Severn HMS

HMS Severn was a Humber-class monitor of the Royal Navy. Originally built by Vickers for Brazil, she was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1914 on the outbreak of the First World War along with her sister ships Humber and Mersey. She had been christened Solimoes by the Brazilians, but was renamed by the British.[1] The three ships were the first of a new type of specialized shore-bombardment warships. As a result of her shallow draught, she was very un-manoeuvrable and unseaworthy in open waters in anything more than a Force 5 wind.
The ships were stationed at Dover for service in the English Channel, attached to the Dover Monitor Squadron. During the Battle of the Frontiers and subsequent operations in 1914, the Humber-class monitors were all employed in bombarding German batteries and positions, under the command of Rear-Admiral Horace Hood.
Severn and Mersey's guns soon wore out, and they were each re-armed with a single 6-inch Mk VII gun stripped from the wreck of Montagu, a battleship which had been wrecked on the Isle of Lundy in 1906. Humber retained her twin gun turret throughout the war, with guns being replaced by refurbished guns removed from the other two ships as needed.
During early 1915 Mersey and Severn were dispatched to German East Africa, where the German cruiser Königsberg was hidden in the Rufiji Delta. Only the long-range guns of the shallow-draft monitors could reach the hidden cruiser, and although the journey to East Africa took nearly six months under tow from Malta, the monitors were ultimately successful in destroying the German ship, their shells directed by two seaplane observers.
For the remainder of the war, all three ships participated in further attacks on German-held territory, Humber (which had been sent to the Dardanelles in 1915) in the Mediterranean and Mersey and Severn in German East Africa, where they operated against German positions in the colony. In 1918, Mersey and Severn were transferred to the Mediterranean as well.[1]