GUN-BOAT, a small boat or vessel armed with one or more guns of heavy caliber. From its small dimensions, it is capable of running close inshore or up rivers, and from the same cause it has little chance of being hit by a larger vessel at the long range which the carrying power of its guns enables it to maintain. On the outbreak of the Russian war (1854-56), as the British navy was without a single gun-boat, a large squadron of them was hastily constructed in 1855 and 1856, but too late for that special war. From the haste with which they were put together, most of those vessels proved defective. Their tonnage was small; and their armament usually consisted of one 8-inch gun and one 100-pounder Armstrong gun. In the last two wars with China, gun-boats performed excellent service, having penetrated nearly to Peking, and far up the Yang•tze-klang. Gun-boats in their more modern form are small mastless vessels mounting one large gun in the bow, and propelled by au engine with single or twin screws. The gun is pointed
by means of the helm or the screws, and the gun-boat is in feet a floating gun-carriage. The Staunch, the first gun-boat built on this principle for our navy, has given her name to the whole class. In our navy these gnu-boats carry an armor-piereing gun of 18 tons, on a draught of only 4 feet. But they have been designed to carry even 35-ton guns. Four have lately been built by Messrs. Armstrong for the Chinese navy —the Bela, Gamma, and Delta; two of these carry a 25-ton gun, and two a gnu of over 30 tons. A small flotilla of such gun-boats, protected only by their small size, wou!d be in coast defense formidable opponents even for ironclads. At the beginning of the century the United States had over 250 of these vessels; but the "gun-boat sys tem" was soon abandoned. Some of the continental navies are well provided with gun-boats.