HMS ''Marshal Soult'' was a Royal Navy monitor constructed in the opening years of the First World War. Laid down as ''M14'', she was named after the French general of the Napoleonic Wars

Marshal Marshal is a term used in several official titles in various branches of society. As marshals became trusted members of the courts of Medieval Europe, the title grew in reputation. During the last few centuries, it has been used for elevated o ...

Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult. She served in both World Wars and was decommissioned in 1946.

Design

Designed for inshore operations along the sandbank strewn Belgian coastline, ''Marshal Soult'' was equipped with two battleship guns. Originally, these guns were to have been stripped from one of the

battlecruisers The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attr ...

and after they were redesigned. However the guns were not ready, and guns intended for the

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

were used instead. The diesel engines used by the ships were a constant source of technical difficulty, restricting their use.

Service

''Marshal Soult'' performed numerous bombardment operations against German positions in Flanders, including during the

First Ostend Raid The First Ostend Raid (part of Operation ZO) was the first of two attacks by the Royal Navy on the German-held port of Ostend during the late spring of 1918 during the First World War. Ostend was attacked in conjunction with the neighbouring h ...

in April 1918. In October 1918, she became a tender to the gunnery school HMS ''Excellent'' at Portsmouth and in March 1919 undertook a similar role at Devonport before paying off in March 1921. Recommissioned in 1924, she moved to

Chatham Chatham may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Canada * Chatham Islands (British Columbia) * Chatham Sound, British Columbia * Chatham, New Brunswick, a former town, now a neighbourhood of Miramichi * Chatham (electoral district), New Brunswic ...

in April 1926 as a training ship. Her armament was removed in March 1940 and was later fitted to the new monitor , which was completed in 1941. In the year of her launch 1915, Caretta, an Admiralty Pinnace was assigned to her. She served throughout the Second World War as a depot ship for trawlers at Portsmouth until being sold on 10 July 1946 and scrapped at Troon.

Design

Service

See also

References