page_title: Monitor (warship)
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: Monitor (warship) / Twentieth century / World War I
caption_attribution_description: English: HMS Raglan
context_page_description: A monitor was a relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armored but carried 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. During the Vietnam War they were used by the United States Navy. The Brazilian Navy's Parnaíba is the last monitor in service.
  The original monitor was designed in 1861 by John Ericsson, who named it USS Monitor. They were designed for shallow waters and served as coastal ships. The term "monitor" also encompassed more flexible breastwork monitors, and was sometimes used as a generic term for any turreted ship.
  The term "monitor" also encompasses the strongest of riverine warcraft, known as river monitors. In the early 20th century, the term "monitor" was revived for shallow-draught armoured shore bombardment vessels, particularly those of the Royal Navy: the Lord Clive-class monitors carried guns firing heavier shells than any other warship ever has, seeing action against German targets during World War I. The Lord Clive vessels were scrapped in the 1920s.
context_section_description: During World War I, the Royal Navy developed several classes of ships which were designed to give close support to troops ashore. Termed "monitors", they owed little to the monitors of the 19th century, though they shared the characteristics of poor seaworthiness, shallow draft and heavy armament in turrets.
  The first class, the Humber class, had been laid down as large river gunboats for the Brazilian navy. Later monitor classes were equally makeshift; they were often designed for carrying whatever spare guns were available from ships scrapped or never built, with the hulls quickly designed and built in "cheap and cheerful" fashion. They were broad beamed for stability (beam was about 1/3 of the overall length) which together with a lack of emphasis on speed made them extremely slow, and they were not suitable for naval combat or any sort of work on the high seas. Monitors of the Royal Navy played a part in consolidating the left wing of the Western Front during the Race to the Sea in 1914.
  In addition to these ships, several monitors were built during the course of the war. Their armament typically consisted of a turret taken from a de-commissioned pre-dreadnought battleship. These monitors were designed to be resilient against torpedo attacks—waterline bulges were incorporated into the Abercrombie class of 1915. As the war settled to its longer course, these heavier monitors formed patrols along with destroyers on either side of the Straits of Dover to exclude enemy surface vessels from the English Channel and keep the enemy in port. The monitors could also operate into the river mouths. HMS General Wolfe, one of the Lord Clive-class monitors, which had a single 18-inch (457 mm) gun added in 1918, was able to shell a bridge 20 miles (30 km) away near Ostend. Other RN monitors served in the Mediterranean.
  The dimensions of the several classes of monitor varied greatly. Those of the Abercrombie class were 320 feet (98 m) by 90 feet (27 m) in the beam and drew 9 feet (2.7 m) compared to the M29-class monitors of 1915 that were only 170 feet (52 m) long. and the Erebus class of 1916 were 405 feet (123 m) long. The largest monitors carried the heaviest guns.
  By this point the United States Navy had largely stopped using monitors. Only a few still existed, and only seven were still in service, all of which had been relegated to being submarine tenders. This would be the last war in which United States monitor-type vessels would see commissioned service. The last original American monitor, USS Wyoming, renamed USS Cheyenne in 1908, was stricken from the Navy List in 1937.
  The Austro-Hungarian Navy had also invested heavily in the construction of river monitors to patrol its internal river systems such as the Danube and its tributaries. These vessels were among the first to fire on Serbian territory at the start of the First World War, and took part in the bombardment of Belgrade, as well as other Balkan campaigns against Serbia and Romania. At the end of the war, the surviving vessels were parceled out to the navies of the new state of Yugoslavia and Romania as war prizes. Several would see action in World War II as well.
caption: HMS Raglan
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