Orion class battleship - HMS Monarch

From SN Guides

The name Monarch

an undated shot of Monarch

There have been five ships bearing the name Monarch in the Royal navy, the name dating back to 1747

1. Was a ship originally named Monarque, and captured from the French at the second battle of Cape Finisterre in 1747, a thirs ship of the line with 74 guns she was sold in 1760.
2. Was another 74 gun third rate ship of the line launched in 1765 She served as Vice Admiral Onslow's flagship at the Battle of Camperdown in 1797. She was scrapped in 1813.
3. was a second rate ship of the line of 84 guns launched in 1832, and scrapped up in 1866.
4. was the first ship of the Royal navy to carry 12” guns and the first to carry those guns in turrets, an iron clad masted turret battleship of 8,300 tons driven by a single steam driven propellor she was also a fully rigged ship, she was launched 1868, and scrapped in 1905.
5. is the Orion class battleship of this article

Class information

'another scan from my fathers collection this shows purports to show the four Orion class ships as the second division of the 2nd BS - L to R, Orion (leading) Monarch, Conqueror and Thunderer. undated but pre WW1 say circa 1913', I think the lead ship of the four belongs to another class and this shows three of the Orions : Orion, Monarch and Conqueror with the two bands on the funnel) Thunderer had three bands on the aft funnel

Following the Colossus class Britain’s next class of Battleship the Orion’s were the first ships to dispense with the unsatisfactory wing turret arrangement, beaten to a world’s first by the American South Carolina class commissioned in 1910, these were the first battleships in the Royal Navy to feature an all big gun armament on the centre line and where a major step forwards and were called Super-Dreadnought’s, in reality these ships and others of their ilk far outclassed the Dreadnought and did to her what she had done to the pre-Dreadnought’s, made her obsolescent. As stated although the South Carolina’s pre-dated the British ships the Orion’s were far bigger ( 581’ and 22,000 tons against 453’ and 16,000 tons) and although their machinery was still essentially that of the Dreadnought the Carolina’s were still driven by Steam reciprocating engines, the turbines were faster, needed less maintenance, more economical, compact and lighter leaving more space and more importantly weight for additional armour. With the possibility of war looming the cost saving used of the Dreadnought types were dispensed with resulting in a far better and larger ship, the Orion’s also saw the introduction of the new 13.5” gun, to achieve greater hitting power on the later variants of the Dreadnought the barrels of the 12” guns had been lengthened to increase the muzzle velocity and hence the range and hitting power, this was an unsatisfactory gun with poor accuracy and wear levels. With the 13.5” gun a return to lower muzzle velocities was made, instead the hitting power was raised by the heavier shell fired by the bigger gun, an altogether better weapon.

On examining the Orion class the design comes across as sleeker and more refined than earlier ships, outwardly similar to the following King George the 5th class the two could be told apart by the Orion's fore mast being placed behind the forward funnel, this reulted in the fire control top at the mast head being heavily affected by smoke, heat and gasses from the funnel, not a good design feature at all.

One other feature of the ships was dictated by the size of the dry-docks available at the time, the size of the ships was the maximum that could fit into these drydocks and something had to give, the bilge keels were omitted, initially the ships rolled heavily and if reports in the tabloids of the times had to be believed the class would capsize in any sea. In truth the rolling whilst undesirable was not this severe and the class were fitted with bilge keels but the size and design was a compromise between effect and dock size.

Another problem facing the designers was were to place the mast, place it in front of the funnel and the spotting top would be clear of smoke and heat with a head wind but another problem then appeared, where to put the derrick needed to hoist the boats. The Orion class would seem to have bowed to the seamanship problem and placed the mast aft of the fore funnel to allow the fitting of a large derrick for hoisting the ships boats, this did cause problems with smoke and heat in the spotting top. To partially alleviate this the fore funnel was smaller in diameter than the aft funnel and only vented six boilers and the remaining twelve vented via the aft funnel.

