The sixth HMS Monmouth of the British Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 was the lead ship

Lead ship

The lead ship or class leader is the first of a series or class of ships all constructed according to the same general design. The term is applicable military ships and larger civilian craft.-Overview:...

 of a class

Monmouth class cruiser

The Monmouth-class was a ten-ship class of 10,000 ton armoured cruisers built around 1901 to 1903 for the Royal Navy and designed specifically for commerce protection...

 of armoured cruisers of 9,800 tons displacement. She was sunk at the Battle of Coronel

Battle of Coronel

The First World War naval Battle of Coronel took place on 1 November 1914 off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel. German Kaiserliche Marine forces led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee met and defeated a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher...

 in 1914.

Built in 1901, with her heaviest guns being fourteen 6 inch quick-firers, she had a weak armament for an armoured cruiser. In addition, most of the casemate

Casemate

A casemate, sometimes rendered casement, is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which guns are fired. originally a vaulted chamber in a fortress.-Origin of the term:...

 6 inch guns were situated so close to the waterline that they were unusable in all but the calmest weather. Her armour was also much too thin for an armoured cruiser and could be easily penetrated by artillery shells. These problems would prove disastrous for her thirteen years later at Coronel. She served on the China Station

China Station

The China Station was a historical formation of the British Royal Navy. It was formally the units and establishments responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, China....

 between 1906 and 1913, before being put in the Reserve Fleet in January 1914.

On the outbreak of the First World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 she was reactivated and sent to the 4th Cruiser Squadron (the West Indies Squadron) of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock

Christopher Cradock

Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher "Kit" George Francis Maurice Cradock KCVO CB was a British officer of the Royal Navy. He was born at Hartforth, Richmond, North Yorkshire...

. She participated in the Battle of Coronel

Battle of Coronel

The First World War naval Battle of Coronel took place on 1 November 1914 off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel. German Kaiserliche Marine forces led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee met and defeated a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher...

 off the coast of Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 on 1 November 1914. Outmatched and with an inexperienced crew, she was quickly overwhelmed, being unable to use many of her guns due to the stormy weather. Early in the battle, a 21 cm (8.2 inch) shell from SMS Gneisenau

SMS Gneisenau

SMS Gneisenau was an armored cruiser of the German navy, part of the two-ship . She was named after August von Gneisenau, a Prussian general of the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was laid down in 1904 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and completed in March 1908, at a cost of...

 penetrated the armour of the forward 6 inch gun turret, destroying it and causing a massive fire on the forecastle. More serious hits followed, and she soon could no longer hold her place in the line of battle

Line of battle

In naval warfare, the line of battle is a tactic in which the ships of the fleet form a line end to end. A primitive form had been used by the Portuguese under Vasco Da Gama in 1502 near Malabar against a Muslim fleet.,Maarten Tromp used it in the Action of 18 September 1639 while its first use in...

. When it was clear that Monmouth was out of action, Gneisenau shifted fire to HMS Good Hope

HMS Good Hope (1901)

HMS Good Hope was a 14,100-ton Drake-class armoured cruiser of the British Royal Navy; she was originally planned to be named Africa, but was renamed before she was launched...

. A short while later, drifting and on fire, Monmouth was attacked by the newly arrived light cruiser SMS Nürnberg

SMS Nürnberg (1906)

SMS Nürnberg, named after the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, was a Königsberg class light cruiser of 3,450 tons laid down in 1905 and launched in 1907. Nürnberg's was similar in both size and appearance to the famous , differing mainly in its uneven funnel spacing. She was armed with ten guns, eight...

under the command of Kapitän zur See Karl von Schönberg, which fired seventy-five 10.5 cm (4.1 inch) shells at close range. Monmouth and Good Hope both sank with a combined loss of 1,570 lives. There were no survivors from either ship.