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  RIVER GUNBOATS

  Austro-Hungarian Monitors Szamos (foreground) and Leitha (background) as they appeared during the First World War. (Photo courtesy of Erwin Sieche)

  RIVER GUNBOATS

  AN ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPAEDIA

  ROGER BRANFILL-COOK

  Copyright © Roger Branfill-Cook 2018

  This edition first published in Great Britain in 2018 by

  Seaforth Publishing,

  An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

  47 Church Street,

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire S70 2AS

  www.seaforthpublishing.com

  Email: [email protected]

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84832 365 0 (Hardback)

  ISBN 978 1 84832 366 7 (Kindle)

  ISBN 978 1 84832 380 3 (ePub)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.

  The right of Roger Branfill-Cook to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Notes on the Plans and Specifications

  Acknowledgements

  Country Chapters

  The earliest British river gunboats were officially owned by the Honourable East India Company. However, they operated under Royal Navy control during their various operations, and are to be found in the Great Britain chapter. Conversely, the river gunboats used on the Nile flew the Egyptian flag, and will be found in the chapter on Egypt.

  The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the collapse of Yugoslavia, and the capture of vessels in the course of conflicts, meant that many river gunboats passed through several hands, and through several modifications. Their chronological history is followed through the various individual country chapters.

  Acre

  Angola

  Argentina

  Austria post-1918

  Austria-Hungary

  Belgium

  Bolivia

  Brazil

  Bulgaria

  Burma/Myanmar

  Cambodia

  Cameroon

  China

  Colombia

  Confederate States of America

  Congo, Democratic Republic

  Croatia, Independent State 1941–1945

  Czechoslovakia

  Egypt

  Equatorial Guinea

  Estonia

  Finland

  France

  Germany

  Great Britain

  Guinea

  Hungary

  Iraq

  Italy

  Japan

  Malawi

  Manchukuo

  Mozambique

  Nigeria

  Paraguay

  Peru

  Poland

  Portugal

  Romania

  Russia

  Serbia

  South Africa

  South Vietnam 1955–1975

  Spain

  Sudan (Mahdist State)

  Sweden

  Switzerland

  Thailand

  Turkey

  Uganda

  Ukraine

  United States of America

  Uruguay

  Uzbekistan

  Vietnam

  Yugoslavia

  Bibliography

  Appendix 1: River and Lake Gunboats in Popular Culture

  Appendix 2: River Gunboat Camouflage Schemes

  INTRODUCTION

  Inspiration

  Like many of my generation, my own interest in river gunboats began with Robert Wise’s masterful film interpretation of The Sand Pebbles in 1966. Who could forget Steve McQueen’s ‘Hello Engine’, or the desperate fight at the barrage of junks, when Richard Crenna’s Captain Collins tries to redeem his small gunboat’s honour? The same year came the depiction of General Gordon in Khartoum, with the mystery of what happened to his gunboat Abbas, despatched to fetch help. The reissue on DVD of the classic Korda 1939 colour movie The Four Feathers reminded us that Kitchener’s old gunboat Melik was still with us. I was two years old when John Huston filmed The African Queen, but I came to know and love it when the classic movie was screened on British TV nearly every Christmas holiday. Thus began my fascination with the lake gunboats of Africa.

  Defining the Scope of this Encyclopaedia

  Mounting a cannon on any small oared craft capable of carrying it immediately transformed it into a ‘gunboat’. The size of the Danube meant that some river gunboats employed there were in fact small sailing warships. The restrictions of most rivers, however, ruled out the use of sail power, and the size and weight of cannons increased to the point where oar power also became impractical.

  The use of the classic river gunboat came into its own in the nineteenth century with the introduction of the steam engine, and this work concentrates on gunboats powered by steam or internal combustion engines, to the exclusion of purely oar or sail power. Now the smaller gunboats could penetrate deep inland, moving upriver against strong currents, attempting the independent passage of rapids in narrow gorges which had previously defied sailing or oared vessels and required, in appropriate cases, assistance by rope haulage from the banks.

  With the advent of steam power, the gunboat became the smallest type of warship able to project naval power, whether used to protect harbours and coastlines – such as the ‘flatiron’ type used by the Royal Navy – or for patrol and policing duties, or simply as a ‘presence’ in far-flung parts of the world. The term ‘gunboat diplomacy’ came into being to recognise the influence these small vessels could bring to bear.

  Ocean-going gunboats with relatively deep draft were in fact used to penetrate quite far up major rivers. Their use continued into the First World War period in Mesopotamia, and up to the Second World War on the lower stretches of the Yangtze and other Chinese rivers, where the opposing Japanese and Chinese navies deployed large vessels including destroyers and cruisers. In the case of ocean-going sloops and gunboats, I have provided representative examples of the types of vessel involved.

