HMS Prince Rupert (original) (raw)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Royal Navy warship

A painting of Prince Rupert
History
United Kingdom
Name Prince Rupert
Builder William Hamilton & Co, Port Glasgow
Laid down 12 January 1915
Launched 20 May 1915
Decommissioned 1923
Fate Scrapped, 1923
General characteristics
Class and type _Lord Clive_-class monitor
Displacement 6,150 tons
Length 335 ft (102.1 m)
Beam 87 ft (26.5 m)
Draught 9.7 ft (3.0 m)
Propulsion 2 shafts, reciprocating steam engines, 2 boilers, 2,310 hp
Speed 6.5 knots (12.0 km/h; 7.5 mph)
Complement 187
Armament 2 × 12 in (305 mm) guns 2 × 3 in (76 mm) guns

HMS Prince Rupert was a First World War Royal Navy _Lord Clive_-class monitor named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, an important Royalist commander of the English Civil War and key figure in the Restoration navy. Although she is the only ship of the Royal Navy to have ever had this precise name, other ships have been named after Prince Rupert as HMS Rupert. Her 12" main battery was stripped from the obsolete _Majestic_-class battleships.

The _Lord Clive_-class monitors were built in 1915 to engage German shore artillery in occupied Belgium during the First World War. Prince Rupert, with her sisters was regularly engaged in this service in the Dover Monitor Squadron, bombarding German positions along the coast and someway inland with their heavy guns.

Following the armistice in November 1918, Prince Rupert and all her sisters were put into reserve pending scrapping, as the reason for their existence had ended with the liberation of Belgium. In 1923 Prince Rupert was scrapped, outliving all her sister ships by two years as she had been briefly attached to the stone frigate HMS Pembroke at Chatham Dockyard.