HMS ''Sir Thomas Picton'' was a

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

. ''Sir Thomas Picton'' was the only Royal Navy ship ever named for

Sir Thomas Picton Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton (24 August 175818 June 1815) was a British Army officer who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. According to the historian Alessandro Barbero, Picton was "respected for his courage and feared for his irascible ...

, a British general of the

Peninsular War The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain ...

who was killed at the

Battle of Waterloo The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, Belgium, Waterloo (at that time in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium). A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armie ...

. The ship's original 12" main battery was stripped from the obsolete . The ''Lord Clive''-class monitors were originally built in 1915 to engage German shore artillery in occupied Belgium during the

. ''Sir Thomas Picton'', however was differently employed, being dispatched to the Eastern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

upon completion for service with the fleet there alongside her sister ''Earl of Peterborough''. Early in 1916 she shelled Turkish positions at the

Dardanelles The Dardanelles (; tr, Çanakkale Boğazı, lit=Strait of Çanakkale, el, Δαρδανέλλια, translit=Dardanéllia), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli from the Gallipoli peninsula or from Classical Antiquity as the Hellespont (; ...

and during the remainder of the war was active against Turkish units in Egypt, Palestine and Turkey itself. Following the armistice in November 1918, ''Sir Thomas Picton'' and her sisters were put into reserve pending scrapping, as the reason for their existence ended with the liberation of Central Power-held coastlines. In 1921 ''Sir Thomas Picton'' was scrapped along with all her sisters.

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sir Thomas Picton Lord Clive-class monitors Ships built in Belfast 1915 ships World War I monitors of the United Kingdom Royal Navy ship names Ships built by Harland and Wolff