Steamboats on the Yangtze River

First Opium War

The first merchant steamer in China, the "Jardine", was built to order for the Firm in 1835. She was a small vessel intended for use as a mail and passenger carrier between Lintin, Macao, and Whampoa. However, after several trips, the Chinese authorities, for reasons best known to themselves, prohibited her entrance into the river. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary who personified gunboat diplomacy, decided mainly on the "suggestions" of "Jardine" to wage war on China. In mid-1840, a large fleet of war ships appeared on the China coast and with the first cannon fire aimed at a British ship, the "Royal Saxon", the British started the first of the Opium Wars. British warships destroyed numerous shore batteries and enemy warships, laid waste to several coastal forts, indiscriminately bombarding town after town with heavy cannon fire, even pushing up north to threaten the Imperial Palace in Beijing itself. The Imperial Government, forced to surrender, gave in to the demands of the British. British military superiority was clearly evident during the armed conflict. British warships, constructed using such innovations as steam power combined with sail and the use of iron in shipbuilding, wreaked havoc on coastal towns; such ships (like the "Nemesis") were not only virtually indestructible but also highly mobile and able to support a gun platform with very heavy guns. In addition, the British troops were armed with modern muskets and cannons, unlike the Qing forces. After the British took Canton, they sailed up the Yangtze and took the tax barges, a devastating blow to the Empire as it slashed the revenue of the imperial court in Beijing to just a small fraction of what it had been.

In 1842 the Qing authorities sued for peace, which concluded with the Treaty of Nanjing signed on a gunboat in the river, negotiated in August of that year and ratified in 1843. In the treaty, China was forced to pay an indemnity to Britain, open five ports to Britain, and cede Hong Kong to Queen Victoria. In the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, the Qing empire also recognized Britain as an equal to China and gave British subjects extraterritorial privileges in treaty ports.

A Chinese song From the Boxer Rebellion sums up the Middle Kingdom's attitude to the European Foreign Devils.

It will not be difficult to exterminate the foreign devils
then.
Push aside the railway track.
Pull out the telegraph poles ;
immediately after this destroy the steamers.

US involvement

The US, at the same time, wanted to protect its interests and expand trade, ventured the USS "Wachusett" six-hundred miles up the river to Hankow about 1860. While the USS "Ashuelot", a sidewheeler, made her way up the river to Ichang in 1874. The first USS "Monocacy", a sidewheel gunboat, began charting the Yangtze River in 1871. The first USS "Palos", an armed tug, was on the Asiatic Station into 1891, cruising the Chinese and Japanese coasts, visiting the open treaty ports and making occasional voyages up the Yangtze River. From June to September 1891, anti-foreign riots up the Yangtze forced the warship to make an extended voyage as far as Hankow, 600 miles upriver. Stopping at each open treaty port, the gunboat cooperated with naval vessels of other nations and repaired damage. She then operated along the north and central China coast and on the lower Yangtze until June 1892. With the cessation of bloodshed with the Taiping Rebellion, Europeans put more steamers on the river. The French, eager to secure their share, engaged the Chinese in war over the rule of Vietnam. The Sino-French Wars of the 1880s emerged with the Battle of Shipu having French cruisers in the lower Yangtze.

Chinese ships on the Yangtze

The China Navigation Company was an early shipping company founded in 1876 in London, initially to trade up the Yangtze River from their Shanghai base with passengers and cargo. Chinese coastal trade started shortly after and in 1883 a regular service to Australia was initiated. Most of the company's ships were seized by Japan in 1941 and services did not resume until 1946. Robert Dollar was a later shipping magnate, who became enormously influential moving Californian and Canadian lumber tothe Chinese and Japanese market.

Yichang or Ichang, 1600 km (1000 mi) from the sea, is the head of navigation for river steamers; oceangoing vessels may navigate the river to Hankow, a distance of almost 1000 km (almost 600 mi) from the sea. For about 320 km (about 200 mi) inland from its mouth, the river is virtually at sea level.

