HMS Monmouth (1901)

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flag
Monmouth or County class
HMS Monmouth
HMS Monmouth
Overview
Type Armored cruiser
units 10
Shipyard

London & Glasgow Co. , Glasgow

Keel laying August 29, 1899
Launch November 13, 1901
delivery December 2, 1903
Whereabouts November 1, 1914
in the Battle of Coronel dropped
Technical specifications
displacement

9,800 tn.l.

length

pp: 134.11 m (440 ft )
o.a.: 141.42 m (463.5 ft)

width

20.12 m (66 ft)

Draft

7.6 m (25 ft)

crew

678 men

drive
speed

23 kn

Armament
Coal supply

1,600 tn.l.

Armor
belt armor / casemates


50–100 mm (2–4 in )

Towers / barbeds

127 mm (5 in)

deck

50–170 mm (2–7.5 in)

Command tower

250 mm (10 in)

HMS Monmouth , the sixth ship of the British Navy with this name, was the lead ship of a class of a total of ten 9,800 ton armored cruisers and named after the Battle of Monmouth, which was victorious for the British in 1777 in the American Revolutionary War . The class was also known as the county class . The Monmouth was sunk in the sea ​​battle at Coronel with her entire crew.

Monmouth or County class

The Monmouth and her sister ships Bedford , Essex , Kent , Berwick , Cornwall , Cumberland , Donegal , Lancaster and Suffolk were relatively weakly armed with fourteen 6-inch (15.2-cm) Mk VII and Mk VIII guns. Four guns were placed in twin turrets at the bow and stern. The only difference between Mk.VII and Mk.VIII was that in the Mk.VIII the shutter opened to the left instead of to the right. The Mk.VIII were installed as a left tube in the twin towers, which made reloading easier, as the locks swiveled away from the tower walls. The remaining guns of the main armament were in casemates along the sides of the hull. Of these, only the four upper ones could be used in the double casemates even in heavy seas. In addition, the ships had ten 12-pdr- (7.62-cm) - rapid-fire guns , three 3-pdr- (4.7-cm) quick-fire guns and two 18-inch (45.7-cm) - broadside torpedo tubes .

The previous armored cruisers of the Drake and Cressy classes had two separate 9.2-inch (23.4-cm) guns at the bow and stern. Jackie Fisher said that "Sir William White designed the County class but forgot guns." In addition, the ships were relatively lightly armored . They were an attempt to build smaller armored cruisers in larger quantities. They were more than 4,000 ts smaller than the previous Drake- class at the same speed. The three chimney-cruisers followed the re larger armored cruiser Devonshire - class with four chimneys and 7.5-inch- (19-cm) -Geschützen.

history

Construction of the Monmouth began on August 29, 1899 at the London & Glasgow Shipping Company as the first ship of this type. When she was launched on November 13, 1901, three sister ships had already been launched and by the time she was finally put into service on December 2, 1903, five armored cruisers of this class were already in service with the Royal Navy.

The structural weaknesses of the class were weak main armament, limited usability of the casemate guns and weak armor that could easily be penetrated by large-caliber projectiles.

Initially with the Mediterranean Fleet , the Monmouth served in East Asia (the British China station ) from 1906 to 1913 and was transferred to the "Reserve Fleet" in January 1914 because it was technically obsolete. In the Home Fleet there was no longer any room for the old armored cruisers with their weak main armament and low speed. The last squadron with this type was in 1913 under Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock to protect British interests in the politically troubled Caribbean and off the the Civil War located Mexico have been laid. The sister ships Suffolk , Berwick , Essex and Lancaster served there. These ships were more suitable for the implementation of a gunboat policy than for use against modern warships.

The reserve included Kent , who had also returned from China in 1913, as well as Cornwall and probably also Donegal . The Cumberland was used as a training ship for the cadets of the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth (Devon) . The Bedford was lost off the Chinese coast in 1910.

War effort

With the outbreak of the First World War it was reactivated and was for the 5th Cruiser Squadron of Rear Admiral Archibald P. Stoddart with its flagship HMS Carnarvon in the Cape Verde provided the its rapidly deployable sister ships HMS Cornwall and HMS Cumberland had already been allocated.

Since the Admiralty feared the greatest threat to British trade from converted German express steamers, they ordered the 4th Cruiser Squadron deployed off Mexico under Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock with its flagship Suffolk only off the North American coast. He had not been able to shadow the German small cruisers SMS Dresden and SMS Karlsruhe stationed in the Caribbean . In order to improve its chances, the light cruiser HMS Bristol should remain in the north for the time being and the Monmouth should replace it off Pernambuco .

When Cradock realized that the bulk of German steamers in the USA were preparing to stay there, he moved to the Brazilian coast on the likewise reactivated 14,100-ton armored cruiser HMS Good Hope , as the German cruisers that had escaped from him were apparently active in the Central Atlantic . He gathered his reinforcements off the Brazilian coast and sent the previous station cruiser, the modern light cruiser HMS Glasgow , with the Monmouth and the auxiliary cruiser HMS Otranto south to the Strait of Magellan in order to prevent the Germans from evading into the Pacific.

Cradock's new distribution achieved its first success when the auxiliary cruiser Carmania put and sank the German auxiliary cruiser Cap Trafalgar on the Brazilian island of Trindade , 450 nautical miles east of Vitória , on the morning of September 14, 1914 . However, the Carmania was also badly hit and had to be accompanied by the auxiliary cruiser Macedonia to Gibraltar for repairs.

