Do gunboats count as early coastal-defence ships?

Would gunboats be early coastal-defence ships?

Some gunboats and guard ships performed coastal defence, but purpose-built coastal-defence ships form a more specific design category.

Gunboats and guard ships could perform coastal-defence duties, so they belong to the broader family of local defensive craft. The lecture's central category is narrower: ships deliberately designed around the coastal role, heavy protection, and enough firepower to deter larger attackers. Some American political proposals even imagined gunboats portable overland by horses, illustrating how elastic the broader coastal-defence idea could become. The specific warship category is therefore narrower than every vessel that happened to patrol or defend a coast.