Bombardment was usually performed by a specialised mortar boat, known originally as a "galiote à bombe", or "bomb ketch", which was the brainchild of a Basque/French mathematician and theoretician called Bernard Renau d'Eliçagaray (Inspector General of the French Navy).
As early as 1682, five of Renau d'Eliçagaray's bomb ketches were used in the siege of Algiers. Using their mortars (known as "Petit Renaus") these ships could fling their explosive shells more than 1,300 meters - obliterating the seaward fortifications and killing many hundreds of the town's inhabitants and defenders. This engraving by Sbonski de Passebon* shows a fairly typical French galiote à bombe, of about 1690 (note how the masts and rigging are designed to allow for the upward flight of the fixed, forward-facing, mortars: these were aimed by reeling in or paying out double anchor cables at the prow, to turn the vessel this way and that as it faced its target).
The Galiote à bombe was a beamy, sturdy vessel, explicitly designed to absorb the immense downward recoil of their weapons. It was Huguenot exiles who brought the technology to Great Britain, and by the time of the Napoleonic wars, bomb vessels were firing quite sophisticated explosive shells that could cause immense damage on impact or during air-burst. British bomb ketches were often named after volcanoes, and used chain rigging on their forward masts, to avoid the risk of fires.
Angola 1986 KZr6.000.00 sg1174, scott962d
http://www.quora.com/How-effective-was- ... -the-coast