Dispatch boat

Dispatch boats were small boats, and sometimes large ships, tasked to carry military dispatches from ship to ship or from ship to shore or, in some cases from shore to shore. Dispatch boats were employed when other means of transmitting a message was not possible or safe or as quick.

Dispatch boats, which performed their dispatch-carrying duties only on a temporary basis, should not be confused with

Generally, dispatch boats served the military, and paquetbots served commerce.

Use of term by the U.S. Navy

Dispatch boat was a term used by the United States Navy in its journal accounts to describe boats which carried messages, or mail—otherwise termed dispatches—between high-ranking military officials aboard other ships or to land-based destinations.^{[citation needed]}

Dispatch boats during the American Revolution

In 1776 the Continental Navy ship Lynch was assigned dispatch boat duty and, after delivering her secret dispatches in France, set sail for the United States with French secret dispatches, only to be captured, but not before destroying the French dispatches.^[1]

Dispatch boat race during the historic Battle of Trafalgar

Once the

The US Navy did not have enough dispatch boats available during the Spanish–American War of 1898, so private yachts and tugboats used by newspapers were frequently tasked by the Navy to carry messages.^[3] USS Vega was a US dispatch boat during World War I.^{[citation needed]}

Demise of the dispatch boat

Dispatch boats became largely unnecessary with the advent of underwater cable and shipboard radio technology in the early 20th century. However, there was a brief reprise during the

• 
  Imperial Russian dispatch boat No. 218 (former torpedo boat), after striking a mine in 1915
• 
  Imperial Russian dispatch boat Roksana
• 
  The tug

  Knickerbocker

  , prior to her United States Navy service as tug, minesweeper, and dispatch boat

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dispatch boats.

• Mail steamer
• Aviso
• Mail-boat

References