Few people associate the German Navy with Yangtse gunboat patrols. But between 1900 and 1914 the Imperial German Navy operated a small fleet of river gunboats in China. The boats, a part of the East Asia Cruiser Squadron, served on the Yangtse and Si rivers.
During the early 1890s, the German Navy had organized the East Asia Cruiser Squadron with the mission to protect the expanding German commercial interests in China.1 The squadron staff, observing the maxim that the best defense is a strong offense, reasoned that the way to accomplish that mission was through a program of commercial surveys to determine the potential for German economic development in those areas of China that were accessible by water. However, the Cruiser Squadron lacked shallow draft boats that were able to go upriver into the interior.2
As late as 1897, when the German Navy seized the Yellow Sea port of Tsingtao from China and built a major naval base there, the Cruiser Squadron lacked ships that were suitable for carrying out the proposed surveys. But in 1901 the Cruiser Squadron received the first of a series of river gunboats that could operate on Chinese rivers. These gunboats were assigned primarily to the Yangtse River, with one on the Si River. They protected German nationals and property in China and carried out the Cruiser Squadron’s program for commercial surveys. Until World War I, the river gunboats carried the Imperial German Navy’s flag deep into China’s interior.
The first river gunboat to enter service with the Cruiser Squadron was SMS Schamien. The boat was built in 1899 in China by a British firm as a small commercial steamer. She originally was named Tong Cheong (by her builders) and was designed to carry a limited number of passengers and bulk cargo upriver from Canton. In 1900 the German Navy bought the tiny steamer and modified it as a river gunboat. The hull, 78 feet long, was roofed over so that Schamien gave the appearance of the fictional steamer in C. S. Forester’s African Queen. Schamien was operated on the Si River between Canton and Wuchow until 1904, when she was sold.3
Also in 1900, the German Navy bought their second vessel, SMS Vorwarts, which was one of the prettiest river gunboats ever commissioned. The boat owed her pleasing lines to her British builders, Famham, Boyd, and Company of Shanghai, who initially designed her as a passenger steamer for the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao Steamboat Company. When nearly complete as the 99- passenger SS Wuchow, the vessel was purchased by the Imperial German Navy. Put into a British yard in Shanghai, she was converted to a river gunboat.
Because the Germans essentially were tenants in the British yard, work on the boat was given low priority. It was not until March 1901, nearly a year after entering the yard, that the steamer-turned-gunboat was relaunched as was SMS Vorwarts. Vorwarts was not “make-do” like Schamien. However, she suffered from a serious drawback: her 500-horsepower, two-cylinder, double-expansion steam engine was not powerful enough. Vorwarts could not overcome the rapids and the current above Ichang; she was confined to the middle and lower Yangtse. Still, despite this limitation, Vorwarts remained in the German Navy’s service for nine years; she was sold in 1910.
In 1904, two river gunboats—designed and built specifically for use on the distant Yangtse—were delivered by the F. Schichau Company of Germany. After completion and testing, both were disassembled and each was shipped in nine prefabricated parts to China. One, SMS Tsingtau, was delivered to Hong Kong, where she was reassembled and placed in service on the Si River as a replacement for the small Schamien, which had been in service for four years. Her sister ship, SMS Vaterland, was delivered to Shanghai. After reassembly, she was assigned to the Yangtse River to work with Vorwarts. Tsingtau and Vaterland were nearly identical. Each was powered by a pair of three-cylinder, upright, triple-expansion, coal-fired steam engines rated at 1,300 horsepower. These powerful engines, along with twin screws housed in protective tunnels and a draft of merely three feet, gave these two boats the capability of working far upriver, beyond previous operational limits.
In April 1910, SMS Otter, a larger and more powerful river gunboat, arrived in Shanghai and was reconstructed. Like Tsingtau and Vaterland, she had been built in Germany by the F. Schichau Company and was shipped to China in nine prefabricated sections. Though similar in appearance to the older boats. Otter was 15 feet longer and about 38 tons heavier. Otter had a more powerful steam engine, rated at 1,788 horsepower. But despite her larger size, she had about the same draft as Vaterland and Tsingtau. In June of 1910, Otter joined Vaterland on the Yangtse, replacing Vorwarts.
Command of a river gunboat was held by an officer with the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade) or Lieutenant. Opportunities for initiative and individual action offered by such a command rarely were found anywhere else in the Imperial German Navy. These opportunities resulted from the boats’ assignments in relatively isolated patrol areas.
