As fucking cool as they look, essentially a floating battleship gun turret with an engine, the fact they were monitors (slow and shallow-draft warships incapable of dealing with rough seas) at a time where the concept had proven a failure for a ship-of-the-line goes to show just how much money the RN had back then, as they were built to deal with shore bombardment and even counter shore battery duties, both which could have been done by a battleship, but that the RN thought it best to have a dedicated ship for those roles just because they could do such a thing.
So yeah, a bit of a waste, but man are they awesome because of it.
enriquemzn262
