Bomb vessel

In the 20th century, this naval gunfire support role was carried out by the most similar purpose-built World War I- and II-era monitors, but also by other warships now firing long-range explosive shells.

[2][3][4] They were first called galiote à bombe (a word derived from the Dutch galliot, denoting a short, beamy vessel well suited for the powerful downward recoil of its weapons).

Because bomb vessels were built with extremely strong hulls to withstand the recoil of the mortars, several were converted in peacetime as ships for exploration of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, where pack ice and icebergs were a constant menace.

However, Forester erred in describing the vessels as ketches, which by the early 19th century had been replaced by full-rigged ships, and in assigning the management of the mortars to Naval officers, rather than the Royal Marine Artillery which had been formed for this specific purpose.

A later book, Hornblower in the West Indies, features a small portable "ship's mortar" mounted in a boat, used to bombard a target during a riverine operation.

In a fictionalized account, war correspondent, author, and yachtsman G. A. Henty describes in vivid detail the deployment of ten bomb-ketches by the Spanish besiegers during the final period of the siege of Gibraltar.

Like the Hornblower books, The Ramage Touch describes in great detail the technical aspects of employing a bomb vessel during the Napoleonic era.

Cockerell by Dewey Lambdin (published 1995), First Lieutenant Alan Lewrie is set ashore by his vindictive captain, for 'land service' during the siege of Toulon.

There Admiral Goodall gives him a bomb ketch, which he commands for several weeks until it is blown out of the water and sunk by a young Colonel of artillery named Buonaparte.