HMS General Wolfe (1915)
General Wolfe in 1918 | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom | |
| Name | General Wolfe |
| Namesake | General James Wolfe |
| Ordered | 6 January 1915 |
| Builder | Palmers, Newcastle |
| Laid down | January 1915 |
| Launched | 9 September 1915 |
| Commissioned | 27 October 1915 |
| Out of service | 1919 |
| Nickname(s) | "Elephant and Castle" |
| Fate | Scrapped, 1923 |
| Notes | Made the longest-range shot in the history of the Royal Navy |
| General characteristics 9 November 1915 | |
| Class & type | Lord Clive-class monitor |
| Displacement | 5,900 long tons (5,995 t) legend |
| Length | 335 ft 6 in (102.3 m) |
| Beam | 87 ft 2 in (26.6 m) |
| Draught | 9 ft 7 in (2.9 m) |
| Propulsion | 2 × shafts; triple-expansion steam engines, 2 × boilers, 2,500 ihp |
| Speed | 8 knots (14.8 km/h; 9.2 mph) |
| Complement | 194 |
| Armament |
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| General characteristics 11 November 1918 | |
| Displacement | 6,850-long-ton (6,960 t) |
| Draught |
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| Armament |
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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.