Name HMS M33

1.      What is the vessel’s ability to demonstrate history in her physical fabric?

Evidence for designs, functions, techniques, processes, styles, customs and habits or uses and associations in relation to events and people.  How early, intact or rare these features are may impact on significance.

M33 was one of nearly 40 Monitors built following the outbreak of the First World War. She was designed as a floating gun platform, and was fabricated in just seven weeks. She is flat-bottomed with a draught of less than 6 feet, and so could be risked close inshore. She was powered by a twin screw triple expansion 400hp engine, and had a top speed of less than 10 knots. She carried two 6 inch guns, situated forward and aft, a single 6 pounder Hotchkiss gun and two Maxim machine guns. 

After the end of the First World War M33 was used for a variety of purposes. In 1919 she became a tender, and in 1925 was converted into a minelaying training ship. She was later used as a fuelling hulk, and in 1943 her engines and boiler were removed when she was converted to a boom defence workshop. After the end of the Second World War she became a floating workshop and office for local Fleet Auxiliary craft.

Her funnel was restored in 1987, and in 1991 her forward gun was installed. In 2007 she was repainted in the black and white anti-submarine dazzle camouflage she wore in 1918. She underwent an extensive programme of conservation in 2014/15. The original steelwork was consolidated and conserved so as to expose original features. Later layers of paint were stripped back exposing the authentic and cracked paint surface below, which were then coated with protective wax. Fittings including the mast, boat, gun shields for the 6 inch and 6 pounder guns were restored and refitted.

2.      What are the vessel’s associational links for which there is no physical evidence?

Associations with people or places.  Off-ship research.

Evidence exists to suggest that the smaller 6-inch gun monitors began life as a rough sketch drawn by the then Director of Naval Construction, Sir Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt, during a meeting with Sir Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and Admiral Sir Jacky Fisher, First Sea Lord, in March 1915. The basic design for the larger monitors was largely carried out by Charles Lillicrap, who also seems to have taken over the design of the smaller vessels, and he too went on to become Director of Naval Construction (1944-1951). Monitors thus had a very distinguished lineage.

M33 is one of only three surviving warships of the First World War (the others are HMS Caroline and HMS President). She played an important role in the Gallipoli Campaign. She and some of her sister ships arrived in the Aegean Sea in time to help cover the landing of reinforcements along the southern coast of the Peninsula during August 1915. She was later involved in the evacuation of troop, assisting the army in establishing a base at Stavros in January 1916. She continued to serve in the region before her return to England in April 1919. She was recommissioned and sent to North Russia in May 1919 with the British Relief Force to cover the withdrawal of Allied and White Russian troops, as part of the Dvina River Campaign. M33 with other vessels bombarded Bolshevik positions along the river.

Her distinguished record of service at Gallipoli gives M33 great national and international significance. Her uniqueness and her career between 1915 and 1919, the significant period of her life and history, provide rich opportunities for both the interpretation of a distinctive aspect of the operational history of the Royal Navy in the First World War, and more widely for the education and greater public understanding of the economic, social and geo-political context within which the history and experience of citizens of the twentieth century were in large part shaped. 

In view of her record of survival virtually unscathed in circumstances where so many other ships were badly damaged or destroyed, M33 won the reputation of being a “lucky” ship which she retained throughout her active service life.

M33 relieved more versatile ships like destroyers for deployment in more active roles. Lessons learned from the experience of the monitors in all theatres of war drove many of the advances in long-range naval gunnery later applied to the battle fleet.

3.      How does the vessel’s shape or form combine and contribute to her function?

Overall aesthetic impact of the vessel, her lines, material she was built from and her setting.  Does she remain in her working environment?

Being a steel-built, steam-driven hull of simple form and construction M33 does not embody any important technological innovation or other distinctive nautical feature. She is not a particularly significant artefact in terms of naval architecture or ship construction, but in her relative ordinariness she is an important representative of the smaller type of naval vessel generally employed for workaday purposes in war-time.

M33 is positioned in the No.1 Dry Dock at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard built in 1801 alongside HMS Victory, where she serves as a static museum. Internal exhibits include an immersive battle experience and a digital projection of the Gallipoli Campaign. She is fully accessible to the public.  

Source: NHS-UK team, 11 August 2015. 

This statement was developed as part of the Heritage Lottery funded First World War project. http://www.ww1britainssurvivingvessels.org.uk/