River Gunboats
Page 63
http://www.magyarbuvar.hu/pages/szemelvenyek/szemelvenyek_buvarmunkak.htm (Photo of salvaged Drava)
http://www.magyarbuvar.hu/pages/szemelvenyek/szemelvenyek_buvarmunkak.htm (Salvage of Drava)
http://www.marina.difesa.it/storiacultura/storia/almanacco (Italian Navy site)
http://www.maritima-etmechanika.org/maritime/lisboa/MuseuMarinha-Navy.html (Lisbon Maritime Museum photos)
http://www.militarian.com/threads/naval-units-of-the-imperial-japanese-army. (Type C armoured boats).
http://lib.militaryarchive.co.uk/library/Miscellaneous-Volumes/library/The-Royal-Navy-A-History-Volume-VII/files/assets/basic-html/page232.html
http://www.motorlaunchpatrol.net/history/post_war/rhine_patrol_flotilla/(RN Rhine Flotilla 1918)
http://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=212222 (President Masaryk)
http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyBritishShips-Dittmar2.htm (HMS Miner)
http://www.naval-history.net/WW1xMemoir-Wanhsein.htm (Wahnsien Incident)
http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/09905.htm (USS Michigan)
http://www.navypedia.org/(Ivan Gogin’s Website)
http://oceania.pbworks.com/w/page/8450548/BRAZILIAN per cent20RIVERINE per cent20SHIPS (Brazilian river gunboats specs)
http://www.panzerbaer.de/helper/bw_pi_sichboot_burmestera.htm (PR Class 33 boats in German hands)
http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/18-1900/D/01445a.html (HMS Dove)
http://www.pdavis.nl/China.htm (HEIC Nemesis)
http://www.pdavis.nl/Niger.htm
https://www.pinterest.dk/pin/249105423120987652/(Udarnyi plans)
https://ptdockyardat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/navalactionsofthercw.pdf (Russian Civil War actions)
http://www.russiadefence.net/t3971-kazakhstan-armed-forces http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol145il.html (Simba)
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/science-civil-war-cannons-css-pee-dee-03291.html (CSS Pee Dee)
https://thaimilitaryandasianregion.wordpress.com/2016/05/28/project-03160-raptor-high-speed-patrol-boats-russia/(Project 03160 Raptor)
http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/jardine.shtml
http://www.trip-points.com/sightseeing-places/monument-to-monitor-ship-zhelezniakov.html
http://usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?http&&&usarmygermany.com/USAREUR_Rhinepercent20Riverpercent20Patrol.htm
http://ussforthenry.com/USSFHpdf/ferryboats_go_to_war.pdf
http://www.uzavtoyul.uz (Amu-Darya gunboats) http://warshipsresearch.blogspot.fr/(Hamzeh)
http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13839 (Rhine Flotilla 1945 ex-ASR launches)
http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14111 (Details of the Girl Class gunboats on the Chindwin).
http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16318 (The RN Caspian Flotilla)
http://web.archive.org/web/20060507221708/ http://www.hmsfalcon.com/index.htm (interesting RN China Gunboats site, but sometimes difficult to access and at the time of writing, all the links were broken)
Wikipedia – especially the different country versions. (Of course, as a good starting place for many gunboats. However, some entries need to be treated with caution, as they often simply repeat mistakes found on other sites). An example of a useful entry is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mindanao (PGMs in Mindanao 1945)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letters_from_the_Battlefields_of_Paraguay/Letters_19-27
http://www.zollgrenzschutz.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=215&Itemid=251 (Royal Albert details)
Appendix 1: River and Lake Gunboats in Popular Culture
THE FOUR FEATHERS
No qualms here about historical accuracy. The 1939 film has the Melik starring as herself, just some forty years after the real-life events the film was based around. Directed by Zoltan Korda, and produced by his brother Alexander, just before the start of the Second World War, the film is based on the patriotic novel of the same name by author, playwright and soldier A E W Mason.
Alfred Edward Woodley Mason was a prolific author, who penned The Four Feathers back in 1902, just four years after the events surrounding the story. He then went on to create a French detective, Inspector Gabriel Hanaud, as the antithesis of Sherlock Holmes, and in 1937 wrote the Elizabethan drama Fire Over England, with the aim of awakening the British to the threat posed by the rise of Nazi Germany.