Building data

Ordered under the 1909 naval estimates Monarch was built at a cost of £ 1,888,736 by W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd, at their Walker Shipyard, Newcastle on the Tyne. being laid down on the 01st. April 1910, launched on the 30th. March 1911 and commissioned in February 1912,

Basic Details

L 581' B 88'06" draft 27'06" Displacement 22,200t standard and 25,870t full load.

Machinery

The machinery arrangement for the Orion class was very similar to that of the earlier Colossus class with quadruple propellers being driven by Parsons direct drive steam turbines. The machinery spaces were split into three with the inboard shafts leading to the centre engine room and the outer shafts the port and starboard wing engine rooms. The two inboard shafts were driven by the high pressure ahead and astern turbines with the ahead turbines having an extra stage for cruising, this was separated from the main turbine by a bypass valve. The outer shafts were driven by the ahead and astern low pressure turbines, for cruising the out board turbines would be shut down , the ship relying on the inboard shafts alone. The boilers of greater power remained in three groups of six, and although coal fired oil spraying equipment was fitted for quickly raising steam. The normal power for the Monarch was 27,000 SHP giving 21 knots but on trials she developed Trials 32,277 SHP giving 21.88 knots.

Finding details of the machinery layout of these old ships is quite daunting, I obtained details of the layout from studying a minute plan with a magnifying glass, the deatails are as accurates as I can get them for the moment SW 21 oct 2007

Armament

Main battery

The main battery consisted of ten 13.5” guns arranged in five twin turrets all mounted on the centre-line and enabled this class to fire a ten gun broadside without any risk of structural damage to the ship, problems still existed with the open sighting hoods of the lower turrets ( A & Y) in that to prevent muzzle blast of the two upper turrets ( B & X) entering the lower turrets via the sighting hoods, firing of the upper turrets was prevented from right ahead to 30 degrees on either bow for A turret and 30 degrees either side of right astern for X turret. The mid-ships turret was designated ‘Q’. The Orion class were the first British ships to carry the new gun, designed in 1909 by Vickers and built at their Barrow in Furness workshops the 13.5” gun and was designated the Mark V L, the L indicating it fired the lighter of the 13.5” shells, later classes had the Mk VH guns which fired the heavier shells, the guns were just over 52 feet long and the barrel alone weighed more than 70 tons each with a working pressure of 18 tons per square inch, construction was of wire winding, so good were these weapons that they were still in use during WW2 as shore guns at Dover.

A superb weapon, although just 1.5” larger than the earlier 12” gun it fired a shell weighing 1,266.5 lbs against the 859 lbs of the earlier gun, although of lower velocity than the 12 C50 gun the 13.5 C45 weapon’s heavier shell maintained it’s in-flight velocity and so had greater hitting and penetrative power, the new gun was also very accurate and possessed very good wear rates – up to 450 rounds per gun, tests also showed that the gun had a very good safety margin so that the following King George 5th class ships could fire an even heavier I,410lb shell, although this lowered the wear rate to 220 rounds per gun.

Using a charge of 293 lbs of cordite ( MD45) ranges of just short of 24,000 yards were achieved at 20 degrees elevation, although this was of little real use, the gun range finders had been designed with closer ranges in mind and so could only work up to 16 degrees elevation. Used as a railway gun and using an elevation of 40 degrees the range was then 49,000 yards using 400 lbs of propellant what this did to the wear rate is unknown. Projectile details : the ships carried three types and weights of shell. CPC – common Percussion Capped or semi Armour Piercing , APC – Armour Piercing Capped and HE – High explosive, Both the HE & CPC weighed 1,250 lbs and the APC 1,266.5 lbs with the length being circa 50” the explosive or bursting charge in the shells was 30 to 40lbs for the APC, 117 lbs for the CPC rising to 176.5 lbs for the HE at 10,000 yards the APC shell could penetrate just over 12” of Krupps cemented armour plate.

