[
    {
        "id": 207799,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 187,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "172 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nshe was retained as the headquarters ship of the Royal Navy's Upper Yangtze squadron. \n\nThe Royal Navy had always maintained a strong presence on the river, since British ships commenced to trade on the Yangtze in the early 1860s. So far as the Yangtze was concerned, ‘trade followed the flag\". Naval ships were the first British ships to navigate the lower Yangtze, and continued to lead the way as British shipping extended its operations further up the river. As we have seen, H.M.S. Woodcock reached Chungking and beyond to Suifu a few months before the Pioneer made the first successful commercial passage of the Upper Yangtze. By the mid 1920s, when British shipping had reached its peak there, the Royal Navy's Yangtze Squadron consisted primarily of six general purpose gunboats of the \"Insect\" class based on Hankow. These had been built originally for service against the Turks on the Tigris and Euphrates in World War 1. Each carried fifty-four officers and men, and had two six-inch guns, and they were powerful little ships in flat country. For the Upper River there were several smaller ships of the \"Bird class\", which carried twenty-six or thirty-one men. Two operated on the Tungting Lake and on the Siang River to Changsha, and another two on the Upper Yangtze to Chungking, with occasional trips to Suifu. In the high water season the \"Insect\" class ships could also operate on the Upper River. \n\nThis force was commanded by the Rear-Admiral, Yangtze, at Hankow, who came under the overall command of the Commander-in-Chief of the British naval forces in the Far East at Hong Kong. The Yangtze Squadron, therefore, consisted of about 500 officers and could be quickly reinforced from Shanghai and Hong Kong if necessary. It was also possible for a 10,000 ton cruiser to reach Hankow in the high water season. The Royal Navy was frequently called on to protect British ships and British interests on the Yangtze, sometimes against rebels, pirates, war lords, or threats from other foreign powers. The term 'gunboat diplomacy' probably originated from the operations of the Royal Navy on the China coast and on the Yangtze. \n\nThe most notable naval occasion on the Yangtze, since the First China War of 1839-42, was the Wanhsien Incident of 1926. This originated in the refusal of the captain of the China Navigation Company's Wanliu to carry soldiers of Yung Lin, one of the war",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207800,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 188,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n173 \n\nlords then fighting for power in Szechuan. Before the 'Incident' closed nearly a month later, another two China Navigation Company ships had been seized by Yung Lin. All available ships of the Yangtze Squadron were involved, and H.M. ships Dispatch, a light cruiser, and Hawkins, the flagship of the China Station, had been sent to Hankow. In addition the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company's Kiawo had been requisitioned by the Navy to carry reinforcements to Wanhsien. During the sometimes severe fighting which occurred at times, the chief engineer of the Wanliu and seven servicemen lost their lives, and several others were wounded. It was nearly two years later, and after Chiang Kai-shek had expelled the left wing elements of the Kuomintang and his Russian advisers, before the situation on the Yangtze returned to something approaching normal.\n\nAfter the Royal Navy took over the Pioneer, Captain Plant built a junk and traded between Ichang and Chungking, and made a thorough study of the Upper Yangtze. In 1908 he persuaded a group of Chinese business men and government officials to form the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company, forty per cent of the capital coming from official sources, and the balance from private Chinese merchants. The Company's first ship, the Shutung, was built by Thorneycrofts in Southampton under Captain Plant's supervision. She cost £26,000 and arrived at Ichang in 1909. The Shutung was 115 feet long, sixteen feet beam, and six and a half feet depth, and was described as 'a mass of machinery.' She towed a float alongside in which her cargo and passengers were accommodated, and in spite of only being able to carry sixty tons dead-weight of cargo, twelve first and sixty-six steerage passengers, was a great success financially and comparatively trouble-free. The Shutung's success was largely due to Captain Plant's intimate knowledge of the Upper River, his ability to inspire confidence in Chinese official and commercial circles in Chungking, and in his Chinese crew. Until 1914 the Shutung was the only steamer on the Upper Yangtze; but in April of that year she was joined by the Shuhun, a larger and more powerful sister ship, also built in Britain, sent out in sections, and assembled in Shanghai. At the same time the Szechwan Railway Company, then planning a railway from Hankow to Chungking, put three smaller steamers on the Upper Yangtze. Two of these ran between Ichang and Chungking, and the third between Chungking and Suifu. By 1914, therefore, the technical",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207803,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 191,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "176 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nChinese shipping in these years, and anti-Japanese boycotts led to the virtual disappearance of Japanese shipping for long periods. \n\nNot that these last few years were trouble-free for British ships. There were also anti-British boycotts, brushes with pirates, war lords, and lawless soldiers, and the famous 'Wanhsien Incident' of 1926 which has already been described. Then when Japan gained control of the Lower Yangtze at the end of 1937, the British presence on the Yangtze rapidly declined. Hankow became the capital before Nanking fell to the Japanese in December 1937, and Chungking succeeded Hankow before the latter fell in October 1938. As the Japanese moved up the river the British steamers moved ahead of them as far as possible, maintaining an increasingly restricted service, which by mid 1940 had been reduced to infrequent trips between Chungking and Wanhsien. During this period many Lower River steamers were abandoned. By mid 1940 the situation had become impossible, fuel was unobtainable, and the last few British officers were evacuated from Chungking by the new road to Kunming, then by the French railway to Haiphong, and finally by sea to Hong Kong. \n\nAt this time there were two Royal Navy gunboats still at Chungking, H.M. Ships Falcon and Gannet. The former remained to act as radio link for the British Embassy, while the latter was decommissioned and her crew sent to Hong Kong by the same route. \n\nSoon after this the Japanese occupied Indo-China, and the Haiphong-Kumming-Chungking lifeline was also denied China. The Chungking-Kunming road was then extended to Burma, and became China's most important route to the outside world, fulfilling the dreams of earlier generations of China traders. This was the famous Burma Road, sometimes identified with the whole 1,000 miles from Rangoon to Chungking, but more accurately with the 600 miles from Lashio (the railhead 130 miles above Mandalay) to Kunming. \n\nThus, after decades of neglect and oblivion, the Burma Road into China was restored to international importance. It was again disrupted when the Japanese conquered Burma in early 1943; but re-opened along a new western route when General Stilwell's American and Chinese forces built a road through North Burma to link Assam with the eastern section of the Burma Road. This route played a vital part in the Allied reconquest of Burma, Malaya, and Indo-China.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    }
]