The Four Feathers tells the story of cowardice redeemed by heroism, during the Nile campaign which saw Kitchener defeat the Khalifa and avenge the death of Gordon. The beautifully-shot 1939 Technicolor film starred Ralph Richardson, John Clements and June Duprez, and is held to be the best portrayal of several versions of Mason’s novel in film form.
THE AFRICAN QUEEN
The real-life exploits of HM gunboats Mimi and Toutou on Lake Tanganyika during the First World War inspired British author C S Forester to write a historical novel The African Queen in 1935. In the novel, missionary Rose Sayer teams up with Charlie Allnutt, master of the small river steamer African Queen, in a bold attempt to attack the German Empire. In the story, the river steamer herself is not converted into a gunboat, but rather a type of spar torpedo launch. The gunboat of the story is the German vessel Königin Luise which is dominating a nearby lake, inspired by the real-life Graf Von Götzen (see GERMANY).
Here the Old Lady is being helped upriver by a tug on either beam. It is possible that her engines had either been removed or were no longer in working order. There is smoke coming from her funnel, but this may be, literally, a smokescreen. She is entering a cataract, and the teams of soldiers and natives are about to take up the strain on the cables laid out from her bows, in true prototypical fashion. The following steamers have a cargo barge lashed to each beam, just as in the real-life ascent of the Nile in 1898. Later in the film, Melik added the firepower of her two 12-pounders to the army’s guns on shore. Her hull has obviously suffered from neglect during the preceding forty years of inactivity. The flag of Egypt shows that she was nominally an Egyptian, rather than a Royal Navy, vessel.
Not a still from the film, but the painting by Richard Caton Woodville which was commissioned by Queen Victoria, showing the memorial service held for Gordon in front of his ruined palace in Khartoum. The Melik is on the right, firing a salute. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1899. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
In Forester’s version, the African Queen sinks in a storm on the lake, the daring couple survive to live (and love) another day, and the Königin Louise meets her fate at the hands of a pair of British gunboats transported overland . . . In 1951 Forester’s novel was made into a classic movie, directed by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Charlie and Katherine Hepburn as Rose. In order to pass the film censorship of the day, their budding romance was toned down, to await consummation after marriage. Also, the ending was changed to a much more dramatic one. The African Queen sinks in the storm, but her overturned hull lies in wait, unseen, to snare and sink the onrushing Königen Louise with her spar torpedoes.
The Königin Louise was played by the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation steam tug Buganda used on Lake Victoria. The 200-ton Buganda had been built in 1925 on the Clyde, by Bow, McLachlan & Co Ltd of Paisley, then dismantled for transport to Lake Victoria.
She is still afloat, used as a hotel in Mwanza, Tanzania. Each bedroom is named after an actor in the film. (Photo of Buganda today viaaveleman.com, courtesy of David Wright)
The old river launch used to portray the African Queen, built in Britain in 1912, was restored in 2012, and at the time of writing is on display in Key Largo, Florida.
SEND A GUNBOAT
In 1960 the popular and prolific British author Douglas Reeman ventured into the realms of China Gunboats with his novel Send a Gunboat. Set in the early 1950s, he tells the story of one of the last survivors, HMS Wagtail, tied up in Hong Kong awaiting the breakers, but reprieved for a final mission to evacuate a sm
all British community from an offshore island, threatened by invasion from mainland China.
THE SAND PEBBLES
In 1962 Richard McKenna published his historical novel The Sand Pebbles, based on the tortuous events in China in 1926. McKenna had served on a Yangtze gunboat in 1936, but set his novel ten years earlier during the Northern Expedition of the Kuomintang Army. The book was an instant success, and in 1965–6 was turned into a classic film by Robert Wise, starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Candice Bergen, Richard Crenna and Mako. The ‘Sand Pebbles’ were the crew of the old ex-Spanish gunboat San Pablo, supposedly seized during the Spanish-American War before the turn of the century. The real star of the movie, however, was the superb replica river gunboat, the San Pablo herself, built at considerable expense in Hong Kong specially for the film. She was a fully-functioning ocean-going vessel, capable of 10 knots, and despite her shallow draft for river work made the double crossing between Hong Kong and Taiwan without difficulty.
