The ships which made up the Yangtze patrol in 1926 were a miscellaneous assortment, including two mine sweepers, two former Spanish gunboats, one of which had been on the bottom of Manila Bay for more than a year, and two old gunboats originally built for duty on the river. The two former Spanish “soldier boats,” as the Chinese called them, were the Elcano and the Villalobos, and the two river gunboats were the Palos and the Monocacy. The seventh ship of the force was the flagship, the Isabel, a converted yacht which had been secured by the Navy during the war. Since 1926, the Navy has acquired six new river gunboats all designed and built for the special duty which they perform. But this article will deal with conditions as they were in 1926 when the writer was attached to the Palos operating on the upper reaches of the Yangtze.
There were four officers and fifty-two men attached to the ship. The officers included the commanding officer, the medical officer, and two other line officers, which meant that these last two held many titles and functioned in various capacities. The fifty-two men of the crew included six Chinese boatmen. The Chinese were mess cooks, and, in addition, they took soundings while the ship was under way and rowed the captain’s sampan when in port.
Duty on the Yangtze is such that the commanding officers of the gunboats are compelled to give their principal attention to their collateral duties, especially When in port. It is always necessary for the captain to keep in close contact with representatives of other foreign nations, both consular and naval. Likewise, it is necessary for him to maintain close contact with various Chinese officials in the river ports, and, at times, he must perform certain consular duties such as arbitrating damage claims and submitting commercial reports regarding localities in which there are no American consular representatives. The fulfillment of these duties requires the captain to devote a great deal of time and attention to the matter of his personal contacts with the various individuals of all nationalities with whom it is necessary for him to do business. The executive officer must necessarily carry on many of the duties which would ordinarily be performed by the captain. Clearly, a commanding officer with a pleasing personality and an abundant supply of tact is more successful in such duty than officers who are not blessed with these characteristics.
All officers in the Yangtze patrol have abundant opportunities to learn many new tricks in practical seamanship. The strong current present in the river, and the rapid rise and fall of the water level at certain seasons, call for exceptional care in mooring the boats. In most places there is no holding ground for anchoring, at certain seasons, and all kinds of expedients become necessary. At times the gunboats are beached on the few short reaches of sand that are available. Sometime the so-called Yangtze moor is used. This means that two anchors are dropped as in a flying moor but the ship rides to two chains. Anchors must be sighted or broken out of the river bottom sometimes as often as once a day, in order to prevent them from being buried in the silt. With a Yangtze moor one anchor remains in case a chain is parted in trying to sight the other anchor.
The handling of a ship in the river gorges is a hair-raising experience for a commanding officer on his first trip. In one or two of the rapids the current is fast enough to make a 13-knot ship lose headway and sometimes go astern. If this happens it is necessary for the ship to be nosed around until she can be worked ahead between the eddies. The reader may imagine the feelings of a captain coming down the river for the first time in these same rapids when the pilot heads straight for a large rocky obstruction on the side of the gorge with water boiling all around it, and then turns the ship just in time to clear the stern by about 10 feet while the ship is going at about 16 knots. The length of a ship and not its draft is the prime consideration in ships operating between Ichang and Chungking. A ship more than 150 feet long cannot make the turns necessary in the gorges in this section of the river, even if it is equipped with four rudders as was the Palos.
Whenever a gunboat proceeds from one port to another there is a pilot on board. These Chinese pilots have been well trained in their profession and their services are absolutely indispensable. Sometime an officer will obtain the latest charts available and follow them closely on a trip up or down the river at high water, and on occasion he will find that the gunboat is passing over what is shown on the chart as dry land several miles from the course of the river. During the summer high-water season, a ship will often steam across areas which were cultivated fields in the low-water season. On occasion our gunboats have even crossed over inundated villages. The river floods are so extensive that a person not thoroughly familiar with the channel cannot identify any landmarks whatever. Even when landmarks can be identified, the river channel may have shifted to a position several miles from that shown on the chart, thus making ranges, danger bearings, and other methods of piloting virtually useless.
The executive officer had collateral duties as first lieutenant, navigator, and engineer officer. The paper work for which he was responsible was a considerable item in itself. As the size of a ship decreases, the relative burden of making out these reports increases. We had only one yeoman on board. If the yeoman is not capable and experienced, the supervision required is proportionately increased. The duties of first lieutenant are easily combined with the executive officer’s other duties as he is directly responsible for the cleanliness, good order, and efficiency of the ship as a whole. The duties of a navigator did not burden the executive officer to any great extent.
If a navigator keeps in touch with the water level at the various principal bars, and keeps the ship control arrangements in good order, he has done practically all that he can safely do himself.
In the duties of engineer officer, the executive officer had enough work to make up for the nominal duties of navigator. Strange as it may seem, some of the coalburning relics of former years were in the engineering competition, which required a certain amount of time in making out the Form H in addition to looking out for the installation. One of the greatest troubles was in obtaining coal that was suitable. The best coal obtainable was so full of non-inflammable material that the ship had to stop steaming every four hours, anchor, and haul fires to get the solid mass of clinkers off the grates. Although the plant had only 800 horsepower available, the engineer’s duties were probably more baffling than they would be in a full-grown plant. There was so much vibration that it was next to impossible to keep steam lines tight and, with a condenser pump almost as large as the main engines, we usually had about 12 inches of vacuum. In order to get up enough steam to shift or sight anchor the stacks would belch flames four or five feet out of the top of the stacks. Above the flame there an enormous black cloud of smoke that was quite startling to the uninitiated. The ship’s boilers were designed for the burning of either coal or wood. There was no wood to burn but the wood- burning design meant a large firebox and an absence of baffling, so that about half of the combustion took place in the stack. The engineer officer (executive officer, first lieutenant, and navigator), probably realizing the difficulties of the engineer force better than anyone else on the ship, sometimes helped out in firing the boilers, joining in the 15-minute shifts and half- hour rests made necessary by the midsummer heat. We, of course, had no thermometers whereby the firemen might find more concrete grounds for pitying themselves but as an indication of the heat in which they were working, the engine-room of the Cincinnati at anchor in Hankow registered over 140°.