  The American Civil War saw the first large-scale use of steam-powered gunboats on the North American river systems. The scope of the conflict also introduced the widespread conversion of commercial riverine craft to warships. For the sake of completeness, this encyclopaedia includes ACW riverine vessels nominally designated as ‘rams’ if they also carried gun armament, especially behind armour. A contemporary use of armoured river gunboats occurred in China during the bloody civil war which pitted the Taiping rebels against the Emperor, when Gordon set up his headquarters on board the side-wheel paddle steamer Hyson.

  With the advent of iron construction, the Royal Navy pioneered the technique of constructing a sectionalised gunboat in a British yard, for transport abroad and reassembly at the chosen destination. The prototype was HMS Mohawk of 1843, a side-wheel paddle steamer built to patrol Lake Erie. She was closely followed by her American counterpart USS Michigan. In France Napoleon III proposed and oversaw the production of drawings for sectionalised river gunboats to use on rivers and lakes during his Italian campaign of 1859. Subsequently, the French built large numbers of such craft for river warfare in Indochina and elsewhere.

  The British continued the trend with two Peruvian gunboats intended for
used on Lake Titicaca, which were designed in 1862. The extremely difficult transport of their hundreds of individual parts on the backs of mules – and the carrying of their sectional propeller shafts on the backs of porters – up the slopes of the Andes, however, meant that the first vessel did not in fact enter service until 1870.

  The gunboats on Lake Titicaca were examples of the ‘pin-built’ form of construction, whereby the vessels consisted of hundreds of individual pieces, small enough to be man- or mule-ported over considerable distances. Before leaving the builder’s shipyard, the individual hull and deck plates would be trial-assembled to the ribs by bolts. They would then be disassembled, numbered and carefully packed into cases for transport overseas. On arrival on site, the hundreds of parts would be permanently assembled using rivets. The process involved sending skilled supervisors to accompany the kit of parts, and to oversee the work of reassembly by local workmen. On more than one occasion, the design plans would not arrive on site with the kit of parts, providing a major headache for the supervisor. One of the last military usages of ‘pin-built’ vessels was the overland transportation of the German steamer Graf von Götzen to Lake Tanganyika in 1915, but steamers intended for service on Lake Victoria were transported in thousands of pieces up to modern times.

  The other form of this type of vessel was the ‘knock-down’ construction, whereby the hull and superstructure would be pre-assembled in complete sections. Once again, following initial assembly with bolts, they would be dismantled for overseas transport, often on the decks or in the holds of cargo ships. The relatively large size of each section compared with the small parts of the ‘pin-built’ version meant that they had to be carried on railway or road wagons, or even floated down rivers. In the case of the hull sections, this form of construction often continued to use bolts to hold the sections together. In period photos, the numbers marked on adjacent sections can be clearly seen. Napoleon III’s floating riverine batteries were of this type, as were many Nile and China gunboats.

  In the 1880s the firm of Yarrow, based at Poplar on the Thames, began to specialise in shallow-draft vessels which revolutionised the exploration and colonisation of vast stretches of Africa. Tested on the Thames, they would then be broken down into sections, for shipping and overland transport to the ultimate destination, where they would be bolted together.

  This system also avoided the problem of deploying a shallow-draft vessel to distant stations when she was completely unsuitable for long ocean transits. Again, the smaller gunboats used in Mesopotamia during the First World War were also broken down for transit. Larger British gunboats, such as the ‘Insect’ class, would affect long transits suitably lightened and reinforced for the open sea. However, as the French would learn with the Argus, encountering bad weather could mean serious trouble.

  Yarrow’s first type of shallow-draft vessels used stern wheel propulsion, as was common on American rivers. This avoided the complication of burying propellers in tunnels which in certain areas risked being clogged with weeds. Several of the country chapters illustrate variants of his steamers, which featured the classic ‘locomotive’ boilers, familiar to early railway enthusiasts. His next important contribution to shallow-draft river craft was the invention of the hinged flap arrangement to ensure the efficiency of screw propellers inside tunnels.

  The perfection of smaller breech-loading guns, and also reliable machine guns, meant that riverine craft in Africa and Indochina could quickly be converted to gunboats, by bolting down armament ranging from a single Gardner or Nordenfelt manually-operated machine gun, then the fully-automatic Maxim which supplanted them, to small-calibre quick-firing cannon originally designed as anti-torpedo boat armament on larger vessels. The smallest of these was the short single-barrelled 37mm 1-pounder Hotchkiss Model 1885, then in ascending calibre the 47mm 3-pounder, and the 57mm 6-pounder. The more powerful riverine craft would go on to mount the classic 76mm 12-pounder. Some gunboats would even mount 6in guns or larger. This volume describes several vessels which were known to their contemporaries as ‘riverine battleships’.

  At short ranges, considerable firepower could be laid down by the fearsome French five-barrelled 37mm Hotchkiss revolver cannon, capable of pumping out up to forty high-explosive or shrapnel rounds a minute, or by the popular Maxim 37mm Pom-Pom. The modern day equivalents are the chain gun and the Minigun.

