Adams Class Gunboat (1874)

Five Adams class gunboats (also called the Enterprise class and described as sloops in British some sources) were completed for the U.S. Navy during between 1876 and 1879.

Overview of five vessels
Citations for this data available on individual ship pages
Name	Builder	Laid Down	Launched	Commissioned	Fate
Adams	Donald McKay at Boston NYd	Feb 1874	24 Oct, 1874	21 Jul, 1876	Sold 5 Aug, 1920
Alliance	Norfolk NYd	1873	8 Mar, 1875	8 Jan, 1877	Sold 13 Nov, 1911
Enterprise	John W. Griffiths at Portsmouth NYd	1873	13 Jun, 1874	16 Mar, 1877	Sold 1 Oct, 1909
Essex	Donald McKay at Portsmouth NYd	1873	26 Oct, 1874	3 Oct, 1876	Sold 23 Dec, 1930
Nipsic	Washington NYd	1873	6 Jun, 1878	11 Oct, 1879	Sold 13 Feb, 1913

Design & Construction

Designed for operating under sail on overseas cruising duties, aided by engines designed by the Bureau of Steam Engineering which were far more economical than those of the Navy's Civil War-era gunboats.

Adams, Enterprise, and Essex were built at Navy Yards by private contractors.

Armament

As Completed

• one 11-inch smoothbore (except for Nipsic, which carried one 8-inch muzzle-loading rifle instead)
• four 9-inch smoothbores
• one 60-pounder muzzle-loading rifle (except for Nipsic, which carried a 60-pounder breech-loading rifle instead)

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.
• Silverstone, Paul H. (2008). The U.S. Navy Warship Series: The Navy of World War II, 1922-1947. New York: Routledge.