The San Pablo on patrol on the Yangtze (actually filmed on the Tam Sui and Keelung Rivers in Taiwan), showing off her tall smokestack, so characteristic of contemporary historical American gunboats. The replica was powered by diesel engines, so a crewman stoked a furnace at the base of the smokestack to produce the characteristic plume of coal smoke. Note the pronounced sheer of her hull, which is so often missing from scale models of the ship. She is ‘armed’ with a 3in/23 cal Mark XIV Mod 2 DP gun forward. A 1-pounder 37mm low-angle anti-torpedo boat gun was mounted on the rear of the battery deck, and .30 cal Lewis guns on the bridge completed her armament. Note the armoured shutters around her wheelhouse.
In a masterly role Richard Crenna portrayed Captain Collins, seen here second from the right with his bridge crew, at speed. Note the Lewis machine guns under their covers at port and starboard. These would have been .30/06 calibre guns made by Savage.
The Nora D at Bontang in Indonesian Borneo in the early 1970s. She was finally towed to Singapore in 1975 and scrapped. (Photo by Horrie Hunt)
She was built of welded steel, but to depict rivets of the 1900 period, rows of plastic mushroom heads were glued on to her panels. After filming, she was sold back to the shipyard, which converted her for use as a floating accommodation barge for American engineers working in South Vietnam in 1966. Later she was sold to the De Long Timber Co in the Philippines, and renamed the Nora D after Nola Dianne Delong. In the early 1970s she changed hands again, being used by Delta Exploration as a base camp for seismic operations in Indonesia. At some date a helipad was constructed on the roof of the aft deckhouse.
There is also the documentary A Ship Called San Pablo, which features the design, construction and film career of the fictional San Pablo and her real-life captain and crew.
Launched:
1964 by Vaughn & Yung Engineering Ltd. of Hong Kong. Cost $250,000.
Dimensions:
L: 45.7m/150ft.
Power/Speed:
Twin screws; 2 × Cummins diesel engines/10 knots.
Guns/Armour:
1 × 3in/23 cal Mark XIV Mod 2; 1 × 1-pounder 37mm; 2 × .30/06 Lewis MG; 1 × BAR.
Fate:
Broken up in Singapore 1975.
KHARTOUM
This major movie, directed by Basil Dearden, could be considered as a ‘prequel’ to The Four Feathers, as it described General ‘Chinese’ Gordon’s ill-fated attempt to hold the city of Khartoum in the hope of a rescue by the British army. Gordon, played by Charlton Heston, arrives in Khartoum aboard the Nile steamer Abbas, which he has converted into a gunboat. The Abbas is sent down river to find the expected British army, carrying Gordon’s assistant Colonel Stewart. We see the Abbas successfully fight off attacks by the Mahdi’s followers, and then she disappears from the narrative. The story of her fate, as described in the chapter on EGYPT, is not shown in the film. However, the Mahdi, played by Laurence Olivier, taunts Gordon before revealing the severed hand of Stewart in a jar, still wearing the ring Gordon had given him.
The historical Abbas most probably resembled the Bordein, lacking the extensive passenger cabins on an upper deck, plus the elevated wheelhouse, as portrayed in the film. However, the film version was a real Nile steamer, and the likely vessel was probably PS Memnon, later used as the fictional PS Karnak in the Peter Ustinov film Death on the Nile in 1978.
A disconsolate Colonel Stewart leaves Gordon to his fate.
Abbas’ Krupp gun on her port paddle box opens fire on the Mahdi’s men as she passes a Nile village.
The Egyptian gunners manning her Nordenfelt hand-operated machine gun, about to open fire on the Mahdist village.
The real-life PS Memnon, built for Thomas Cook in 1904, and sailed for them up until the end of October 1948 when she was sold to His Excellency Aly Maher Pacha. She had accommodation for 19 passengers. When last recorded in 2009 she was cut into two pieces and awaiting restoration. (Photo supplied by Paul Smith, Archivist, Thomas Cook Travel Archives)
Launched:
1904 for Thomas Cook.
Dimensions:
L: 39.9m/131 ft; B: 5.8m/19 ft.
Power/Speed:
Side paddle wheels; Steam engine 150ihp.
Guns/Armour:
(In the film) 3 × Krupp 90mm breechloaders; 2 × five-barrelled 0.45in calibre Nordenfelt MG.
Fate:
Awaiting reconstruction since 2009.
