HMS M.33

This is a beautiful and informative guidebook and history of HMS M.33. The 'monitor' HMS M.33 is a small ship with a big history. Built with incredible speed in 1915, she is one of only three surviving Royal Navy warships in the First World War, and the only remaining fighter veteran of that year's bloody Gallipoli Campaign. M.33 offers the unique opportunity to see how men lived and fought in small ships 100 years ago, and to understand a little of the dangers they faced, floating in a basic steel box in shallow waters underneath Turkish guns. HMS M.33 is also a ship with a long history of service and of restoration. Until her final sale by the Navy in 1987 she had served not only as a monitor but had been adapted to be a minelayer, a workshop and a hulk. She was known as M.33, HMS Minerva, C.23 and RMAS Minerva - and was even painted with the unofficial name HMS 'Mugwump' for three months. Now finally, after sterling work by Hampshire County Council to rescue and conserve the ship since 1990, the National Museum of the Royal Navy is delighted to complete the job, to open the ship to visitors and use her to commemorate the Gallipoli Campaign.

Matthew Sheldon is an experienced Pitkin author who specialises in naval history, with titles such as Nelson.