Five Mk2 turrets, or gun houses, were fitted to the Orion’s, these were very similar to those fitted on the earler 12” Dreadnought designs and each weighed about 600 tons, they were a cramped compromise and not very satisfactory, in case of failure of the magazine hoists 8 ready use shells were stowed within the gun houses and could be loaded using manually powered davits, a further six rounds were stowed in the handling room under the gun with the cordite charges stowed in the turret trunk – the rotating section of the turret reaching down from the handling room down to the magazines and holding the hoists.

Fire control was effected by a nine foot six inch Co-incidence type rangefinder in the fire control tower high in the ship, this data was fed into a Dreyer table ( invented and developed by Frederic Charles Dreyer) this was an early mechanical computer into which was fed range and bearing of the target, wind own course and speed targets course and speed, temperature and wind direction and adjustments for corriolis effect, this produced a firing solution which was fed electrically to the guns were the gun layers would follow the pointers, when the guns were load the interceptor switches would be closed and gun ready lamps would light in the fire control tower, when all guns were ready they would be fired electrically by the gunnery officer

Monarch firing a salvo of five guns, assuming she is firing with full charges the smoke is being produced by five 293lb MD45 cordite charges

Secondary battery

As with the Dreadnoughts the secondary batteries of the Orion class were rather weak comprising sixteen 4" C50 Mk7 installed in 14 casemate mounts and two open mounts, I can find no data on the two open mounts but the may well have been HA weapons for use against aircraft, the case mate mounts would be useless for this kind of assailant. Approximately 700 of these guns were produced in the early 1900's and nearly 500 of them were still in use in the second world war but in civilian DEMS ( Defensively Armed Merchant Ships). They fired a 31lb shell to 11,500 yards and a good crew could achieve a rate of fire of 8 RPM but normally this would be 6 RPM ( rounds per minute). This weapon lacked the stopping power to prevent a determined attacking torpedo boat.

four 3 pounder signalling guns were also fitted

Torpedo armament

This remained the same as the earlier Colossus class with three submerged 21" torpedo tubes , one firing on each beam and one astern. The torpedoes used by the Orion class battleships were the Whitehead 21" Mk2 these had a range of 4,000 yards at 35 knots or 5,500 yards at 30 knots and had a TNT warhead of about 400 lbs. Although Robert Whitehead had been born in Bolton, England he was running another buisness in Milan when he started out in the torpedo manufacturing buisness, however although the British Admiralty wanted to order his torpedoes ( and they did in vast numbers) they were not prepared to buy them from Italy so a factory was set up in England near Portland - this was were they tested the torpedoes so it was logical to set the factory up there, in 1914 at the outbreak of war the Admiralty seized control of the factory.

Armour Protection

The earlier Dreadnoughts had one major failing, the side armour belt was quite shallow in depth and at full load was often submerged making it useless as a shell could pass over the top of and cause flooding- quite apart from the internal damage it would cause. The Orion class cured this defect by being the first British battleships to carry the side armour belt up to the upper deck, the belt was also increased in thickness to 12” tapering down to 8” below the waterline, all vertical armour being Krupp Cemented Armour Plate ( KC). The armoured bulkheads which closed off the citadel were 10" thick both forward and aft, in previous designs the aft bulkhead was of lighter construction, presumably assuming attack would come from ahead not astern. The main turret barbettes were 10” thick tapering to 3” were they were inside other armour. Turret faces were of 11” plate other thicknesses on the turrets are not known at the time of writing. Decks the armour deck was of 4” Non Cemented NC armour , the maximum thickness was maintained over the machinery and magazine spaces and tapered down to 1” in non vulnerable areas, for details of the cementing process see :- HMS Warspite armour.