The third line officer attached to the ship took over the remaining departmental organizations and made armed guard trips occasionally on U.S. merchantmen operating on the river. These merchantmen were subject to being fired on by the Chinese and, in an attempt to discourage the practice, a squad of men with an officer in charge was often placed on board with machine guns in order to return the fire. The theory was good, but it was very seldom that the source of the fire from the banks could be located and the return fire was merely aimed in the general direction of the snipers. Reports of silencing such fire by return fire were probably due to the ship’s drawing out of range rather than to effective return fire by the armed guard. A trip of this kind would last from five to seven days or longer and, during unsettled conditions, would take a considerable part of the time of the officer detailed for this duty.
The commissary and communication officer duties are familiar to nearly all line officers, especially the method of handling these duties on a small ship. The inspection of food coming aboard was a very necessary precaution, as the Chinese are probably the most successful merchants in the world and the weights and the quality of the provisions had to be carefully watched. The temptation put in the way of a ship’s cook makes it very easy for him to stray from the straight and narrow; careful and complete supervision is needed to prevent him from getting into trouble. In addition to checking weights and quality of provisions the procurement of supplies was further complicated because fresh vegetables and fruit are the most common sources of dysentery and must be very carefully prepared. To avoid danger from this source, as much of the supplies of this kind as possible are obtained from foreign sources through importers in Shanghai. Dry stores are obtained from a godown in Hankow where the Navy maintains a small supply station for the patrol force. The ration allowance is sixty-five cents a day and is more than enough to feed the crew on the best food obtainable. The limit of good feeding is imposed by availability rather than cost.
The communication duties consisted mostly of coding and decoding messages, and correcting confidential publications. All messages concerning local situations were put in code and, even if there was nothing to report, a daily message was sent to the Commander Yangtze Patrol. All messages from other ships of the patrol are intercepted and decoded.
The gunnery officer’s duties consisted in making out the usual routine reports and looking after the two 3-inch 23-caliber guns, the machine guns, and the rest of the landing force equipment. There were rifle ranges in Hankow and in Chungking available for the use of the ships and they were used as often as possible in order to have the landing force ready to handle rifles when the opportunity presented itself. Drill on board ship consisted in sight- setting and fuse-setting drill for the 3-inch guns and a great deal of instruction in the operation of the Lewis machine guns. These machine guns were used as part of the armament of the ship as well as for the landing force. There were three bulletproof shields on either side of the ship with mounts for them.
One of the duties peculiar to ships on the river (which do not carry paymasters) is that of special disbursing agent. These duties result in saddling a line officer, without any preparation whatever, with the responsibility of handling large sums of money, and surrounding him with so many regulations concerning the manner in which disbursements may be legally made that for the first three or four months it is almost a full-time job. He must draw foreign currency from the patrol paymaster or obtain it from sources ashore by a draft on the United States. If the paper money falls into disrepute, as it did during civil trouble, the only currency acceptable ashore is silver. The mere handling of this money is considerable trouble because $5,000 is a good load for two men to carry, and is too much to put into the small safe used by the disbursing agent. We had as much as $15,000 if we made an extended trip away from a ready source of supply, and we put in the magazines until needed. In addition to keeping the ships equipment books in order, the disbursing agent must keep an account of all disbursements in both “Mex” and gold values. Then, at the end of the quarter, when all the vouchers, pay receipts, public bills, and contracts for provisions and coal must be turned in to the general accounting office, our friend the comptroller general begins picking the papers to pieces trying to disallow all items that he possibly can.
The doctor on these ships is usually of junior grade and, in addition to his regular duties, takes over the wardroom mess and crew’s welfare activities. The welfare duties, while stationed in Ichang or Chungking, include the operation of a club ashore for the crew. This institution is a necessary adjunct if the ship is to stay in either of these ports for any period, as it is practically the only place for the men to go ashore. The ships also carry athletic gear and can usually find opportunity to use baseball, basketball, soccer, or even football gear. If there is a British ship in port they can always get a game of baseball in return for a game of soccer or cricket and very often basketball games can be arranged with Chinese school teams or with foreign teams ashore. These activities become more important under these conditions than in ports where the crew have other means of recreation.
In taking the Palos as an example, if is to be remembered that the present gunboats on the river are in an entirely different category as far as the operation of the ' ship itself is concerned. These new ships have plenty of power, are oil burning, well protected, and as comfortable as was possible to build them. They also have one more officer on board so that when a landing force is sent ashore or armed guard trips are made, it does not completely disrupt the whole ship’s organization- They are capable of fulfilling their duty much more satisfactorily than the older types, to be sure, but, as long as the patrol force is required to protect our nationals under the conditions which now obtain in China, and as long as the Yangtze River does not change its characteristics, the duty on the Yangtze Patrol Force will probably be well understood only by those who have served on it- At some periods it is very pleasant; at others, it is very disagreeable; both in the superlative degree. If, on the other hand, it is not always interesting, the fault is not in the duty but in the person who finds it so.