5767. NAVY, Gunboats.—[continued].
The efficacy of gunboats
for the defence of harbors, and of other
smooth and enclosed waters, may be estimated
in part from that of galleys, formerly much
used, but less powerful, more costly in their
construction and maintenance, and requiring
more men. But the gunboat itself is believed
to be in use with every modern maritime nation
for the purpose of defence. In the Mediterranean,
on which are several small powers,
whose system like ours is peace and defence,
few harbors are without this article of protection.
Our own experience there of the effect
of gunboats for harbor service is recent. Algiers
is particularly known to have owed to a
great provision of these vessels the safety of its
city, since the epoch of their construction. Before
that it had been repeatedly insulted and injured.
The effect of gunboats at present in the
neighborhood of Gibraltar, is well known, and
how much they were used both in the attack
and defence of that place during a former war.
The extensive resort to them by the two greatest
naval powers in the world, on an enterprise of
invasion not long since in prospect, shows their
confidence in their efficacy for the purpose for
which they are suited. By the northern powers
of Europe, whose seas are particularly adapted
to them, they are still more used. The remarkable
action between the Russian flotilla of gunboats
and galleys, and a Turkish fleet of ships-of-the-line
and frigates in the Liman Sea, 1788,
will be readily recollected. The latter, commanded
by their most celebrated admiral, were
completely defeated, and several of their ships-of-the-line
destroyed.—
Special Message. Washington ed. viii, 80.
Ford ed., ix, 24.
(Feb. 1807)