The Chinese Government, too, had steamers. It had its own naval fleet, the Nanyang Fleet, which fell prey to the French fleet. The Chinese rebuilt its fleet, only to have it ravaged by another war with Japan in 1895, the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, and ongoing inefficiency and corruption. Chinese companies ran their own steamers, but were second tier to European operations at the time. With the Japanese advance into the east coast of China in 1938, enterprises and numerous people withdrew from Wuhan to the west and Sichuan. The Kuomintang navy undertook the responsibility of defending the Yangtze River and covering the withdrawal. On 24 October, while patrolling the waters of the Yangtze River near the town of Jinkou, in Wuchang (Jiangxia, Wuhan), the "Zhongshan" was bombed by six Japanese aircraft . The aircraft dived, strafed and bombed the "Zhongshan". Despite shooting down two of the aircraft, the "Zhongshan" eventually sank due to the serious damage she had sustained. Twenty five Chinese officers and soldiers were killed in the battle.

Commercial involvement

Steamers came late to the upper river. The three gorges and the strong current hindered plans. Archibald Little attempted a voyage with the "Lee-Chuan", and the "Kuling", delays and weak engines meant that he only succeeded in the first vessel in 1898. Little soon built the first truly successful boat, the "Pioneer", in about 1899. She plied the river for two more decades and was even the flagship for the Royal Navy on the China Station. There were a few commercial steamers on the upper river by the turn of the century and the Boxer Rebellion. The commercial firms of Jardine Matheson, Butterfield and Swire, and Standard Oil had their own steamers on the river. Until 1881, the India and China coastal and river services were operated by several companies. In that year, however, these were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, Ltd., a public company under the management of Jardines. The Jardine company pushed inland up the Yangtze River on which a specially designed fleet was built to meet all requirements of the river trade. For many years, this fleet gave unequalled service. Jardines established an enviable reputation for the efficient handling of shipping. As a result, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company invited the firm to attend to the Agency of their Shire Line which operated in the Far East. Standard Oil ran the tankers "Mei Ping", "Mei An", and "Mei Hsia".

With the Treaty Ports, the European powers and Japan were allowed to float navy ships into China's internal waters. The British, US and French did this. A full international fleet featured on Chinese waters: Austro-Hungarians, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and German navy ships came to Shanghai and the treaty ports. The Japanese engaged in open war with the Chinese twice, and Russians twice, over conquest of the Chinese Qing empire-- in the First and Second Sino-Japanese War 1895, and 1905;and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Incidentally, both the French and Japanese navies were heavily involved in running Vietnamese opium and narcotics to Shanghai, where it was refined into morphine. It was then transhipped by liner back to Marseilles and France (ie. French Connection) for processing in Germany and eventual sale in the US or Europe. In 1909 the gunboat USS "Samar" changed station to Shanghai, where she regularly patrolled the lower Yangtze River up to Nanking and Wuhu. Following anti-foreign riots in Changsha in April 1910, which destroyed a number of missions and merchant warehouses, "Samar" sailed up the Yangtze River to Hankow and then Changsa to show the flag and help restore order. The gunboat was also administratively assigned to the United States Asiatic Fleet that year, which had been re-established by the Navy to better protect, in the words of the Bureau of Navigation, "American interests in the Orient." After returning to Shanghai in August, she sailed up river again the following summer, passing Wuhu in June but then running aground off Kichau on 1 July 1911. After staying stuck in the mud for two weeks, "Samar" broke free and sailed back down river to take on coal. Returning upriver, the gunboat reached Hankow in August and Ichang in September where she overwintered, owing to both the dry season and the outbreak of rebellion at Wuchang in October 1911. Tensions eased and the gunboat turned downriver in July 1912, arriving at Shanghai in October. "Samar" patrolled the lower Yangtze after fighting broke out in the summer 1913, a precursor to a decade of conflict between provincial warlords in China. In 1919, she was placed on the disposal list at Shanghai following a collision with a Yangtze river steamer that damaged her bow.