Until 1912, when the river gunboats were first equipped with wireless telegraphy, their captains often were completely out of touch with the squadron staff for long periods of time. Communications between a river gunboat far upriver and the squadron staff in Canton or Shanghai were handled by telegraph—whenever a telegraph station was available.
Shortly after receiving Vaterland and Tsingtau, the squadron staff sent them on survey cruises deep into the interior. The captain and his officers were expected to note and report on the political, social, and economic conditions observed in the areas visited. They were instructed to pay particular attention to the quality and quantity of mineral resources that might be found, besides estimating the cost of extracting and transporting the ore. They were expected to comment on the suitability of the area for railroad construction, as well.
The officers were unusually well-suited for this assignment. Unlike the predominately aristocratic officer corps of the German Army, most German Navy officers came from the upper middle class. Many were well-trained in business operations and finance; they knew how to find economic opportunities. Reports they submitted at the end of their survey cruises reflected exceptional quality, detail, and judgment.
In addition to protecting German commercial interests in the interior, the crews of the river gunboats also were charged with protecting the lives and property of German citizens living there. In addition to a ship’s armament, a captain could draw upon his infantry-trained crew in accomplishing this mission. An alternate option to the use of the ship’s firepower and landing parties was to bring the German nationals on board the gunboat. When, where, and to what extent these options were to be employed were decisions only the gunboat captain could make. Like all captains, he was held accountable for his actions, or his lack of action. Despite the ever-present possibility that a gunboat might become involved in some sort of armed action, the assignment on the rivers usually involved nothing more exciting than “showing the flag.”
Deployment of the gunboats throughout the year was determined by a deployment plan. This was drawn up each quarter by the squadron staff and was based on seasonal fluctuation of the rivers’ water levels, special political requirements, the annual crew exchange, periodic inspections and overhauls, and individual ship’s training. Still, the plan left the gunboat captains with considerable discretion. They enjoyed exceptional independence and became remarkably self-reliant.
There were two scheduling requirements that every German river gunboat captain had to observe. One was the date for the annual crew exchange. In early spring, when replacements arrived from home and relieved the personnel who had completed their tours, all the ships replaced half their crews simultaneously—the movement involved several hundred men. Getting these replacements to their ships was not difficult, but it required careful scheduling and coordination.
A German shipping line was contracted to carry the replacements to Tsingtao. Each spring, the river gunboats moved downriver and awaited the replacement ship’s arrival in Hong Kong (Tsingtau) and Shanghai (Vorwarts, Vaterland, and Otter). This system eliminated the expense and trouble of transporting replacements from Tsingtao to their ships. Understandably, tardiness on the part of any gunboat captain would interfere with this efficient plan.
The second fixed requirement was the annual haulout, accomplished by a British yard at Shanghai for the two boats on the Yangtse, and at Canton for the boat on the Si. The British gave priority to their own needs and accepted all others, including the Germans, on a “space available” basis. The Germans had to arrange use of the British yards as far in advance as nine months. Even then, the date was subject to change. Even emergency repairs—short of avoiding a sinking—suffered delays. Clearly, this was another instance requiring the river gunboat captain’s punctuality.
In addition to the demands of a fixed schedule and carrying out a political mission, the German river gunboat skipper had to act as his own labor relations negotiator and personnel director, since every ship in the East Asia Cruiser Squadron employed Chinese nationals as part of the crew.
These Chinese crewman were categorized as either “regular” or “special” employees. The regulars served as stokers, ship’s cooks, or stewards. They received a fixed annual wage established by the Cruiser Squadron staff, which could be supplemented with jobs such as laundry or coaling.4
“Special” employees were taken on board for a particular trip, usually in connection with a survey cruise. Their wages were established through negotiation. Special employees commonly served as pilots, interpreters, or photographers. Lists of candidates usually were provided by the local German consulate, but in some cases the British and French made recommendations. The river gunboat captain handled much of the actual negotiating and hiring.
Among the regular Chinese crewmen were some who spoke pidgin-English, and a few who knew a smattering of German. The regular pilot was conversant in German within the limits of his occupation, but when taking a special cruise beyond normal patrol limits, the marginal language capability of the regular Chinese crewmen did not suit the Germans’ needs. In these cases the Germans hired special interpreters; but not just any interpreter would do.