THE PRIDE AND THE ANGUISH
In 1968 Douglas Reeman returned to our theme with his novel The Pride and the Anguish, describing the British river gunboat HMS Porcupine in Singapore in 1942, and her desperate fight with a much larger Japanese Akikaze class destroyer.
APOCALYPSE NOW
Somewhat surprisingly, no film of the Vietnam War to date has featured any of the impressive river monitors, ‘Zippos’ or ‘Douches’ converted from LCMs, nor even the command or helicopter pad variants. However, in Apocalypse Now, along with many scenes which have become cult images, director Francis Ford Coppola treated the audience to a vivid portrayal of riverine combat in a small PBR, manned by a motley crew led by Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen.
Here their PBR escapes from the mayhem of the night attack on the bridge.
SAHARA
Breck Eisner directed this adventure story, based on a novel by Clive Cussler. The only film to date to feature a Confederate ironclad, SAHARA begins with the ‘CSS Texas’, described as the last Confederate vessel to attempt to break out of besieged Richmond at the end of the Civil War. We see her being loaded with Confederate gold dollars, which will inspire treasure hunter Dirk Pitt, played by Matthew McConaughey, to try to find her 140 years after the vessel disappeared. His hunt will take him across the Atlantic to a dried-up river bed in West Africa . . . After many hazardous adventures, the heroes hole up inside the rusted iron hulk of the ironclad, washed up beside the former river bed, in an attempt to shelter from the forces of local dictator General Kazim (Lennie James).
1865, ‘CSS Texas’, described as the last ironclad to leave Richmond, making a run for safety down the James River at night in the teeth of the Union gun batteries, loaded with Confederate gold.
Matthew McConaughey ducks inside the stranded hull of the ironclad as the helicopter of General Kazim comes in for another strafing run.
RIVER AND LAKE GUNBOATS (AND STEAMERS CONVERTED TO GUNBOATS) FEATURED ON POSTAGE STAMPS
Colourful postage stamps are certainly popular, despite blatant attempts by small nations to cash in on collectors, who follow themes in spite of the fact that the stamp issues of such nations exceed a thousand times the actual number of their inhabitants. But the vast majority of pictorial stamp issues serve a cultural purpose, reminding the inhabitants of their heritage (as well as acting as publicity for potential foreign visitors). As their main purpose is educational, they are included here.
Malawi
The 1967 Steamer set included Dove, Chauncy Maples and Guendolen. Again in 1985, a stamp featured Chauncy Maples, converted to a motor vessel. As
part of the 1994 series of ships on Lake Malawi, the country issued a 95t stamp of Pioneer and a K2 stamp of Dove.
Paraguay
In 1931 Paraguay issued a series of two stamp issues, commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Constitution and, pointedly, marking the arrival of their powerful new gunboats, probably intended as a warning to possible aggressors. The series of Air Mail stamps – obviously intended as a message outside the country – featured the gunboat APA Paraguay. Values ran from 1 peso to 10 pesos, in a range of colours, claret, red, blue, orange, green, brown, mauve and pink. SG reference numbers range from 397 to 411. A second series of two stamps, SG Nos 412 and 413, featured the gunboat APA Humaitá, value 1peso50 for internal mail, in violet or blue.
Peru
In 1952 Peru issued an Air Mail 40c stamp in amarillo green, and a variation in a blue-green shade, showing the gunboat BAP Marañon (SG Nos 784 and 784a). In 1962 a non-Air Mail issue appeared in orange (SG No 869).
As part of a series on the Peruvian Navy, in 1984, Peru issued a two-tone blue stamp, value 400 soles, featuring the gunboat BAP America. SG No is 1598. As one of a sheet of six stamps commemorating naval victories, to mark their victory in the Battle of La Pedrera on 12 July 1911, in 2005 Peru issued a 200soles stamp again featuring America. A third Peruvian stamp featuring America is the 2014 issue commemorating 150 years of their navy’s presence in Amazonia and the foundation of Iquitos.
Portugal
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Military Naval Association, in 1967 Mozambique issued two stamps: 3c featuring A Coutinho and gunboat Tete (SG No 592) and 10c showing J Roby and gunboat Granada (SG No 593). To mark the same anniversary, in 1967 Timor issued a 10c stamp featuring G. Coutinho and gunboat Patria which was sold to China in 1931. (SG No 387).