Increased US presence

The Spanish boats were replaced by newer vessels in the 1920s. "Luzon" and "Mindanao" were the largest, "Oahu" and "Panay" next in size, and "Guam" and "Tutuila" the smallest. China in the first fifty years of the twentieth century, was in low-grade chaos. Warlords, revolutions, natural disasters, civil war and invasions contributed. Yangtze boats were involved in the Nanjing Incident in 1927 when the Communists and Nationalists broke into open war. Chiang Kai-shek's massacre of the Communists in Shanghai in 1927 furthered the unrest, US Marines with tanks were landed.

River steamers were popular targets for both Nationalists and Communists, and peasants who would take periodic pot-shots at vessels. During the course of service the second USS "Palos" protected American interests in China down the entire length of the Yangtze, at times convoying U.S. and foreign vessels on the river, evacuating American citizens during periods of disturbance and in general giving credible presence to U.S. consulates and residences in various Chinese cities. In the period of great unrest in central China in the 1920s, "Palos" was especially busy patrolling the upper Yangtze against bands of warlord soldiers and outlaws. The warship engaged in continuous patrol operations between Ichang and Chungking throughout 1923, supplying armed guards to merchant ships, and protecting Americans at Chungking while that city was under siege by a warlord army

Japanese takeover

The British had a series of Insect class gunboats which patrolled between Chungking and Shanghai. Cruisers, destroyers and Fly class vessels also patrolled the river.

On January 28 1932, the Japanese attacked the Chinese nationalists around Shanghai. Around midnight, Japanese carrier aircraft bombed the city in the first major aircraft carrier action in the Far East. Three thousand Japanese troops proceeded to attack various targets, such as train stations, around the city. From 1931 to 1933, the cruiser "Tenryū" was assigned to patrol the Yangtze River and was thus in combat during the January 28 Incident at Shanghai in 1932. The Battle of Shanghai of 1937 was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army, Republic of China and the Imperial Japanese Army, Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the entire war. On August 13 1937, the Japanese and Chinese exchanged fire in Shanghai in the ongoing war. The Chinese 88th Division retaliated with mortar attacks. Sporadic shooting continued through the day until 4pm, when the Japanese headquarters ordered the naval ships of the Third Fleet, stationed in the Yangtze and the Huangpu River to open fire on Chinese positions in the city. In the late night of August 13, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Zhang Zhizhong to begin the Chinese offensive the next day. On August 22, the Japanese 3rd, 8th, and 11th Divisions made an amphibious assault under cover from naval bombardments and proceeded to land in Chuanshakou (川沙口), Shizilin (獅子林), and Baoshan (寶山), towns on the northeast coast some fifty kilometers away from downtown Shanghai. Japanese landings in northeast Shanghai suburban areas meant that many Chinese troops, who were deployed in Shanghai's urban center, had to be redeployed to coastal regions to counter the landings.

The most infamous incident was the Panay incident, when USS "Panay" and HMS "Bee" were dive-bombed by Japanese aircraft in late 1937 during the Rape of Nanking. The Europeans were forced to leave the Yangtze River with the Japanese takeover of the Settlements in 1941. The former steamers were either sabotaged or pressed into Japanese or Chinese service.

The Post War Period

After the Japanese surrender, the Communists and the Nationalists continued their civil war. The Americans and British tried to re-instate their presence as it had been before the war, but to little avail. On April 21 1949, Communist forces crossed the Yangtze River, capturing the Capital Nanking. And with the Communist takeover of Peking in late 1949, the European exploitation of China was over, though steamers continued to work the river. However, little is known in the west about this period as China became a closed country. Many retired North American steamers were sent to Japan or Taiwan for scrapping. Some were pressed into mainland china service. By the 1970s China embarked on its own ship and engine building programs and steamers have since been replaced by diesel tugs, freighters and ferry boats.

ee also

*China Station
*"The Sand Pebbles"
*USS "Asheville"
*Brown water navy
*Yangtze Patrol
*HMS "Amethyst"