A Motor Launch (ML) is a small military vessel in British navy service. It was designed for harbour defence and submarine chasing or for armed high speed air-sea rescue.
Although small by Naval standards, it was larger than the preceding Coastal Motor Boats of 40 and 55 ft length. The first Motor Launches entered service in the First World War. These were 550 80-foot-long (24 m) vessels built by the US Elco company for the Admiralty receiving the designations ML-1 to ML-550. They served between 1916 and the end of the war with the Royal Navy defending the British coast from German submarines.
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Famous quotes containing the words motor and/or launch:
“This biplane is the shape of human flight.
Its name might better be First Motor Kite.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made ... and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)