Alert Class Gunboat (1874)

Two of the three Alert class gunboats were still in service with the U.S. Navy during the 1880s. The third was lost in 1877.

Overview of three vessels
Citations for this data available on individual ship pages
Name	Hull No.	Builder	Laid Down	Launched	Commissioned	Fate
Alert	AS-4	John Roach & Sons	Sep 1873	18 Sep, 1874	27 May, 1875	Sold 29 Jul, 1922
Huron	—	John Roach & Sons	1873	2 Sep, 1874	15 Nov, 1875	Foundered 24 Nov, 1877
Ranger	PG-23 IX-18	Harlan & Hollingsworth	1873	10 May, 1876	27 Nov, 1876	Transferred 11 Apr, 1940

Design & Construction

Authorized simultaneously with the preceding Adams class, the three Alerts were built with iron hulls instead of wooden ones owing to political pressure.

Armament

As Completed

• one 11-inch smoothbore
• two 9-inch smoothbores
• one 60-pounder muzzle-loading rifle

For subsequent modifications, see individual articles.

See Also

• Wikipedia

Bibliography

• Bauer, K. Jack and Roberts, Stephen S. (1991). Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants. New York: Greenwood Press.
• Chesneau, Robert; Kolesnik, Eugene (editors) (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press. (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
• Silverstone, Paul H. (2006). The U.S. Navy Warship Series: Civil War Navies, 1855-1883. New York: Routledge.
• Silverstone, Paul H. (2006). The U.S. Navy Warship Series: The New Navy 1883-1922. New York: Routledge.