History Book Club
The U.S. Navy in Asia
Wednesday, March 28. 2018
Wednesday, March 28,
2018: The U.S. Navy in Asia. The Asiatic Squadron. The Yangtze Patrol. Patrolling
the Philippine Islands, “China Sailors”, World War II, The Seventh Fleet. [Suggested by Walt Frederick]
Tolley, RADM Kemp; Yangtze
Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China, Annapolis, MD: Bluejacket Books, U.S.
Naval Institute Press, 1971
Kemp Tolley
spins out the sea stories one after another as be tells the story of the United
States Navy in China for a century, from 1854 to 1946.
China in
the 19th century was really the wild west, and European governments
staked out territory all over China, paying off local officials and then
conducting trade from one end of the country to the other. Before the age of rails, trade moved by the
rivers, as it had for centuries.
China, a
land whose culture was flourishing long before these Europeans, was now in effect
a colony of European nations, a humiliating condition for a proud people.
As European
nations worked out treaties with Chinese officials, their navies followed, and
they rented out storage sheds (godowns) and built housing and clubs and playing
fields for the crews, and even horse race tracks.
Where our
American businessmen and missionaries went, the Navy followed, with small,
shallow draft gunboats that could sail up the Yangtze River from Shanghai all
the way to Chungking, 1700 miles inland.
Shanghai, (Above the Sea) on the coast, was built on
the mouth of the Whangpoo River, and in the middle of the 19th
century there were 3,000,000 Chinese and some 50,000 Europeans and Americans living
there.
Just
upstream was Chinkyiang (to Pacify the River),
the first treaty port on what foreigners called the Yangtze, but Chinese called
this marvelous waterway various names at different locations.
Next
upstream was Nanking (now Nanjing) (Southern
capital), then Wuhu, and next Kiukiang (Nine
rivers meeting at one place), now called Jiujiang,
Next was
Hankow (now Wuhan) (At the mouth of the
Han river), 600 miles inland. Then Shasi (now Shashi) (The market on the sand), and then Changsha (Sand Spit), actually 85 miles from the Yangtze.
Next
upstream was I Chang (now Yichang) (Can
be prosperous), 400 miles upstream of Hankow,1000 miles from the mouth.
Finally, deep
in the province of Szechwan, and above beautiful but treacherous gorges which made
river traffic dangerous, was Chungking (now Chongqing) (Happy Again), the World War II headquarters of Chiang Kai Shek and
his Nationalist Army.
Map of Yangtze River in China
American
merchantmen beat a path to China with clipper ships in the early 1800s, and our
government soon began to send U.S. Navy ships over to protect U.S. interests
and American citizens. The industrial revolution
urged Americans to find new markets, there was brisk business in shipping tea
and carrying Chinese coolies to America to work on railroads and gold mines.
With some five million tons of sailing merchantmen, America was becoming as
powerful as England on the high seas.
China in
those days was filthy, smelly and loaded with diseases. Each city and town had its taotai, who was
the head man, connected loosely at least to Peking and the Emperor. The local
taotai had the authority to punish anyone, even to execute them. This man worked
in concert with a cast of characters who could get anything for you, for a
price.
There were
occasional revolutions, uprisings and riots here and there. There were local firebrands who would periodically
start trouble with the foreigners, and the navy gunboats would show up, fire
some rounds into the crowd, perhaps land a platoon of Marines, and quiet things
down.
American
Navy activity began with shallow draft gunboats, because that was all that
could sail over the shallow parts of the river. These boats had side paddle
wheels, and when they appeared in various ports the Chinese were thrilled
because they had not often seen boats belching smoke before.
It was in 1853
when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay in Japan and demanded that
the Japanese grant America the privilege of entering Japan to conduct
trade. We had already made arrangements
up and down the coast of China, and this opened up Japan to the western world. Britain, Russia, France and Holland followed
soon after.
Perry often
sailed into Shanghai, but he didn’t like China.
It was dirty and disorganized, there was graft and corruption. In Japan, everything was clean and orderly.
I joined
the Navy in 1953, just a few years after the last “River rat” had come home
from duty in China, and we heard many tales of these men because it was a world
of wonder for a sailor. The gunboats spent much time in port, so there was plenty
of time for sailors to explore the Chinese cities on the Yangtze. Wherever there
were sailors, there were bars and girls, and some men took up life ashore with
a Chinese girl. Aboard ship they could
hire boys to cook their breakfast, and to do their chores.
When the Yangtze
patrol started in the middle of the 19th century, it was different.
Sailors arose at the firing of a reveille gun at sunrise, and went up on deck to
begin holystoning, which involved using a large stone attached to a mop handle
to scrub the teak decks until they were shining. Then at four bells, 8 o’clock
they had breakfast, which included spirits of one-third of a half pint. Then
the men washed up and got on their uniforms for inspection, at 10 a.m. At noon
was dinner, with more grog, and then work al afternoon.
CDR Kemp Tolley (1908-2000)
When Tolley
gets to the early 1930s you sense that he is not writing history any longer but
telling his own story on the Yangtze Patrol.
There are the sailors with the Russian girl friend back in Shanghai, the
young naval officers sweating out operating a gunboat in the Yangtze with only
six inches of water under the keel, or heading up into the gorges toward
Chungking against raging currents, offloading coal to reduce the draft, hiring
coolies in a junk to carry the excess coal… or trying to manage paying the crew
and purchasing food and supplies with a collection of Chinese yuan, British
pounds, Mexican silver, and American greenbacks
and goldbacks.
