Except Benito:
- 1 × 64-pounder gun
With the formation of the Queensland Maritime Defence Force. To equip the new force the colonial government purchased two gunboats and a torpedo boat. However given the number of ports along the long Queensland coast it was realised that additional ships were required. Five ships had already been ordered for the Queensland Department of Harbours and Rivers when the decision was taken to convert them to also serve as auxiliary gunboats. This resulted in the fitting of a 5-inch gun and the relocation of the boilers below the waterline. The ships were as follows:
- Bonito
- Bream
- Dolphin
- Pumba
- Stingaree
These ships were built by Walkers at Maryborough and were the largest warships built in the Australian colonies before federation. The depression of the 1890s greatly curtailed operations with most of the vessels placed in reserve. Stingaree was listed until 1895 whilst Pumba remained on strength at the time of federation in 1901.
Bream (1963), Dolphin (1963) and Stingaree (1966) were sunk off Tangalooma, Moreton Bay. One of the others worked in private hands on the Brisbane River into the 1990s.
Famous quotes containing the words defence, force and/or gunboats:
“To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defence against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering.... Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide.”
—Cesare Pavese (1908–1950)
“All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)
“Leadership in today’s world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)