Flyboat

The flyboat was a European light warship of between 70 to 200 tons, used in the late 16th and early 17th century; the name was subsequently applied to a number of disparate vessels.

The name "flyboat" is derived from Dutch "vlieboot", a boat with a shallow enough draught to be able to navigate a shallow "vlie" or river estuary, such as the Vlie. Armed flyboats were used by the naval forces of the Dutch rebels, the Watergeuzen, in the beginning of the Eighty Years' War. The type resembled a small carrack and had two or at most three masts, a high board and a dozen iron cannon. Small, inexpensive and manoeuvrable, it was ideal for privateering activities in the European coastal waters and soon imitated by privateers or pirates of other nations. The Dutch navy, and their enemies, the Dunkirkers, at first extensively employed flyboats. In 1588 the army of Alexander Farnese was blocked in Dunkirk by a fleet of thirty Dutch flyboats commanded by Lieutenant-Admiral Justin of Nassau, preventing him from joining the Spanish Armada to invade England.

In the early 17th century the warship type became obsolete by the invention by the Dunkirkers of the frigate, then a small galleon type. However civilian Dutch "vlieboten" continued to be built and evolved during the 18th century into much larger cromsters ("kromstevens"), then flat coastal cargo ships of up to 1200 tons. At the same time the term flyboat was used for a swift fishing vessel on the Atlantic. In the 19th century the term was used in England for canal boats, resembling small Dutch cromsters.

Canal carrying company flyboat

A flyboat is also a narrowboat which works all day and all night (24/7) on the English canal system without mooring.