Monitor (warship) Informations

A monitor was a relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured 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 Navys 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 (albeit briefly) against German targets during World War I. The Lord Clive vessels were scrapped in the 1920s.

In Latin, a monitor is someone who admonishes: that is, reminds others of their duties—which is how USS Monitor was given its name. She was designed by John Ericsson for emergency service in the Federal navy during the American Civil War (1861–65) to blockade the Confederate States from supply at sea. Ericsson designed her to operate in shallow water and to present as small a target as possible, the water around her acting as protection.

Nathaniel Hawthorne described Monitor thus:

The Battle of Hampton Roads (March 1862), between Monitor and CSS Virginia, was the first engagement between ironclad vessels. Several such battles took place during the course of the American Civil War, and the dozens of monitors built for the United States Navy reflected a ship-to-ship combat role in their designs. However, fortification bombardment was another critical role that the early monitors played, though one that these early designs were much less capable in performing.

Three months after the Battle of Hampton Roads, John Ericsson took his design to his native Sweden, and in 1865 the first Swedish monitor was built at Motala Warf in Norrköping, taking the engineers name. She was followed by 14 more monitors. One of them, Kanonbåten Sölve, served until 1922 and is today preserved at the Maritiman marine museum in Gothenburg.

Ericsson and others experimented greatly during the years of the American Civil War. Vessels constructed included a triple-turreted monitor, a class of paddlewheel-propelled monitors, a class of semi-submersible monitors, and a class of monitors armed with spar torpedoes.

In the 1860s and 1870s several nations built monitors that were used for coastal defense and took the name monitor as a type of ship. Those that were directly modelled on Monitor were low-freeboard, mastless, steam-powered vessels with one or two rotating, armoured turrets. The low freeboard meant that these ships were unsuitable for ocean-going duties and were always at risk of swamping, flooding and possible loss. However, it greatly reduced the cost and weight of the armour required for protection, and in heavy weather the sea could wash over the deck rather than heeling the ship over.

Attempts were made to fit monitors with sails, but the provision of masts interfered with the turrets ability to operate in a 360-degree arc of fire and the weight of masts and sails aloft made the ships less stable. One ship, HMS Captain, which combined turret and sails with a low freeboard, was lost in heavy weather.

A late example of a vessel modeled on Monitor was BAP Huáscar, designed by Captain Cowper P. Coles, the advocate and developer of turret ships for the Royal Navy. Huáscar was one of many monitor designs to be equipped with a ram. She was built and launched in 1865 for the Peruvian Navy at Birkenhead, England, and attained fame in the Battle of Pacocha during the Peruvian Civil War of 1877.

BAP Huáscar, under the command of Rear Admiral Miguel Grau, fought with distinction during the War of the Pacific. Huáscar successfully raided enemy sea lanes for several months and delayed an invasion of the Chilean Army into Peruvian territory until she was captured by the Chilean Navy at the Battle of Angamos in 1879. Once in Chilean hands, Huáscar fought a small battle with the Peruvian monitor Manco Capac, during the bombardment of Arica, where she was damaged; after the land battle was lost, the crew scuttled BAP Manco Capac to prevent capture.

Over the years, both Chile and Peru came to venerate the ship and the officers from both sides that died on her deck, either commanding her or boarding her, as national heroes. Huáscar is currently commissioned in the Chilean Navy, has been restored to a near-original condition and, as a museum ship, is open to visitors at its berth in Talcahuano.

In an effort to produce a more seaworthy vessel that was more capable in ship-to-shore combat, a type called the breastwork monitor became more common in the later nineteenth century. These ships had raised turrets and a heavier superstructure on a platform above the hull. They were still not particularly successful as seagoing ships, because of their short sailing range and the poor reliability of their steam engines. The first of these ships was HMVS Cerberus, built between 1868 and 1870. She was later sunk and used as a breakwater near Melbourne, Australia and is still visible there, as her upper works project from the water.

Monitors were used frequently during the Spanish–American War in 1898. Notable United States Navy monitors which fought in the war were USS Amphitrite, USS Puritan, USS Monterey, and USS Terror. These four monitors fought at battles or campaigns such as the Bombardment of San Juan, the Battle of Fajardo, and the Philippines Campaign. Other monitors also participated in the conflict.

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.

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