forward and after supports. The mounting was covered by a large non-traversing half-inch steel plate shield fixed to the deck.[1]
The enormous rounds and charges were transported to the gunhouse on a light railway fixed to the main deck. Work was completed on Lord Clive and General Wolfe but the end of World War I intervened before Prince Eugene was finished. Both of the converted ships saw action. The original 12-inch turret was left in place on them to maintain stability.
General Wolfe fired on a railway bridge at Snaeskerke, four miles (6km) south of Ostend, Belgium, on 28 September 1918. The range of 36,000 yards (33km) made this the greatest range at which a Royal Navy vessel has ever engaged an enemy target using guns.[citation needed]Lord Clive fired a mere four rounds with the replacement gun at enemy targets.
Buxton, Ian (2008) [1978]. Big Gun Monitors: Design, Construction and Operations 1914–1945 (2nd Reviseded.). Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-84415-719-8.
Crossley, Jim (2013). Monitors of the Royal Navy; How the Fleet Brought the Great Guns to Bear. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword. ISBN978-1-78383-004-6.
Dittmar, F. J. & Colledge, J. J., "British Warships 1914-1919", (Ian Allan, London, 1972), ISBN0-7110-0380-7
Dunn, Steve R. (2017). Securing the Narrow Sea: The Dover Patrol 1914–1918. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-84832-251-6.
Friedman, Norman (2011). Naval Weapons of World War One: Guns, Torpedoes, Mines and ASW Weapons of All Nations; An Illustrated Directory. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-84832-100-7.
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.
The Majestic class of nine pre-dreadnought battleships were built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1890s under the Spencer Programme, named after the First Lord of the Admiralty, John Poyntz Spencer. With nine units commissioned, they were the most numerous class of battleships. The nine ships, HMS Majestic, Caesar, Hannibal, Illustrious, Jupiter, Magnificent, Mars, Prince George, and Victorious, were built between 1894 and 1898 as part of a programme to strengthen the Royal Navy versus its two traditional rivals, France and Russia. This continued the naval re-armament initiatives begun by the Naval Defence Act 1889.
The M29 class comprised five monitors of the Royal Navy, all built and launched during 1915.
The Town class consisted of 10 light cruisers built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s. The Towns were designed within the constraints of the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The ships were built in the sub-classes, Southampton, Gloucester and Edinburgh, each sub-class adding more weaponry.
The Abercrombie class of monitors served in the Royal Navy during the First World War.
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 Marshal Ney class was a class of monitor built 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 Swiftsure was one of three Minotaur-class light cruisers built for the Royal Navy during the Second World War. She was laid down by Vickers Armstrong at Newcastle upon Tyne on 22 September 1941, launched on 4 February 1943 by Lady Wake-Walker and commissioned on 22 June 1944. The first of a new Minotaur class, a development of the later Colony class with extra beam and a fifth twin 4 inch turret. Swiftsure was the last Royal Navy cruiser completed during World War II and was the first British cruiser designed around the concept of an operations room and modern radar, with sensor screens and communications positioned for efficient operation. During her service in the Pacific in 1945, she proved the most efficient anti-aircraft cruiser in the fleet and was the first Royal Navy cruiser with the Type 274 lock-and-follow radar targeting system for her main armament.
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.
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 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 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.
The Humber-class monitors were three large gunboats under construction for the Brazilian Navy in Britain in 1913. Designed for service on the Amazon River, the ships were of shallow draft and heavy armament and were ideally suited to inshore, riverine and coastal work but unsuitable for service at sea, where their weight and light draft reduced their speed from a projected twelve knots to under four. The class comprised Humber, Mersey and Severn. All three were taken over by the Royal Navy shortly before the outbreak of the First World War and were commissioned as small monitors. All three saw extensive service during the war and were sold in 1919.
The Gorgon-class monitors were a class of monitors in service with the Royal Navy during World War I. Gorgon and her sister ship Glatton were originally built as coastal defence ships for the Royal Norwegian Navy, as HNoMS Nidaros and HNoMS Bjørgvin respectively but requisitioned for British use. Gorgon commissioned first, in June 1918 and bombarded German positions and other targets in Occupied Flanders. She fired the last shots of the war by the Royal Navy into Belgium on 15 October 1918. She was offered for sale after the war, but was used as a target ship when there were no takers. She was sold for scrap in 1928. Glatton was destroyed by a magazine explosion only days after she was completed in September 1918 while in Dover Harbour. She remained a hazard to shipping until the wreck was partially salvaged and the remains moved out of the way during 1925–26.
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.
The M15 class comprised fourteen monitors of the Royal Navy, all built and launched during 1915.
The Neptune class was a proposed class of cruisers planned for the British Royal Navy in the latter years of the Second World War. They were large ships which were to be armed with twelve 6-inch (152 mm) dual-purpose guns and with a heavy secondary armament. Although five ships of the class were planned in 1944, they were cancelled following the end of the war and before construction could begin.
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