The history of the US Navy's gunboats, their roles in building a
worldwide American naval presence and in combat, from the Yangtze era
through to World War II.
For more than half a century, American gunboats were the ships often
responsible for policing small crises and provided deterrence and
fast-response capabilities around the world - showing the flag, landing
armed parties, patrolling river and littoral areas, and protecting
ex-pats. They were often the United States' most-visible and constant
military presence in far-flung foreign lands, and were most closely
associated with the Far East, particularly the Philippines and China.
Most famous, of course, was the multinational Yangtze Patrol.
Many US gunboats were built, purchased, or reassembled overseas, where
they usually served out their entire careers, never coming within 7,000
miles of the national homeland which they served. Numerous gunboats were
captured from the Spanish during the 1898 war, many being raised from
shallow graves, refurbished, and commissioned into USN service.
The classic haunt of US gunboats was the Asiatic Station of China and
the Philippines. Gunboat service overseas was typically exotic and the
sailors' lives were often exciting and unpredictable. The major
operational theaters associated with the US gunboats were the pre-1898
cruises and patrols of the earliest steel gunboats, the Spanish-American
War of 1898 (both the Philippines and the Caribbean), the guerilla wars
of the early 20th century Philippines and Latin America, the Asiatic
Fleet and Yangtze Patrol of the 1890s-1930s, and finally World War II,
which largely entailed operations in China, the Philippines, the Dutch
East Indies, Alaska, and on convoy routes. It was Japan's sudden
1941-1942 "Centrifugal Offensive" that effectively spelled the beginning
of the end not just of most American gunboats, but also the century-old
world order in Asia that had provided US gunboats their primary mission.
