LordSunhawk wrote:Honestly, Dilandru's arguments all seem to stem from a fatal mix of Jefferson's Gunboats (We can build all these little ships and thus outgun anybody who tries to attack us!) and the worst aspects of the jeune ecole.
The major naval powers did build small gunboats... for showing the flag and gunboat diplomacy at distant stations against enemies who would at worst throw rocks at them. When they needed to protect against real commerce raiders, they needed cruisers, not hordes of little gunboats.
Gunboats could have their place in an overall force mix. The concept of the PT boat has some similarity and that was reasonably successful, after all. My problem with Dilandu's proposal is that he seems to want to use the things exclusively.
I agree with your comment about cruisers, although that is a bit more long term. For the short term, as long as what we are looking at are covoys of sailing ships and commerce raiders that are also sail powered, I would think that building large numbers of schooners armed with smooth bore cannon would be fine, at least until you start encountering explosive shells. Then you focus your ironclads on coastal work hunting down the shipyards building the privateers.
Don