How to Use gunboat in a Sentence

gunboat

noun
  • Armed guards in black shirts roam the decks, and gunboats from a navy base in nearby Haifa patrol.
    — Stanley Reed Ofir Berman, New York Times, 27 July 2023
  • Constant fire from river gunboats and land forces made their position untenable.
    — James B. Nelson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 17 Aug. 2017
  • That clears the path for mass deportations and sending Navy gunboats into the Channel to turn back small boats.
    — The Week Uk, TheWeek, 7 May 2026
  • Unfortunately, none of the Iranian gunboats was shot up and sunk.
    — Rob Crilly, The Washington Examiner, 6 Feb. 2026
  • Gaza fishermen are blocked by Israeli gunboats and forbidden to venture beyond six miles.
    — William Booth, Washington Post, 6 Aug. 2017
  • This story has been corrected to reflect that work to raise and preserve the gunboat is in the proposal stage, not already underway.
    — Wilson Ring, The Seattle Times, 4 June 2017
  • The flotilla included an even older ship, a former Russian gunboat named the Politkofsky reduced into a coal barge.
    — David Reamer, Anchorage Daily News, 15 May 2022
  • The former queries were answered, but (the American gunboat’s commander) politely refused to answer the last one.
    — Brad Lendon, CNN, 26 May 2023
  • The service had instead invested in coastal anti-ship missile batteries, Bayraktar drones, and small patrol/gunboats.
    — Sébastien Roblin, Popular Mechanics, 3 Aug. 2023
  • Thomas Jefferson, for example, declined to use money set aside for gunboats in the early 1800s.
    — Lindsay Whitehurst, Chicago Tribune, 29 Jan. 2025
  • James Hughes, had taken the precaution of painting large American flags on the gunboat to prevent any mistaken fire.
    — Brad Lendon, CNN, 26 May 2023
  • The first-person video released by the Israeli military shows navy fighters on a gunboat using assault rifles and grenades to blast away at people floating in the water.
    — Drew Harwell, Washington Post, 24 Oct. 2023
  • The fort stood high above the river, where fearsome artillery was able to turn back the Union gunboats that had pounded low-lying Fort Henry into submission.
    — Bill Steiden, Des Moines Register, 24 Mar. 2026
  • Her impetuous plan to sink a German gunboat provides a strong narrative hook that propels the two lovebirds into unexpectedly heroic roles.
    — Danny Horn, EW.com, 9 Apr. 2024
  • The result was standoffs between fishing boats and Icelandic gunboats, and even the intervention of the British Royal Navy.
    — Bradley J. Cardinale, The Conversation, 27 Mar. 2025
  • In the 19th century American gunboats forced the Japanese shogunate to open its markets to foreigners.
    — The Economist, 5 Oct. 2017
  • In 2013, small Navy patrol ships engaged Iranian gunboats at least three times in international waters.
    — Michael S. Schmidt and Helene Cooper, New York Times, 14 Jan. 2016
  • Over the next 18 months, a reasonably effective convoy system was put in place, but more tankers hit mines and were attacked by Iranian gunboats, further elevating tensions.
    — James Stavridis, Time, 25 June 2019
  • How the city’s outpouring for the victims of a horrific 1905 gunboat explosion in San Diego Bay helped turn this into a Navy town.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 Dec. 2022
  • More than two decades after it was discovered at the bottom of Lake Champlain, a Revolutionary War gunboat will be raised, preserved and displayed for the public.
    — Washington Post, 4 June 2017
  • The flying gunboats typically engage targets at a range of two miles or more, which implies an ADS far more powerful than System 1 has been developed.
    — David Hambling, WIRED, 5 Dec. 2006
  • The Jersey gunboat stunt was necessary because the Garden of Eden promised by Johnson has already become a dense jungle of bureaucratic tedium.
    — Fintan O’Toole, The New York Review of Books, 13 May 2021
  • Bolshevik henchmen on the Soviet gunboat Red October seized the islands from American settlers.
    — Thomas Emanuel Dans, WSJ, 4 Nov. 2022
  • Hamilton and Madison would have been aligned in horrified opposition had Washington, without congressional action, dispatched gunboats to sink British ships.
    — Ruth Marcus, New Yorker, 5 Mar. 2026
  • The sailors on the gunboats undertook a last-minute mission without proper training or equipment and were captured after straying into the waters surrounding an Iranian naval base on Farsi Island.
    — T. Christian Miller, ProPublica, 17 Jan. 2020
  • And in 2013, officials aboard a Venezuelan gunboat detained the crew of a seismic vessel contracted by a Texas petroleum company for a week before releasing them.
    — Bert Wilkinson, Quartz, 7 Feb. 2024
  • The notice came after an Iranian gunboat fired on a container ship Tuesday causing heavy damage to the bridge of the vessel, according to an incident report from UKMTO.
    — Spencer Kimball, CNBC, 23 Apr. 2026
  • Revolutionary Guard gunboats fired on the tanker and a container ship was hit by an unknown projectile, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Operations Centre.
    — Spencer Kimball,lee Ying Shan, CNBC, 19 Apr. 2026
  • American forces defeated the British in January 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans, which was fought in part with gunboats on the Mississippi River.
    — Trevor Hughes, USA Today, 31 May 2026
  • During a fight with Iranian naval forces, the frigate USS Simpson sank an Iranian gunboat with an anti-ship missile after the Iranian boat fired a missile of its own at the Simpson and two other ships.
    — Brad Lendon, CNN Money, 5 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gunboat.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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