  A relatively heavy armament was always valuable, when for example following rivers where even famous explorers such as Mungo Park came to grief at the hands of aggressive natives. Or when attempting to prevent tribes from invading their neighbours’ territory in search of slaves, such as on the Gambia and Niger. Missionaries also tended to ensure their steamers were capable of carrying artillery or machine guns: one leading missionary had been killed and eaten by cannibals, and Arab slavers inevitably resisted Christian do-gooders interfering with their lucrative business. Conversely, if a gunboat was likely to face enemy troops dug in along the river bank, then the classic First World War antidote to trenches was fitted, in the form of short-barrelled howitzers or even army mortars.

  The rapid and simple conversion of commercial riverine craft to gunboats which began during the American Civil War continued into the First World War period, especially on the vast river systems of Russia. The large numbers of such craft, and their often ephemeral existence – at least as warships – means that I have refrained from attempting the virtually impossible task of listing each and every river craft armed with a cannon or machine gun, but instead have provided examples to give some idea of the types of craft involved. In many cases, specific details of these transitory craft have either been lost, or in fact were never recorded. At the very least, I have attempted to find a photo. But in one notable case, the Hyson used in China by Gordon, to date no illustration has come to light.

  Also included are gunboats used on lakes, as they were in most respects identical to the types found on river systems, and I have extended the scope to also take in the fascinating ‘lagoon gunboats’ designed to protect Venice.

  Maps

  My original intention was to include colour maps of all the various river systems and lakes where historical and current gunboats were and are used. As my research revealed the enormous scope of my project, and bearing in mind the practicalities of publishing and distributing the finished work, I have preferred to give the space over to the descriptions of all the river and lake gunboats I have found, rather than dedicate many dozens of pages to maps which are freely accessible elsewhere.

  Reference libraries can furnish historical and modern atlases, and a search on the Internet will quickly pinpoint any particular place or water course mentioned in the text. A particularly valuable resource is the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

  The Sources

  Previous authors and historians have concentrated on certain narrow aspects of river gunboats. In the United States, the river gunboats of the Civil War have received much attention. China gunboats on the Yangtze and other smaller rivers are now relatively well-covered in literature. The centenary of the Great War and the turbulence in Iraq revived interest in the Mesopotamia campaigns, and many contemporary reminiscences were revisited.

  Austrian and Hungarian authors have covered their respective navies on the Danube, but lack of translation into English has hampered their widespread dissemination. A similar problem has bedevilled the sharing of the significant research conducted by Russian historians and enthusiasts.

  A rich source of information has, as always, been the Internet. I freely recognise the contributions of the many enthusiasts, and I give them credit for their input, which so often has such a limited shelf life before it disappears forever behind the ‘Error 404’ message, the bane of the surfer’s life. A large part of the Bibliography is dedicated to the Websites which provided much valuable information. One site in particular must be mentioned, the vast Navypedia site run by Ivan Gogin, which includes many river gunboats. In the herculean task of compilin
g his vast encyclopaedia, which attempts to eventually list all the warships from the industrial revolution up to today, in a very few places he has copied inaccurate information, which I have corrected in my own work.

  Some countries defy all reasonable attempts to find full information. The main country affected is China. Whereas the multitude of foreign China gunboats have always received international attention, conversely the details of historic Chinese China gunboats are fragmentary, for the reasons discussed in the relevant country chapter. Over-protective state secrecy does not help the situation with regard to modern Chinese river gunboats. Conversely the Royal Navy never hid its first iron-armoured battleships from view, but flaunted them in full view of their possible French opponents. Hiding them from view could have given the impression that, just perhaps, they had good reason to hide.

  So little attention has been paid to the subject of river gunboats, that even official sites can lack certain basic details. The most commonly omitted are ‘crew complement’, ‘horsepower’ and ‘speed’. With their secondary role of transporting troops or police detachments, the complement of a river gunboat could vary depending on the circumstances, from a handful of caretaker crew when not in action to several hundred if space was available. As for speed, high speed is a great advantage on the open sea, and can convey a vital tactical advantage, for example when attempting to out-manoeuvre an enemy formation, or as in the past when launching or avoiding a torpedo or ramming attack. In a riverine environment, the principal requirements are shallow draught and manoeuvrability. Speed is a secondary consideration. It suffices to show a significant surplus speed over the strongest head current to be encountered. In shallow or confined waters high speed is a definite disadvantage. Then there is the psychological aspect. If the object of operating a gunboat is to overawe indigenous peoples living on the river banks, then the bulk of a heavily-armed gunboat moving with slow determination is sufficient. A similar effect is a favourite trick of movie directors, when the camera is deliberately slowed to show a group of heroes ‘walking the walk’, advancing with determination towards a showdown. Usual riverine maximum speeds ranged from 8 knots to a maximum sprint of 12 to 15 knots. On the other hand, several gunboat crews would discover to their discomfort that low maximum speed often meant they could never make headway against strong currents . . .