Monitor

This is a nifty digital recreation of a particularly odd-looking naval vessel -- the pioneer Monitor-type (called, unsurprisingly, the USS Monitor), which launched in 1862.


It was effectively a floating gun turret, iron-clad and with very little draught to enable it to steam far up-river. The gun was intended for shore bombardment, or for destroying other iron-clads (the iron-clad war-ship was the brand-new super-weapon of its day).


It famously participated in the first-ever battle between two iron-clads, its opponent being the CSS Virginia (actually a captured conventional ship called the Merrimack, that was rebuilt as an iron-clad). The battle was a draw.


But the USS Monitor launched a whole new class of ship -- sitting incredibly low in the water (to minimise the target for the enemy), even though it had a shallow draught (to enable estuarine or even riverine operations), and usually punching massively disproportionately guns designed for bombardment (which benefited from the more stable platform provided by the low centre of gravity).


These were the classic imperial gun-boats.


It's therefore unsurprising that the Royal Navy got in on the act, and that was a 1918 photo of the prosaically-named "HMS Monitor M33", sometimes known as HMS Minerva.


Prosaic name or not, M33 was a lucky ship: it's one of only two First World War Royal Navy vessels to survive, and it's currently being restored by Hampshire County Council.


Here it is, sitting in a dry dock in Portsmouth, wearing its dazzle camouflage.


It has the shallow draught, the low superstructure, a pair of massive guns (plus a few others for defensive purposes), and giant search-lights. And not much else: Monitors are very sharply-focused ships.


They fell out of favour after the Second World War -- the end of the old-style imperial adventures, as well as changes in technology, meant they were too specialist to justify their existence. Although they enjoyed a brief revival during America's imperialist adventure in Vietnam:


That's a far cry from one the US's most feted Monitor design -- USS Puritan:


But these things go in circles, and the latest US Navy proposals are for a new type of ship that specialises in littoral work, and for destroyers with a major focus on shore bombardment:


That looks like a 21st-century (imperial) Monitor to me.