On the same day, Cradock met his southern group off Santa Catarina . Together they ran to Montevideo , which they left on September 18 for Tierra del Fuego . On September 28, they arrived in Punta Arenas and found that the Dresden had already moved to the Pacific . Since there was further evidence that the German small cruiser Leipzig, which was on the Pacific coast of Mexico at the outbreak of war , was moving south, it became more likely that the cruisers wanted to merge with the German cruiser squadron . However, Cradock should strengthen his squadron with the older Canopus ship of the line . He therefore first ran back to the Falkland Islands to await its arrival.

On October 21, Cradock then moved to the Pacific with his cruisers Good Hope , Monmouth , Glasgow and the Otranto - possibly in the hope of still providing one of the cruisers alone. The ship of the line followed, but it was unable to join the cruiser formation. From October 26th he anchored in the bay of Vallenar in the Chonos archipelago . The Glasgow ahead caught the radio messages from Leipzig . Cradock's armored cruiser Good Hope and Monmouth then set out from Vallenar Bay on October 30th to confront the supposedly single Leipzig . In search of the Leipzig , the Glasgow Coronel called on October 31 . Shortly before, the suppliers of the East Asia Squadron Yorck and Göttingen had arrived there. Göttingen lifted anchor again and radioed outside the three-mile zone on November 1 at 02:50: "Cruiser Glasgow is anchored in Coronel Roads." Admiral Maximilian von Spee's squadron then marched south at 14 knots to intercept the Glasgow .

Skirmish at Coronel

So it came to the sea ​​battle at Coronel on November 1, 1914, in which both sides marched in the belief that they had a single cruiser of the enemy in front of them. When the Germans opened fire at 6:34 p.m. for 11 kilometers, SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau fired at the British armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth , both of which were eventually sunk, while Leipzig and Dresden took the Glasgow and the Otranto under fire.

In armament and armor, hopelessly inferior to the two German great cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , with their inexperienced crew and their casemate guns, which were unusable in high seas, the Monmouth from the Gneisenau was very quickly incapacitated and shortly afterwards, while burning, was driven out of the combat formation Small cruiser SMS Nürnberg arriving late on the battlefield sunk after massive fire from close range. There were no survivors.

Admiral Cradock's flagship, the Good Hope , was also sunk. Only the Glasgow and the Otranto managed to escape. In total, more than 1,400 British sailors lost their lives in the battle.

  • Rear Admiral Cradock

  • HMS Glasgow

  • HMS Otranto

  • SMS Scharnhorst

  • SMS Gneisenau

  • SMS Leipzig

  • SMS Dresden

literature

  • Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Ed.): Warships of the world 1860 to 1905. Volume 1: Great Britain and Germany. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5402-4 .
  • Geoffrey Bennet: Coronel and the Falklands. Birlinn Limited, Edinburgh 2000, ISBN 1-84158-045-7 .
  • John Moore: Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. Studio Editions, London 1990, ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .

Web links

Commons : HMS Monmouth (1901)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The only difference between Mk.VII and Mk.VIII was that with Mk.VIII the shutter opened to the left instead of to the right.
    The Mk.VIII were installed as a left tube in the twin towers, which made reloading easier,
    as the locks swiveled away from the tower walls.
  1. ^ Robert K. Massie : Castles of Steel. Balantine Books, 2004, ISBN 0-345-40878-0
  2. ↑ Report by the commander of the German cruiser Nuremberg on the sinking of the British armored cruiser Monmouth (November 1, 1914) in the Federal Archives, accessed on August 28, 2016. ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesarchiv.de

The Monmouth or County class ships

Monmouth class plan

Postcard of the HMS Monmouth The unfavorable casemate arrangement

Surname shipyard machine date
Keel laying Launch completion fate
Monmouth London & Glasgow Shipbuilding , Govan Shipyard 08/29/1899 11/13/1901 December 2, 1903 11/1/1914 sunk at Coronel
Kent Portsmouth Dockyard Hawthorn 02/12/1900 March 6, 1901 1.10.1903 6.20 sold for demolition
Essex Pembroke Dockyard J. Brown 01/01/1900 08/29/1901 03/22/1903 11/8/21 sold for demolition
Bedford Fairfield , Govan Shipyard 02/19/1900 08/31/1901 11/11/1903 August 21, 1910 accrued and sunk
Donegal Fairfield, Govan Shipyard 02/14/1901 4.09.1902 11/5/1903 1.07.20 sold for demolition
Berwick W. Beardmore , Govan Humphrys 04/19/1901 09/20/1902 12/9/1903 1.07.20 sold for demolition
Cornwall Pembroke Dockyard Hawthorn 03/11/1901 October 29, 1902 1.12.1904 6/7/20 sold for demolition
Cumberland London & Glasgow, Govan Shipyard 02/19/1901 December 16, 1902 December 1, 1904 5/9/21 sold for demolition
Suffolk Portsmouth Dockyard Humphrys 03/25/1901 1/15/1903 May 21, 1904 1.07.20 sold for demolition
Lancaster Armstrongs , Elswick Hawthorn 4.03.1901 03/22/1903 5.04.1904 3.03.20 sold for demolition