Royal Navy Boats On The Yangtze River
Of course, the British Royal Navy had three generations of gunboats on the Yangtze River spanning fifty years. The first were the Heron-class river gunboats, of which HMS Nightingale ; and HMS Robin, HMS Sandpiper, HMS Snipe served on Yangtze and West Rivers until 1914 and were sold in 1919. Later, in the Woodcock Class of gunboats came into service: these included the Woodcock, Moorhen, Teal and Widgeon.
The Insect-class gunboats, built in Britain for service on the Danube in 1915, were moved to the China Station and the Yangtze River in the 1920s. Concomitant to the Insect class were the Dragonfly class of smaller boats—Dragonfly, Grasshopper, Locust and Mosquito. Unfortunately, most of these became casualties of war in 1942 with the Japanese attacks.
In 1926 the Wanhsien incident, brought the attention of the perils of China. A local warlord seized the Swire steamer Wahsien and held ship and officers for ransom. British gunboats attended and fired. The officers escaped, and the gunboats shelled the shoreline, from where the Chinese were firing rifles and artillery at the boats. (See HMS Cockchafer.)
Read more about this topic: Steamboats On The Yangtze River
Famous quotes containing the words yangtze river, royal navy, royal, navy, boats, yangtze and/or river:
“In the Yangtze River waves push the waves ahead; so in life new people constantly replace the old ones.”
—Chinese proverb.
“The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island.”
—William Blackstone (1723–1780)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Bodhidharma sailing the Yangtze on a reed
Lenin in a sealed train through Germany
Hsuan Tsang, crossing the Pamirs
Joseph, Crazy Horse, living the last free
starving high-country winter of their tribes.
Surrender into freedom revolt into slavery—”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)