One peculiarity the Germans had to contend with was an exaggerated insistence on protocol by the Chinese authorities. Since Mandarin was the official language used by the Chinese officials, the Germans had to have a Mandarin-speaking interpreter. Any other interpreter would reflect poorly on the Germans and would have precluded any cooperation by the Chinese Government.
The interpreter was selected with the assistance of the local German consulate. Without exception, the man chosen was an unemployed government official. Once hired, he selected the other special employees for the trip, including the special pilot, or pilots. The interpreter also conducted the negotiations for their fees—which meant that the other special jobs went to those who offered the interpreter the biggest kickbacks from their pay.
In addition to being a labor contractor, the river gunboat captain acted as his own purser and procurement officer. Though Tsingtao was superbly equipped to provide logistics, maintenance, and repair facilities for the larger ships in the squadron, no such system existed for the river gunboats.
Each gunboat carried several thousand Mexican silver dollars to pay all the warship’s annual operating costs, except those for haulout and ammunition. The captains became experts at budget planning and barter. To cut costs, they supplemented food supplies by hunting and saved pilot expenses whenever possible by putting a leadsman out in a small boat that moved ahead of the gunboat.
The captains also arranged to have coal reserves stockpiled along the rivers. To ensure that they would not be stranded due to lack of coal, they experimented with burning wood for fuel. The results were noted carefully and tables were drawn to show the results obtained with different kinds of wood.
For the German skippers, piloting on the rivers in China was always a challenge. The water level in the rivers rose and fell as much as 50 feet in a season. The most water was generally in the rivers during July and August, but it was never a sure thing. The water level rose and fell from day to day, even from hour to hour.
The gunboats were faced with all the problems normally associated with river navigation. There was, however, one unusually serious challenge—rapids. These existed between Hankow and Ichang, nearly 1,000 nautical miles from the coast. The middle river rapids were a problem, but did not approach the ferocity of the rapids on the upper Yangtse, beyond Ichang. As a river gunboat went farther upriver, the rapids became more vicious. At high water the boulder-strewn rapids became cataracts; at low water they were so shallow even a leaf could run aground.
Navigating the rapids was not simply a matter of steaming straight ahead—the route lay between rocks and boulders and conformed to the riverbed’s twists and turns. Whirlpools threatened to wrench the wheel from the helmsman’s grasp. In addition to rocks, irregular bottoms, sharp bends, and whirlpools, was the enormous power of the surging rapids. At times, a straining gunboat could not make any headway through them. The crewmen had to pit their strength and endurance against the rapids by using steel poles to push the gunboat against the torrent while the engines strained at full power.
Strong currents cut and eroded the river bottom and banks, and washed millions of tons of soil downriver, with rapid silting resulting. Gunboat captains soon learned that an anchor had to be raised and reset at least once every three days, or silt and mud would bury it so deeply it could not be recovered. In some cases the anchor had to be reset daily or it would be lost—an expense a captain could not afford.
The same mud that buried anchors also created new shoals and bars, and silted in the channels. The same strong currents that moved tons of mud and debris also planted stones in new locations. Known obstacles disappeared and new ones popped up where none had been before. The constantly changing river beds made running aground an ever-present danger.
A good pilot and careful attention to French survey charts reduced these hazards, but—despite all precautions—German gunboats sometimes got stuck. In some cases the river level fell before the boat could be freed, leaving the warship high and dry for days or even weeks. In spite of all the hazards, not one German river gunboat in China between 1900 and 1914 was lost by grounding or accident.
When a German river gunboat did run aground, the captain often could expect another foreign river gunboat to come to his aid. There were many such boats on the river. Nevertheless, a prudent captain didn’t pin his hopes on such assistance. Lightening his ship’s load and kedging were standard procedures that always were started immediately after running aground.
Many steam-powered Chinese boats plied the rivers, but almost without exception, the Chinese adamantly refused to help any stranded foreign gunboat. The German captains believed the Chinese had a total disregard for the law of the sea; more likely, however, the Chinese simply did not like foreigners. German captains reported several instances when Chinese steam-powered junks and large Chinese steamers refused to stop and offer assistance.
These problems and others were covered in a German Admiralty publication, Das Yangtse Handbuch—analogous to the United States Coast Pilot, but covering only the Yangtse and its tributaries. Though the information was to be updated annually with reports from the captains, the book was not entirely satisfactory. In 1914 one river gunboat captain went so far as to call the book absolutely worthless. Conditions changed so often and so quickly, he declared, that the Handbuch never had the right information. Most captains ignored the publication and relied on their own seamanship and their pilots’ knowledge.
