River gunboat

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The USS Panay, a United States Navy river gunboat which served on the Yangtze Patrol.

A river gunboat is a type of gunboat adapted for river operations. River gunboats required shallow draft for river navigation. They would be armed with relatively small caliber cannons, or a mix of cannons and machine guns. If they carried more than one cannon, one might be a howitzer, for shore bombardment. They were usually not armoured. The USS San Pablo described in Richard McKenna's The Sand Pebbles is an example of this class of vessel, serving on the US Navy's Yangtze Patrol. Stronger river warships were river monitors.

[edit] Chinese river gunboats

Various European powers, the USA, and Japan, maintained flotillas of these shallow draft gunboats patrolling Chinese rivers. These gunboats were enforcing those nations' treaty rights under the unequal treaties that China had started to sign following her defeat during the first Opium War with Britain.

Foreign powers had coerced concessions from China, like extraterritoriality for their citizens in China, and the gunboats policed these rights.