About: Castore-class gunboat

The Italian Castore-class gunboats, Castore and Polluce, were a class of two Rendel gunboats, designed and built by Sir W G Armstrong Mitchell & Co.'s Elswick Works in the late 1880s to a contract by the Italian War Ministry. Designed by Philip Watts and , and constructed in Elswick's Tyneside yard in the United Kingdom, the two gunboats were disassembled and shipped to Italy for reassembly in the Armstrong facility at Pozzuoli, proving to be the only ships constructed there after the Italian government cancelled the shipyard project. It is uncertain whether the vessels were designed as testbeds for heavy guns, or were intended from the outset as operational gunboats.