This is a list of gunboat and gunvessel classes of the Royal Navy. For gun-brigs see List of gun-brigs of the Royal Navy.

Steam gunboats

Wooden paddle gunboats (Indian service)

Wooden paddle gunboats (Great Lakes)

Iron paddle gunboat (Great Lakes)

Iron paddle despatch vessels/gunboats

Wooden screw gunboats

Composite screw gunboats

The gunboats designed from 1870 onwards were of composite construction, i.e. they had an iron keel, stem and stern posts, and iron framing, with wooden planking retained over the iron frames.

Armoured gunboats

The only ironclads of gunboat size were three largely experimental (and unsuccessful) vessels ordered in 1864. The first two were towed to the Royal Naval Dockyard at the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda (being considered unsatisfactory to sail under their own power) where they served as harbour vessels and for coastal defence (Vixen ultimately being sunk to block a channel that torpedo boats might have used to attack ships of the North America and West Indies Station at their anchorage on Grassy Bay). Vixen was the first twin-screw vessel built for the Royal Navy, and Waterwitch employed a form of water pump propulsion.

Iron coastal gunboats

Steel coastal gunboats

Torpedo ram

Torpedo gunboats

Steel gunboats

River gunboats

Insect-class gunboat (1915) The Insect-class gunboats were a class of small, but well-armed Royal Navy ships designed for use in shallow rivers or inshore. Several of them took also part in World War II.

Steam gunvessels

Wooden paddle gunvessels

Iron paddle gunvessels

NB. A third vessel of the class was retained by Prussia.

Wooden screw gunvessels

This section includes two early iron-hulled screw gunvessels ordered in May 1845, which in other respects were half-sisters to two wooden-hulled gunvessels ordered at the same time. The four vessels comprised the first-class gunvessels Rifleman (wooden hulled) and Sharpshooter (iron hulled), and the second-class gunvessels Teazer (wooden hulled) and Minx (iron hulled). Further vessels ordered later to the same design were either cancelled or built to very different concepts. Rifleman and Sharpshooter were re-classed as sloops in 1854.

Composite screw gunvessels

The gunvessels designed from 1867 onwards were of composite construction, i.e. they had an iron keel, stem and stern posts, and iron framing, with wooden planking retained over the iron frames. Like the preceding Arab to Dolphin classes, these were designed by Nathaniel Barnaby; they were re-classed as screw sloops on 26 November 1884.

Steel torpedo-and-gunvessels