gunboat "Myrtle," and the story of their terrible privations has become quite as well known as the far more horrible "Medusa" case.
In addition, when it became evident that the air must be fought for, the air-sailors were provided with rifles with explosive bullets of oxygen or inflammable substance, but no airship at any time ever carried as much in the way of guns and armour as the smallest gunboat on the navy list had been accustomed to do.
Light as this armament was in comparison with the smallest gunboat that ever sailed, it was sufficient for them to outfight as well as outfly the German monster airships.
Helena and the Oil Rivers in a
gunboat. Then came a blessed year of peace and domesticity, to be followed by nine years, with only a three months' break, five upon the Pacific station, and four on the East Indian.
Shells were falling all round till a tiny French
gunboat came out of Bayonne and shooed the Numancia away out of territorial waters.
King Edward and law and order are represented by the Commissioner at Tulagi and an occasional visiting
gunboat. And two men and one woman is an equally primitive proposition.
But apart from this it is an infernally lonely state for a ship to be going about the China seas with no proper consuls, not even a
gunboat of her own anywhere, nor a body to go to in case of some trouble.
Oh, well-a-day and lack-a-day, the whirligig of time and fortune, the topsyturviness of luck, the wooden shoe going up and the polished heel descending a French
gunboat, a conquered island kingdom of Oceania, to-day ruled over by a peasant-born, unlettered, colonial gendarme, and .
He told one of them a couple of our
gunboats could come here and knock Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!
Here's a big rube comin' along, hayseed stickin' out all over, hands like hams an' feet like Mississippi
gunboats. He'd make half as much again as me in size an' he's young, too.
The Philippine Navy (PN) successfully tested the effectiveness of its first missile
gunboat yesterday.