Service History

On her commissioning in Feb 1912 Monarch was the second of the four ship class to be complete, she was followed by the Thunderer in June and Conqueror in November of the same year, together they formed the second division of the second Battle Squadron (BS). Pre war their lives were typical of any other major warship in the British fleet with fleet manoeuvres and battle practice. Early in WW1 Monarch was un-successfully attacked by the submarine U15 , on the 08th of August 1914 and still off the fair isle channel, U15, an early gasoline engined boat, was sighted on the surface by the cruiser HMS Birmingham, after Birmingham opened fire the submarine commenced diving, the cruiser then rammed the submarine which was lost with all 25 of her men, it was her first and last patrol. On the 27th December 1914 Monarch rammed Conqueror suffering moderate damage to her bow, she received temporary repairs at Scapa Flow before proceeding to Devonport for full repairs, she rejoined her sister-ships on the 20th January 1915 , conqueror was aslo seriously damaged in this collision. At Jutland on the 31st May 1916 all four of the Orions were present under the leadership of Rear Admiral Arthur Leveson flying his flag in Orion, her CO was Captain O. Backhouse, followed by : Conqueror - Captain H.H.D. Tothill, Monarch – Captain G.H. Borret, and Thunderer- Captain J.A. Fergusson. Monarch’s first action at Jutland came at 1833 when she sighted five German battleships, Three Koenig and two Kaiser class ships, she opened with Armour Piercing Capped (APC) shell at the leading Koenig class, she could only fire two salvoes before the Koenig ships disappeared, she then fired a further salvo at the leading Kaiser class ship, although claiming a ‘straddle’ on the leading Koenig, she actually scored one hit on the Koenig herself, this 13.5” shell hit the 6.75” casemate side armour in way of No1 port 5.9” gun, the shell burst on the armour blowing a hole some three by two feet in size, most of the blast went downwards blowing a ten foot square hole in the 1.5” thick armoured upper-deck, the deck was also driven down over a large area. Several charges for the 5.9” gun were ignited and burnt including ones in the hoists to No14 magazine, thankfully the fires did not penetrate the magazine, the crew of the gun had a lucky escape as an earlier nearby hit had forced them to evacuate the gun due to gas from the explosion and so no injuries were incurred, the gun however whilst largely undamaged had had it’s sights and control cables destroyed. At 1914 Monarch sighted the German battle-cruiser Lutzow and opened on her with five salvoes of APC at a range of 17,300 yards increasing to 18,500 yards straddles were claimed but no hits before the target was lost in smoke and spray. There were five hits on the Lutzow at this time and they could only have been fired by either the Orion or the monarch , Lutzow was in serious trouble and was only saved from further serious damage by the actions of her escorting destroyers making smoke and shielding her from view. This was effectively the end of the battle for the Orion class as the German high seas fleet was in retreat to the south under cover of smoke and a torpedo attack by their destroyers which for a while had the British fleet turned away to the North to avoid the torpedoes. In total monarch fire 53 rounds of 13.5” shell all of which were APC, like the rest of her sisterships she did not use her 4” secondary batteries, and also like the rest of her sister-ships she received no damage or injuries. Post Jutland the German High Seas put in very few appearances on the North sea so life for the British fleet became on mainly sweeps and patrols of the North Sea. The post war life of the Orion class was very short owing to the Arms limitation Washington treaty of the 06th February 1922, Two class, Orion and Conqueror were scrapped , Thunderer became a training ship and lived on until scrapped in 1926, the monarch was assigned as a target ship, on the 14th June 1924 she was assigned her final role, she was decommissioned and then stripped of anything valuable including scrap metals at Portsmouth dockyard, she was then towed out by dockyard tugs into the Hurd deep and on the 21st January 1925 she was attacked by a wave of bombers scoring several hits, this was followed by the light C class cruisers Carysfort, Calledon, Caracoa and Calliope and the V&W class destroyer Vectis pounded her with 6” and 4” guns, when they were finished , the battle-cruisers Hood, and Repulse, and the five revenge class battleships, Revenge, Royal oak, Royal Sovereign, Ramilies and Resolution commenced firing with their 15” guns at her, the number of hits on Monarch are unknown but after 9 hours of shelling at 2200 she finally sank after a final hit from the Revenge approximately 50 miles south of the Scilly Isles.

Article completed by Steve Woodward 05th November 2007

Bibliography

1. IWM
2. Jutland – John Campbell
3. Jutland - Geoffrey Bennett
4. Wikipedia list of ships bearing name Monarch