HMS M33 is the smallest of the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN)’s museum ships and you’ll find her in her dry dock next to HMS Victory.

She is significant because she is the last remaining ship from the Gallipoli campaign in WW1.

History

HMS M33 is a 580-ton M29-class monitor designed and built for shore bombardment with her two 6-inch naval guns. Her shallow draught allowed her to get close to the coast (a “littoral” ship¹), but reportedly made her roll like a pig in big seas offshore!

She was one of five monitors ordered in March 1915, only a year into WW1. Her construction at Workman Clark² shipyard, Belfast, was fast-tracked so she was launched just two months later in May and went into service with her crew of 67 men and five officers, in June.

Given her poor sea-going attributes, she was towed to her first operational area – the Dardanelles. By early August she was shelling in support of the IX Corps landing of 20,000 troops at Suvla Bay – a tactical landing in support of the Anzac troops’ failed attempt to seize the Sari Bair heights.

When the campaign was over HMS M33 stayed in the Mediterranean becoming a guardship at Salonika and Stavros. She returned to the UK in April 1919 and was decommissioned… but hastily re-commissioned a month later and dispatched to Russia to fight the Bolsheviks on the River Dvina.

Back in the UK she was turned into a mine-laying training ship in 1925 and then ended up being used variously as an office, a workshop, and a refuelling barge.

In 1984 she was sold to the Hartlepool Ship Preservation Trust in Hartlepool (now part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. In 1990 she was returned to Portsmouth and prepared for display in her current dock.

HMS M33 the Museum Ship

NMRN has done a good job converting her for visitors. She has been restored to the way she would have been at Gallipoli, but in the dazzle camouflage paintwork of her Russian campaign.

Stairs or a lift (The access ramp and lift were installed to allow all visitors, including those using wheelchairs could access the ship.) take you to the bottom of the dock and you enter onto her lower decks through a door cut in her hull. She is pretty clear down below, with some displays recreating her stores and munitions magazine.

In WW2 (1943) her engine room and boilers were removed and she was towed to the Clyde to act as a boom defence floating workshop, so there’s plenty of space in the mid section of hull for interactive audio visual experiences to explain how the ship was operated and her role in the Gallipoli Campaign and the Russian Revolution.

There’s also a viewing platform so that visitors can see into the mess, which has been recreated as it was in 1915.

From here you can get topsides to the main, the foredeck and bridge – all much more interesting than below decks.

The aft gun is on the main deck, though I couldn’t get to it on my visit. Some of the officer cabins and galley, ward room, and heads (toilets) are on this level. They’ve been reconstructed as they would have been in 1915. The prop food in the galley looks almost edible and they use audio soundscapes to bring these parts of the ship to life.

The forward gun is on the focsle. The ship is designed around these guns and they are impressive. One of the reasons they were able to built her and her sister monitors so quickly was because they already had the guns and their mounts going spare. They had been originally intended for the five new Queen Elizabeth-class battleships but had become surplus to requirements.

From the foredeck you can climb up to the navigation deck with the wheelhouse and behind it, the wireless room.

The odd thing about the wheelhouse is that wheel itself and engine room telegraph are mounted on a high plinth, whereas the chart table is at deck level. I’m guessing this was to improve the view from the steering position, so the helmsman could see better over the forward gun (unusually at that moment there was nobody around to ask).

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¹ “Littoral” is once again a buzzword in NATO Navy circles, particularly the US & UK navies.
² The M29 class was hurriedly designed by young Admiralty constructor Charles Lillicrap. M33 was to be built at Harland and Wolff, but the work was passed to the nearby Workman Clark shipyard Global Maritime History

Declaration: No need. I was visiting Portsmouth on my own. All entrance fees, accommodation, petrol, etc paid by me.