Gunboats from Crimea to riverine warfare

The history begins with small pre-steam craft carrying one or a few guns, then follows the type into paddle gunboats on the Great Lakes and British shallow-water fire support during the Crimean War. The American Civil War made river gunboats and monitors especially prominent, while later navies applied the label to a broad family of small coastal and river fighting ships. HMS Gannet and the Rendel or flat-iron gunboats illustrate how sail, steam, coastal defense, and imperial policing overlapped before the modern river-gunboat category settled into place.