3-021-612 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The new gun-boat Staunch, built at Elswick, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1868. Gun-boat '...built for the Admiralty upon the plans of Mr. George Rendel, of the firm of Sir William Armstrong and Co...She carries as heavy a rifled gun as any in the Navy...it is easily worked in a rolling sea, and its change of position by recoil does not appreciably affect the trim of the vessel...Machinery is...employed for the purpose of working the gun, by which means more than half the ordinary gun's crew can be dispensed with...the 12½-ton gun was easily handled by six men instead of sixteen...The vessel is so small as to be a sort of floating gun-carriage...The Staunch is wholly unarmoured. Her strength and security lie in her great gun and her diminutiveness; and she must be considered as one of a flotilla of similar vessels. Sixty such could be built at the price of a single armour-clad frigate, and ten of them, acting from different points, doubling in their own length, escaping into shallows, sheltering under forts, would drive off or render a good account of any hostile vessel venturing to attack our harbours'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.