In between,
there’s the occasional riot or revolution, sandwiched with elegant little
parties with officers and their ladies, and businessmen and wives, from Britain,
France, Holland, Russia, Japan and Germany. There’s wheeling and dealing, with
a whole string of shady characters, Chinese and foreign.
Tolley’s
detailed account of the voyage of USS Palos up the Yangtze to Chungking in 1934,
pitting her old, coal-fired boilers and creaking hull against roaring,
rock-strewn rapids is a tale of
marvelous seamanship, facing danger that had wrecked many ships and killed
thousands.
The end really came slowly for the Yangtze River Patrol, but Tolley reports the Japanese attack on USS Panay in 1938 in vivid detail. The attack was a monumental screwup by the Japanese, and it showed terribly poor communication between the otherwise efficient Imperial Japanese Navy and Army. They didn't want to get America in their war just yet. That was to come in 1941.
The end really came slowly for the Yangtze River Patrol, but Tolley reports the Japanese attack on USS Panay in 1938 in vivid detail. The attack was a monumental screwup by the Japanese, and it showed terribly poor communication between the otherwise efficient Imperial Japanese Navy and Army. They didn't want to get America in their war just yet. That was to come in 1941.
I first
sailed into Hong Kong in 1958, and much of what one reads of life along the
Yangtze River was still lurking in the shadows: the little Chinese boys who, if
a sailor tossed a Hong Kong dollah
(worth 10 cents) into the water near the ship, would dive in and collect
it. There was the No Squeak Shoe Company, where sailors would have shoes made to
order during a week in port--- shoes that would dissolve in salt water after
leaving port. And Mary Soo, a venerable
legend, with an unknown number of women operating out of small sampans, who
would paint the hulls of weather-beaten U.S. Navy ships in return for all the
garbage from the galley… And the chief
petty officers or sailors who were especially skilled at cumshaw, and could
arrange for little men to come aboard and repair a sheet metal ventilator for a
can of ham…. and always, the sleazy, shady characters who could get you just
about anything, for a few HK dollars.
This book
is truly a delightful story.
Mary Soo's sampan, 1957
S.W. Coulbourn
HISTORY
BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2018
Wednesday, April 25, 2018: A look at the world and times of Jane Austen. Rockport
Public Library is celebrating “Austen in April”. Read about the life of Austen, or focus upon
England in the early 1800s, the Royal Navy at that time, the gentle English
world Jane lived in. Feel free to read Sense and Sensibility, Pride
and Prejudice, Persuasion, or any of her novels to gather a sense of
Jane and her world. [Suggested by
Christiann Guibeau]
Wednesday, May 30,
2018: A History of Public Relations. Managing
the news, propaganda, image-building. Hitler’s Joseph Goebbels. Ancient
persuasive techniques. How information, false. Tainted or factual, can be used
to elect leaders, start wars, and more. [Suggested
by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, June 27,
2018: The History of Language. Can you understand the English spoken by
Chaucer? [WHAN that Aprille with his
shoures soote; The droghte of Marche
hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour,]
Choose any language and learn how it grew from its ancient roots, how it
absorbed other languages, how it spread, and its variations in use in the world
today. Did you know that only one in 40 Italians spoke Italian in 1861? What language is most widely spoken in the
world today? How are languages changing in modern times? [Suggested by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, July 25,
2018: Immigration to America. How
did we all get here? Read about the
history of immigration, at any stage – from first settlers to the great
immigration waves of the 19th and early 20th centuries;
victims of the Irish Potato famine, Jews fleeing persecution in Europe,
Europeans suffering poverty in their countries, Africans brought here as
slaves, Chinese brought here to build railroads; Fugitives of war everywhere;
Mexicans and Central Americans coming to pick crops. Read about immigration
policies and national drives to keep out or encourage immigration. [Suggested by Walt Frederick.]
Wednesday, August 29, 2018. Fighting
the U.S. Constitution. Times and events when the Americans and even
Presidents went against the freedoms in our Constitution. E, g, Alien and
Sedition Acts of 1798, Indian Removal Act under Jackson, Mexican American War, suspension
of Habeas Corpus under Lincoln, Red Scare in 1920, McCarthyism in 1950’s, and Patriot
Act 2001. [Suggested by William
Tobin]
Wednesday, September 26: Religion and Politics in America. Religious impact in American political events. E.g.:
Puritan Exceptionalism, justification of Slavery through the Bible, Abolition
Movement, treatment of Native American Christianization movement, Justification
of Imperialism’s Christianization mission. [Suggested
by William Tobin]
Massachusetts
54th Infantry Regiment (Afro-American) at Fort Wagner
Wednesday, October 24, 2018. (vice Oct. 31): African
American Warriors and their place in American History. From the American
Revolution, during the Civil War to Korean War. E.g.: Contraband to
Massachusetts 54th, Buffalo Soldiers and Native American Wars, Spanish American
War and Truth about Battle of San Juan Hill, World War I and use of African
American soldiers with French combat troops, World War II and Segregated
all African American combat units: Armor, Transport, Tuskegee Airmen,
Desegregation and Korean War. [Suggested by William Tobin]
Wednesday, November 28, 2018: Guns in American
History. E.g. American Revolution and the Minutemen; Going West with new
technology: six guns, repeating rifles, Twentieth Century automatic weapons
after World War I, : pistols, rifles, Tommy guns, The St. Valentine’s Massacres
of 1929 and 2018. Control vs. freedom of gun use. and Machine Gun laws, mass
shootings in America: rifles, pistols, military style weapons, Guns laws
in 21st century America. [Suggested by William Tobin]
December 2018: No
meeting.
