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Spanish Gunboats of the «Cánovas del Castillo» Class
Authors: Alexander F. Mitrofanov

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The paper considers the history of the creation and operation of gunboats of the «Cánovas del Castillo» class in the Spanish Navy. Ships of this class became an important stage in the Spanish military shipbuilding; they eliminated the flaws inherent in the gunboats of the previous «Recalde» class, having received a generally quite successful type, well suited for service in Spain and military operations in Morocco. Subsequently, this successful class after a small upgrade resulted in gunboats built for Mexico «Guanajuato» class.
Gunboats of the «Cánovas del Castillo» class took an active part in the Spanish Civil war of 1936–39, all of which ended up in the Nationalist Navy. One of the gunboats, the «Dato», was sunk by Republican Naval forces. After her rise, gunboat repair was combined in a modernization that turned out to be so successful that the rest of the gunboats also underwent a similar alteration. However, created for the colonial service, gunboats of the «Cánovas del Castillo» class could not fit into the Spanish post-war doctrines and already in the 1950s they were all scrapped.