Surviving the natural hazards of the rivers was hard work; but surviving the “human hazards” on the Chinese rivers was, in the Germans’ opinion, entirely a matter of luck. These “human hazards”—Chinese boatmen—-were the subject of much bitter comment.
The rivers always had heavy junk and sampan traffic. The number of craft increased as the river rose and trade picked up; traffic also was heavier during harvest time, in September and October. Joining the bigger craft was a hoard of row boats, junks, towed boats, and just about anything that would float and carry cargo.
Congestion near villages, towns, landings, or the confluence of two rivers was so bad that at times the river gunboats could not get through.
In the eyes of a German river gunboat skipper, the lowest order of life included people who sailed sampans. Not much higher on the scale were the junk operators. These craft sailed up, down, and across the river without regard to what the Germans considered “the rules of the road.” The Germans failed to realize that the Chinese boatmen had no rules. The Chinese practice of anchoring and rafting their boats in the main channel was of particular annoyance to the German skippers. A solid wall of boats often resulted and gunboats could not pass.
When faced with this problem a German captain usually sounded his steam siren and waited for the Chinese police to come out in a steam launch. One of the standing orders that applied to every man in the Cruiser Squadron was to avoid creating an incident with the Chinese. The order was particularly important to the crews on the river gunboats, because they were in closer contact with the Chinese than were the squadron’s larger ships. The Chinese police were less concerned about causing an incident than were the German captains, and thus had more options in their approach. Using their more direct methods, the Chinese police quickly cleared a passage through the tangle of Chinese boats.
The Germans’ position in China partially explained their cautious policy. German officials and businessmen in China wanted to expand German influence and interests, but had to be careful not to upset other foreign powers. The Cruiser Squadron, operating 10,000 miles from home, could not expect relief if any real trouble developed. The Germans were out on a limb and they knew it. Therefore, they usually backed away from confrontations with the Chinese or any other foreign power. Events proved the wisdom of this policy.
When World War I began, Otter was on the upper Yangtse near Chungking; Vaterland was patrolling the middle Yangtse between Ichang and Hankow. Both boats escaped down the Yangtse just ahead of their British pursuers to the neutral Chinese port of Nanking, where they interned themselves. To keep them from being seized if China declared war on Germany, the boats were “civilianized”—sold on paper to a German corporation. To complete the charade, Vaterland was renamed Lan- desvater, and Otter became Munchen. Despite the ruse, both boats were seized by the Chinese in March 1917, after China entered the war against Germany.
Vaterland was again renamed—this time Li Sui—and served the Chinese Navy on the Yangtse until 1932. In that year she was taken over by the Japanese Navy and renamed Risui. Munchen, formerly Otter, served until 1932 on the Yangtse with the Chinese Navy as the Li-Tscheh. The final fate of both boats is not known, but most likely they were either scrapped or destroyed during World War II.
Tsingtau met with a different end. After a harrowing trip down the Si River, she was interned by the Germans in Canton. No attempt was made to civilianize her. In March 1917 she was scuttled by her German crew to prevent seizure by the Chinese.5
World War I ended the German Navy’s presence in China. German river gunboats never again probed China’s interior. Today, few Germans, and even fewer people outside of Germany, know that the German gunboats ever existed in China.
1. Starting in the 1870s the German Navy periodically had formed an East Asia Cruiser Squadron. By 1890, the squadron had become a permanent organization. John A. Moses and Paul Kennedy, ed., Germany in the Pacific and Far East 1870-1914 (Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1977), p. 115.
2. The source for this article, unless otherwise noted, is a microfilm of several hundred German Admiralty documents. Microfilm OG.02, Auftragsnr. 78 (07292), Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam. Deutsche Dcmok- ratische Republik (hereafter cited as OG.02).
3. Details about the boats are found in Erich Groncr, Die Deutschen Kriegsschiffe, 1815-1945 (Munchen: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1966), p. 206.
4. Information about life on board a German river gunboat, the officers’ duties, and special problems was found in two firsthand accounts: Kapitanleutnant Fritz Breh- mcr, “Die Fahrt S.M.S. Tsingtau in die siidchincsischc Provinz Kuangsie; Juli- August 1906,’’ Die Flotte, Nr. 1 Januar-Mai, 1908; and Hans H. Matthiesen, “Meine Dienstzeit auf einem Kanonenboot in Ostasien, 1910-1912.”
5. OG.02; and Groner, p. 206.