A river gunboat is a type of

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 Pre-ste ...

adapted for

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of ...

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 A howitzer () is a long- ranged weapon, falling between a cannon (also known as an artillery gun in the United States), which fires shells at flat trajectories, and a mortar, which fires at high angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like ot ...

, for shore bombardment. They were usually not armoured. The fictional USS ''San Pablo'' described in

Richard McKenna Richard Milton McKenna (May 9, 1913 – November 1, 1964) was an American sailor and novelist. He was best known for his historical novel, '' The Sand Pebbles'' which tells the story of an American sailor serving aboard a gunboat on the Chinese ...

's '' The Sand Pebbles'' is an example of this class of vessel, serving on the US Navy's Yangtze Patrol. Stronger river warships with larger guns were

river monitor River monitors are military craft designed to patrol rivers. They are normally the largest of all riverine warships in river flotillas, and mount the heaviest weapons. The name originated from the US Navy's , which made her first appearance in ...

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 treaties that China had started to sign following her defeat during the first

Opium War The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of th ...

with

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

. The advantages of steam power and shallow drafts meant that the new European vessels initially vastly outclassed anything available to the Chinese. Foreign powers had received concessions from China, like

extraterritoriality In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations. Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdiction was usually cl ...

for their citizens in China, and the gunboats policed these rights.

British

HMS Ladybird off Shanghai, circa in the 1920s

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...

(RN) gunboats, numbering on average 15 a year in Chinese waters, served as "station ships", assigned to specific ports, and were designed for river functions. The RN maintained patrols and escorts up and down the Yangtze based in Shanghai until the end of the International Concessions in 1941. These boats were part of the Navy's

China Station The Commander-in-Chief, China was the admiral in command of what was usually known as the China Station, at once both a British Royal Navy naval formation and its admiral in command. It was created in 1865 and deactivated in 1941. From 1831 to 18 ...

and vessels of various classes were deployed and often moved to and from other major world rivers. The Navy had built a large number of gunboats for the Crimean war in the 1850s and several of these found their way to the China Station afterwards. As these boats were scrapped they were replaced by types purpose built for inshore and river service around the world, ''Beacon''- and later ''Frolic''-class boats. The purpose built river vessels of the

Insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pa ...

and ''Fly'' classes which had seen service in the

Mesopotamian Campaign The Mesopotamian campaign was a campaign in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I fought between the Allies represented by the British Empire, troops from Britain, Australia and the vast majority from British India, against the Central Po ...

in the

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and on the

Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...

during the First World War were deployed to China during the

interbellum In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relative ...

and took part in events of the period of the Japanese invasion of China and the beginning of the Pacific theatre of the Second World War. ''Ladybird'' and ''Bee'' were involved in the USS ''Panay'' incident. The Insects were supplemented in 1937 by the ''Dragonfly''-class boats, three of which, ''Dragonfly'', ''Grasshopper'' and ''Scorpion ''were involved in the fighting down the Malay Peninsula and Singapore.

United States

U.S. Navy craft were of varying age, design, size, and utility. The earliest craft made brief excursions upriver between 1861 and 1901, but were rarely assigned on permanent patrol. In 1901 two large gunboats, USS ''Helena'' (1290 tons and crew of 170) and ''Wilmington'' (1570 tons and 212), were assigned to the

Asiatic Squadron The Asiatic Squadron was a squadron of United States Navy warships stationed in East Asia during the latter half of the 19th century. It was created in 1868 when the East India Squadron was disbanded. Vessels of the squadron were primarily inv ...

's "Second Division" as permanent river patrol, although too large to patrol deep inland, until 1932 and 1923 respectively. In 1903 converted gunboats of the

Spanish Navy The Spanish Navy or officially, the Armada, is the maritime branch of the Spanish Armed Forces and one of the oldest active naval forces in the world. The Spanish Navy was responsible for a number of major historic achievements in navigation, ...

captured in

1898 Events January–March * January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, B ...

, began patrols designed to take them further upriver toward

Chungking Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a municipality in Southwest China. The official abbreviation of the city, "" (), was approved by the State Coun ...

. USS ''Elcano'', a 620-ton craft with a crew of 103, and USS ''Villalobos'', a 350-ton ship with 50 men, served until 1928, when they were decommissioned and sunk. USS ''Callao'' (240 tons) and ''Quiros'' (sister ship to ''Villalobos'') served until 1916 and 1923. In 1914 two 204-ton, 50-man patrol craft of British design and built at

Mare Island Naval Shipyard The Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINSY) was the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean. It is located northeast of San Francisco in Vallejo, California. The Napa River goes through the Mare Island Strait and separates t ...

were disassembled, shipped to China, and reassembled in Shanghai. USS ''Palos'' patrolled until 1934, when she became the station boat at Chungking, and ''Monocacy'' until 1939. The Yangtze Patrol was formally established in 1922 as a component of the

Asiatic Fleet The United States Asiatic Fleet was a fleet of the United States Navy during much of the first half of the 20th century. Before World War II, the fleet patrolled the Philippine Islands. Much of the fleet was destroyed by the Japanese by Februa ...

. Six new craft were designed and built in 1928 in Shanghai, of three differing sizes. USS ''Guam'' and ''Tutuilla'', 380 tons and a crew of 60, were able to ply the entire river year round. USS ''Panay'' and ''Oahu'', 450 tons and a complement of 65; and ''Luzon'', 560 tons and 82 men, were "May–September" gunboats, able to patrol completely upriver only during high water months. (''Luzon''s sister ship, USS ''Mindanao'' served on the China coast but not in the river patrol.) Except for ''Panay'', sunk by Japanese aircraft in December 1937, the newer ships served in China until late 1941.

External links

1928 River Gunboats PR-3;PR-4;PR-5;PR-6;PR-7; PR-8 {reference only}

��a site devoted to British river gunboats that patrolled China.

(in Portuguese) Ship types Riverine warfare Small combat vessel classes

Chinese river gunboats

British

United States

See also

External links