User:White Shadows/SMS Monarch

SMS Monarch ("His Majesty's ship Monarch") was a pre-dreadnought battleship and coastal defense ship of the Monarch class that was constructed by the Austro-Hungarian Navy at the end of the 19th century. The Monarch was laid down in the Naval Arsenal in Pola as the last ship of the class that shared her name on 31 July 1893. She was the first ship of the class to be launched on 9 May 1895. Despite being launched about two months before her sister ship the Wien, the Monarch was the second ship of the Monarch class to be commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy, on 11 May 1898.

After her commissioning, the Monarch, along with her sister ships the Wien and the Budapest, cruised around the Adriatic and Aegean seas in a display of the Austro-Hungarian flag around the Mediterranean Sea in 1899. The Monarch, along with her sister ships, formed the I Battleship Division of the Austro-Hungarian Navy until they were replaced by the newly commissioned Habsburg class at the turn of the century. Thereafter, the Monarch and her sister ships were given increasingly diminished roles in the Austro-Hungarian Navy with the successive commissioning of the Erzherzog Karl class and later the Radetzky class. By the beginning of World War I the Monarch was in the V Battleship Division, serving as a coastal defense ship.

During the war, the Monarch initially served as a training ship and a floating battery. In early August 1914, the Monarch participated in Shelling French and Montenegrin radio stations in Montenegro along the Adriatic coast. However, these early operations were to be the only action that the Monarch was to see in World War I and she soon served as a harbor defense ship there-after for the remainder of the War.

Construction
The Monarch was the last ship of the class that shared her name to be laid down in the Naval Arsenal at Pola, on 31 July 1893. After just under two years of construction, the Monarch was launched from her slipway at Pola on 9 May 1895, as the first ship of the class to be launched. Despite being launched before her sisters, Monarch was the second ship to be commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy on 11 May 1898, after here sister ship Wien.

Design
At only 5878 t total displacement, the Monarch was half the size of the battleships of other major navies at the time. The Monarch and her sisters were initially to be much larger, but the Hungarian and Austrian parliaments only approved the construction of a smaller class of coastal defense vessels, because Austria-Hungary believed that the role of her navy was solely to defend her coast. The armament of the Monarch consisted of four 240 mm L/40 guns with two guns in each of the two turrets, six 150 mm L/40 guns, ten 47 mm L/44 guns, four 47 mm L/33 guns, one 8 mm MG gun, and four torpedo tubes. The Monarch normally carried 300 tons of coal, but her hull could hold up to 500 tons. Her propulsion system consisted of coal-fired cylindrical boilers and vertical triple expansion engines with an output of 8500 hp. The Monarch's maximum speed was 15.5 kn. She was manned by 26 officers and 397 crewmen, a total of 423 personnel.

Peace time
Once she was put into service, the Wien, along with her sister ships, formed the I Battleship Division of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. As the first ship of the Monarch class to be commissioned into the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the Wien participated in the Diamond Jubilee of the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1897. Later that year, the Wien formed part of an international blockade off Crete during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. Following the commissioning of her sisters the Monarch and the Budapest in 1898, the three ships cruised around the Adriatic and Aegean seas in a display of the Austro-Hungarian flag in 1899. The Wien and her sister ships were replaced as the I Battleship Division by the newly commissioned Habsburg class in 1900. With the building of the Erzherzog Karl class and later the Radetzky class battleships, the Wien was given increasingly diminished roles in the Austro-Hungarian Navy.

Despite the Wien's increasing obsolescence, she and her sister ships continued to conduct training exercises with the other more modern battleships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. In January 1903, the Wien, accompanied by the newly completed Habsburg and the other ships of the Monarch class, conducted a training cruise in the Mediterranean. The Wien also took part in the 1904 cruise of the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas as well as training exercises in which the three Habsburg class battleships engaged the Wien and her sisters in simulated combat. Those maneuvers marked the first time two homogeneous squadrons consisting of modern battleships operated in the Austro-Hungarian navy.

World War I
By the beginning of World War I the Wien was located in the V Battleship Division, serving as a coastal defense ship. The Wien served as a training ship and a floating battery for most of the war. In late 1917, the Wien saw her first taste of real action when she and her sister ship the Budapest shelled Italian positions in the Gulf of Trieste and bombarded other enemy positions in the northern Adriatic Sea. On 16 November 1917, the Wien was hit seven times by shells from Italian positions while engaging the enemy in the upper Adriatic, but suffered only minor damage. On 9 December 1917, the Wien docked at Muggia in Trieste and prepared for a shore bombardment. On the night of 9–10 December 1917, two Italian torpedo boats managed to penetrate the port of Trieste undetected, and fired torpedoes at the Wien and the Budapest. The torpedo fired at the Budapest missed, but the Wien was hit twice and sank in less than five minutes in the shallow water of the Trieste harbor. Forty-six men on board were killed in the attack. The Wien was the only ship of the Monarch class to be sunk during the war, the Austro-Hungarian Navy's biggest loss in the Adriatic campaign since the sinking of the 2300 t SMS Zenta by the French fleet in 1914.