Early 20th century China was plagued with famine, disease, and bloodshed. The United States Navy’s Yangtze Patrol cruised the Yangtze River, the mighty waterway that flows through the Chinese heartland. Their main mission was to protect American lives and property from marauding Chinese armies and the bandit gangs that infested the river.
The Yangtze Patrol or YANGPAT
There was an American naval presence on the Yangtze as early as 1854, but fairly sporadic until after 1900. In the early years the Patrol was neglected, treated as almost an afterthought by State Department officials. After the Spanish-American War of 1898 the Patrol acquired a number of Spanish gunboats as war prizes. They became the mainstays of the Yangtze Patrol until about World War I.
The Patrol was officially organized on December 25, 1919. By the mid-1920s it was recognized that the Patrol was becoming woefully inadequate for the tasks at hand. The force was small, its ships becoming rapidly antiquated. The United States was losing “face,” a concept always important in China.
The “New Six,” American Shipping in China, and Chinese Bandits
The U.S. Navy constructed six new gunboats for China, a belated recognition of the Yangtze River trade’s growing importance. All built between 1926-1927, they were the Luzon and Mindanao, the Oahu and Panay, and the Guam(later Wake) and Tutuila. In the 1920s American-flag passenger and cargo service with the Robert Dollar Line, America West China Company, and the Yangtze River Steamship Company often needed protection.
China was still in turmoil, with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists locked in mortal conflict with warlords, Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communists, and later the Japanese. Warlord armies, Communist partisans, and just plain thieves infested the Yangtze. Usually westerners lumped them all together as generic “bandits.”
U.S. Navy gunboats escorted vessels, negotiated the release of kidnapped Americans, rescued missionaries and other U.S. citizens, and used armed force if the occasion demanded it.
On November 12, 1930, for example, the Panay encountered a couple of “bandit” trench mortars that opened fire on the gunboat. As Kemp Tolley’s Yangtze Patrol : The U.S. Navy in China puts it, the troublesome mortars were soon silenced, with “seven 3-inch high explosive shells and 450 machine gun bullets (that) did the trick nicely in two firing runs.”
Life Aboard a U.S. Gunboat, and The Sand Pebbles
Life aboard a U.S. gunboat was colorful, fascinating, and comfortable. Most of the hard work was done by Chinese servants. China was an exotic place to most Americans of the time, even if marred by extreme poverty and violence. Goods were cheap, and sailors could take liberty at Shanghai, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The gunboaters, affectionately called “River Rats,” could patronize the many clubs, dance halls, and bars in Shanghai. The more adventuresome could go to brothels or have a drink in one of the infamous “dives” at Blood Alley.
Much of this life was detailed in Richard McKenna’s fiction novel The Sand Pebbles, later made into a 1966 movie starring Steve McQueen. And speaking of Hollywood, character actor Jack Warden was a China sailor. While serving on a gunboat, probably the U.S.S. Guam, he witnessed the Japanese take Hankow (now Hankou) in 1938.
The Sino-Japanese War of 1937, and the Coming of World War II
The Yangtze Patrol’s mission became increasingly difficult after war broke out between China and Japan. The U.S. was officially neutral, but that didn’t stop the Japanese from sinking the gunboat Panay in 1937. Official Japanese apologies and a cash reparation averted war. But in 1941 relations with Japan were deteriorating, and it was decided the Patrol should be withdrawn to the Philippines. The Tutuila remained in Chungking, in “free” Chinese territory. The Guam, renamed the Wake, stayed behind in Shanghai as a communications ship and was later captured by the Japanese. The rest made it to the Philippines.
YANGPAT was formally disolved in 1942. The gunboats that reached the Philippines were all eventually sunk or scuttled, their crews becoming Japanese POWs.
Sources:
Glenn Howell, Gunboat on the Yangtze: The Diary of Captain Glenn F. Howell of the U.S.S. Palos, 1920-1921 (McFarland, 2002)
Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley,(Ret), Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China Naval Institute Press, 1971)
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