The Flat-Irons: Rendel Type Gunboats (1865-1897)

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One of the most numerous class of small ironclad was the Rendel gunboat, named for its inventor, Sir George Rendel, a contractor to the Admiralty for proving of their big guns. These boats were nicknamed "flatirons" for their clear resemblance to the common ironing implement in daily use across the British Empire and, indeed, across Europe and its many colonies. How these came to be such a prolific type has to do with their origins.

In testing the artillery, Rendel had hit on a boat that, to aim its artillery, one only had to pivot the boat itself. These short, nimble, twin-screw craft were just the thing. They were no-frills vessles. Aside from delivering the gun to a particular place, there was little surplus space about them. Just the thing for the navy to deliver their advance artillery with, perhaps? Not coincidentally at just this time, Britain was undergoing one of her periodic bouts of invasion jitters. The French had been making terrifying gestures, laying down a numerous ironclad fleet that had Britons flurried; no matter than their own navy had Napoléon outclassed. When flustered fishwives from Brighton, Brixham, and Bournemouth besieged them, parliamentarians needed an economical way of calming their security fears. The cheap, employment-boosting, confidence-building remedy was the purchase of lots of comforting, pudgy, puffing gunboats with fat 9" and 10" guns perched high on the bow.

The popularity of the Rendel gunboat was owed to the invulnerability of early ironclads. The artillery carried in the gunboats was outsized for such small craft; it was posited that swarms of gunboats could swarm about an ironclad and pummel it into submission with monster artillery shells.

From this humble beginning arose a rather enduring design, a tradition of gunboat construction. More than 130 flatiron boats were built over then next thirty years, ranging in size from 240 to 560 tons. In one case the eleven overgrown German gunboats of the Wespe class, mounting 12" guns, were like small cruisers at 1200 tons, but all duplicated the same forward-placed gunhouse and stepped-down prow. While the British were the biggest consumers, (30 boats plus four more for H.M. Victorian Navy) they were not the only large-scale customer. Not only the British and their dominions fielded flatirons, but Germans, Dutch, Norwegians -- and Chinese. In fact, flatirons were in service in a dozen navies spead across four continents. Keeping up on who owned how many ships of a numerous class such as the British Ant Class, is a problem that daunts even a veteran of the campaign to classify the Garibaldi armored cruisers. For a chart of who owned what and how many, click here.

By the late 1890s newer designs came into vogue, and larger river gunboats became common. Nevertheless, these were sturdily constructed vessels and many remained in service for 50 years or more, as our photos attest.