Gunboat

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

History

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 15 m (49 ft) 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, the boat could be manoeuvred in shallow or restricted areas, where sailing was difficult for larger ships, such as rivers or lakes. The gun that such boats carried could also be quite heavy; a 32-pounder for instance. As such boats were cheap and quick to build, swarm tactics were favoured; while a single hit from a frigate's broadside would destroy a gunboat, a frigate facing a large squadron of gunboats could be seriously damaged before it could manage to sink them all. An example of this would be the Battle of Alvøen, where 5 Dano-Norwegian gunboats defeated the lone HMS Tartar during the Gunboat War. Gunboats used in the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain during the American Revolutionary War were mostly built on the spot, attesting to the speed of their construction.