HMS General Wolfe (1915)

General Wolfe in 1918
History
United Kingdom
NameGeneral Wolfe
NamesakeGeneral James Wolfe
Ordered6 January 1915
BuilderPalmers, Newcastle
Laid downJanuary 1915
Launched9 September 1915
Commissioned27 October 1915
Out of service1919
Nickname(s)"Elephant and Castle"
FateScrapped, 1923
NotesMade the longest-range shot in the history of the Royal Navy
General characteristics 9 November 1915
Class and typeLord Clive-class monitor
Displacement5,900 long tons (5,995 t) legend
Length335 ft 6 in (102.3 m)
Beam87 ft 2 in (26.6 m)
Draught9 ft 7 in (2.9 m)
Propulsion2 × shafts; triple-expansion steam engines, 2 × boilers, 2,500 ihp
Speed8 knots (14.8 km/h; 9.2 mph)
Complement194
Armament
General characteristics 11 November 1918
Displacement6,850-long-ton (6,960 t)
Draught
  • 8 ft 9 in (2.7 m) forward
  • 13 ft 2 in (4.0 m) aft
Armament

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.[1] After the war, she was laid up before being stripped and put up for sale in 1920. She was finally scrapped in 1923.

  1. ^ Buxton. Big Gun Monitors. p. 58.