Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An obsolete sailing vessel of war with two square-rigged masts, and generally of less than 500 tons burden.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun nautical A small two-masted vessel during the Age of Sail, typically carrying 12 guns, comprising two long guns in the chase position and ten carronades on the broadsides. In the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars this term implied an armed brig smaller than a brig-sloop.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compounded from gun and brig.

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Examples

  • This was a gun-brig, not so very much bigger than La

    Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

  • Only two men had followed the lieutenant from their boat, the rest being needed for her safety in the strong sea running, and those two at the signal would have been flung overboard, and the schooner (put about for the mouth of the Canche, where heavy batteries were mounted) would have had a fair chance of escape, with a good start, while the gun-brig was picking up her boat.

    Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

  • He seems to have confounded coarse caricaturists with refined and thoughtful journalists, even as, in the account of that inshore skirmish, he turns a gun-brig into a British frigate.

    Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

  • She contented herself with a harmless shot, and leaving the gun-brig to pursue the chase, bore away for more important business.

    Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

  • The gun-brig bore down on them at a great pace, feeling happy certitude that she had got a prize — not a very big one, but still worth catching.

    Springhaven Richard Doddridge 2004

  • It happened however, one day that an English gun-brig had appeared off Suez, and sent her boats ashore to take in fresh water.

    Eothen 2003

  • Carnation gun-brig; and four boats were immediately sent off, filled with armed men, who pulled directly towards the privateer.

    Jack in the Forecastle or, Incidents in the Early Life of Hawser Martingale John Sherburne Sleeper

  • And at this entrance proper precautions were taken by stationing a civil force in the speaker's gardens; while in the river, such regulations were strengthened by the parties on board the Thames police-boat, and a gun-brig moored off this point in the course of Wednesday.

    Coronation Anecdotes Giles Gossip

  • March 1800, and in bright moonlight landed three hundred lusty sailor-men fresh from French prisons, under the very nose of the battery, the guard at the port head and the _Clinker_ gun-brig.

    The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore

  • He served on board the gun-brig _Marshall_, which attended the Fisheries department in the west; next in the Mediterranean ocean; and latterly in South America.

    The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century Various

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