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Originally Posted by Michele
Well... and why is a warship this big called a "patrol gunboat"? Official designation or what?
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It was also called a "peace cruiser" -- it was a "show the flag" and patrol the colonies type of vessel. IIRC the Washington and London treaties had a loophole allowing such a ship (relatively small & slow) to NOT count against the various cruiser/destroyer tonnage quotas. The idea was that since most of the signatory nations were empires (France, Italy, Japan, UK, even US -- see Philippines) they would want such ships and they'd be of limited use in war.
Actually, they might have been more useful as escorts against German "hilfskreuzer" types than were the various converted merchant ships.
As it was, again IIRC, the Erie/Charleston were the only US ships in this "peace cruiser" category. The French navy built a variety of "colonial sloops" for similar purposes, but I don't recall their characteristics off-hand.