Gunboat

Union ironclad gunboats assault the Confederates at Fort Donelson, February, 1862.

A gunboat is a military watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard costal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.

History

Age of sail

In the age of sail, a gunboat was usually a small undecked vessel carrying a single smoothbore cannon in the bow, or just two or three such cannons. A gunboat could carry one or two masts or be oar-powered only, but the single-masted version of about 50 ft (15 m) length was most typical. Some types of gunboat carried two cannons, or else mounted a number of swivel guns on the railings.

The advantages of this type of gunboat were that since it only carried a single cannon, that cannon could be quite heavy — for instance, a 32-pounder — and that the boat could be maneuvered in shallow or restricted waters, where sailing was difficult for larger ships. A single hit from a frigate would demolish a gunboat, but a frigate facing six gunboats in an estuary would likely be seriously damaged before it could manage to sink all of them. Gunboats were also easy and quick to build; the combatants in the 1776 Battle of Valcour Island on New York's Lake Champlain were mostly gunboats built on the spot.

All navies of the sailing era kept a number of gunboats on hand. Gunboats were a key part of the planned Napoleon's invasion of England in 1804, and were heavily used by Denmark-Norway. Between 1803 and 1812, the US Navy had a policy of basing the naval forces on coastal gunboats, and experimented with a variety of designs, but they were nearly useless in the War of 1812, and went back to being special-purpose vessels.

Steam era

With the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century, small vessels propelled by side paddles and later by screws were built in considerable numbers by the Royal Navy and other navies. These retained full sailing rigs, so that steam propulsion was used as an auxiliary form.

Britain launched a number of wooden paddle gunboats between 1834-1847 for Canadian service on the Great Lakes. This was followed by at least one iron-hulled paddle gunboat.

The Von der Tann was a steam-powered 120 long tons (120 t) gunboat built in 1849 at Conradi shipyards in Kiel for the small navy of Schleswig-Holstein, the first propeller-driven gunboat in the world. Initially called "Gunboat No. 1", Von der Tann was the most modern ship in the navy. She participated successfully in the First Schleswig War.

Britain built a large number of wooden screw gunboats during the 1850's, some of which participated in the Crimean war, Second Opium War and Indian Mutiny. The requirement for gunboats in the Crimean war was forulated in 1854 and was to allow for shore bombardment operations to be carried out in the Baltic.^[1] The first ships built by the royal navy that met this requirement were the Arrow class gunvessels.^[1] Then in mid 1854 the Royal Navy ordered 6 Gleaner class gunboats followed latter in the year by an order for 20 Dapper class gunboats.^[1] In May 1855 6 Dapper class gunboats were deployed to the Sea of Azov where they repeatedly raided and destroyed stores around its coast.^[2] In June 1855 the royal navy rentered the baltic with 18 a total of gunboats as part of a larger fleet. ^[3] The boats were used to attack various coastal facilities operating alongside larger warships from which they drew supplies such as coal. ^[3]

Gunboats experienced a revival during the American Civil War. Armed sidewheel steamers were quickly converted from existing passenger-carrying boats by Union and Confederate forces. Later, some boats were purposely built, such as the USS Miami. They all frequently mounted 12 or more guns, sometimes of rather large caliber, and were usually armored to some degree. At the same time britian's gunboats from the Crimean war period were starting to wear out so a new series of classes was ordered. At the same time construction shifted from a purely wooden hull to an iron teak composite. ^[4]

SMS Panther, a famous gunboat diplomat from the Agadir Crisis.

In the later 19th century and early 20th century, "gunboat" was the common name for smaller armed vessels, often called "patrol gunboats". These could be classified, from the smallest to the largest, into river gunboats, river monitors, coastal defense gunboats (such as the SMS Panther), and full-fledged monitors for coastal bombardments. In the 1870s and 80s Britian took to building so called Flat iron gunboats for coastal defence.^[5]When there would be few opportunities to re-coal, vessels carrying a full sailing rig were still used as gunboats; HMS Gannet, a sloop preserved at Chatham Historic Dockyard in the United Kingdom, is an example of this type of gunboat.

In the US Navy, these boats had the hull classification symbol "PG"; they usually displaced under 2,000 long tons (2,000 t), were about 200 ft (61 m) long, 10 to 15 ft (3.0 to 4.6 m) draught and sometimes much less, and mounted several guns of caliber up to 5 to 6 in (130 to 150 mm). An important characteristic of these was the ability to operate in rivers, enabling them to reach inland targets in a way not otherwise possible before the development of aircraft. In this period, gunboats were used by the naval powers for police actions in colonies or weaker countries, for example in China (see e.g. Yangtze Patrol). It is this category of gunboat that inspired the term "gunboat diplomacy".

With the addition of torpedoes they became torpedo gunboats.

In Britian much of the gunboat fleet was disposed of as part of Admiral Fisher's reforms in the 1900s.^[6] A handful were still in service in various roles at the start of WW1.^[7] The very last in active service were two of the second Bramble class which survived until 1926 carrying out river patrols in west Africa.^[8]

World War II and Great Britain

During the Second World War, the gunboat was for the Royal Navy a vessel identical to torpedo boats, but equipped with machine guns and larger weapons up to 57 mm (2.2 in) calibre for attacking enemy torpedo boats or small craft - the Motor Gun Boat (MGB). Post-World War II, the terms "motor gunboat" came to be used for smaller vessels, with displacements in the 50 long tons (51 t) range.

Vietnam War

US riverine gunboats in the Vietnam War, utilized Patrol Boats River (PBR), which were constructed of fiberglass; Patrol Craft Fast (PCF), commonly known as Swift Boats, which were built of aluminum; and Assault Support Patrol Boats (ASPB) built of steel. The ASPBs were commonly referred to as "Alpha" boats and were primarily deployed for mine sweeping duties along the water ways, due to their all steel construction. The ASPB's were the only US Navy riverine craft specifically designed and built for the Vietnam War.^[9] All of these boats were assigned to the US Navy's "Brownwater Navy".^[10]

Gunboats are still being built and operated around the world today, albeit mainly used for coast guard duties.

References

• Chapter 4, "The Gunboat Navy", of Howard Chapelle, The History of the American Sailing Navy (Norton, 1949)
• http://www.chdt.org.uk/Historic_Warships/HMS_Gannet/hms_gannet.html
• Friedman, Norman. US Small Combatants: An Illustrated Design History. 1987; Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-8702 1713-5.

See also

• Alarm class torpedo gunboat
• Dryad class torpedo gunboat
• Insect class gunboat
• Japanese gunboat Chiyodagata
• Japanese gunboat Seta
• Japanese gunboat Unyo
• List of gunboat and gunvessel classes of the Royal Navy
• SMS Panther
• HMS Rattlesnake (1886)
• Redbreast class gunboat
• River gunboat
• Russian gunboat Korietz
• Soviet gunboat Krasnoye Znamya
• Spanish gunboat Callao
• Spanish gunboat General Concha
• Spanish gunboat Marques del Duero
• Torpedo gunboat
• HMS Vixen (1865)
• Von der Tann (gunboat)
• Yorktown class gunboat