The United States Asiatic Fleet was a fleet of the United States Navy during much of the first half of the 20th century. Before World War II, the fleet patrolled the Philippine Islands. Much of the fleet was destroyed by the Japanese by February 1942, after which it was dissolved, and the remnants incorporated into the naval component of the South West Pacific Area command, which eventually became the Seventh Fleet.
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.
A river gunboat is a type of gunboat adapted for river operations. River gunboats required shallow draft for river navigation. They would be armed with relatively small caliber cannons, or a mix of cannons and machine guns. If they carried more than one cannon, one might be a howitzer, for shore bombardment. They were usually not armoured. The fictional USS San Pablo described in Richard McKenna's The Sand Pebbles is an example of this class of vessel, serving on the US Navy's Yangtze Patrol. Stronger river warships with larger guns were river monitors.
The Yangtze Patrol, also known as the Yangtze River Patrol Force, Yangtze River Patrol, YangPat, and ComYangPat, was a prolonged naval operation from 1854 to 1949 to protect American interests in the Yangtze River's treaty ports. The Yangtze Patrol also patrolled the coastal waters of China where they protected U.S. citizens, their property, and Christian missionaries.
The Nanking Incident occurred in March 1927 during the capture of Nanjing by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) in their Northern Expedition. Foreign warships bombarded the city to defend foreign residents against rioting and looting. Several ships were involved in the engagement, including vessels of the Royal Navy and the United States Navy. Marines and sailors were also landed for rescue operations including some 140 Dutch forces. Both Nationalist and Communist soldiers within the NRA participated in the rioting and looting of foreign-owned property in Nanjing.
USS Tutuila (PR-4) was a gunboat in the service of the United States Navy from 1928, until her transfer to China, under lend-lease in 1942.
The Insect-class gunboats were a class of small but well-armed Royal Navy ships designed for use in shallow rivers or inshore. They were intended for use on the Danube against Austria-Hungary. The first four ships—Gnat, Mantis, Moth and Tarantula—were first employed during the Mesopotamian Campaign of the First World War on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
HMS Aphis was a Royal Navy Insect-class gunboat. She was built by Ailsa Shipbuilding Company, launched on 15 September 1915 and completed in November 1915. She was based in Port Said at the beginning of World War I, served in Romania and then the China Station until 1940. All of her fighting service was in the Mediterranean, taking part in the invasion of Pantelleria and landings in the south of France, returning briefly to the Pacific in 1945. She was scrapped at Singapore in 1947. Her class was intended for shallow, fast flowing rivers and they also proved suitable for inshore operations when her relatively heavy weaponry could be used to support Army operations.
HMS Wild Swan was an Admiralty modified W-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy. She was one of four destroyers ordered in 1918 from Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson, Wallsend-on-Tyne under the 14th Order for Destroyers of the Emergency War Program of 1917–18. She was the second Royal Navy ship to carry the name, after the sloop HMS Wild Swan in 1876. Like her sisters, she was completed too late to see action in the First World War.
SS Zhongshan, formerly romanized as Chung Shan, was a Chinese gunboat built in Japan in 1913. It was originally known as SS Yongfeng, before being renamed in 1925 in honor of Sun Yat-sen. Zhongshan was sunk by the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second Sino-Japanese War, but was later raised and restored as a museum ship in Wuhan.
The first USS Oahu (PR-6), a Yangtze River gunboat, was laid down by Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Works, Shanghai, China, 18 December 1926; launched as PG–46 on 26 November 1927; sponsored by Mrs. Bryson Bruce, wife of Comdr. Bruce; and commissioned 22 October 1928.
The first USS Mindanao (PR‑8) was a river gunboat in the service of the United States Navy before and during World War II.
HMS Peterel was a river gunboat built by Yarrow Shipbuilders at Scotstoun and she was the sixth ship of the Royal Navy to carry the name. Her name used an archaic spelling for consistency with previous Royal Navy Ships of the same name, in contrast to the modern accepted spelling petrel.
USS Villalobos (PG-42) was a steel screw gunboat originally built for the Spanish Navy as Villalobos but captured by the United States Army in 1898 during the Spanish–American War and commissioned into the United States Navy in 1900. The ship spent almost all of her life as an American gunboat in the Yangtze Patrol on the Yangtze River.
HMS Wolsey (D98) was a W-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that saw service in the final months of World War I, in the Nanking incident of 1927, and in World War II.
HMS Thistle was a Bramble-class gunboat of the Royal Navy, launched in 1899 and broken up in 1926. She was the last classic Victorian gunboat, and the last British warship to retain a practical sailing rig.
The following events occurred in August 1926:
The following events occurred in September 1926:
The Wanhsien incident of 1926 was a series of maritime conflicts on the Yangtze river between British merchant shipping and regional Chinese military leaders, culminating in a battle with Royal Navy gunboats, which also fired cannons into the city of Wanxian.
HMSCicala was a Royal Navy Insect-class gunboat. She was built in 1915 for shallow water work, possibly on the Danube or in the Baltic Sea during the First World War. Cicala was deployed to the Baltic for the 1918–19 British campaign against the Russian Bolsheviks. Whilst there her crew mutinied and refused to follow orders to attack a Russian shore battery. The mutiny was quelled when Admiral John Green threatened to open fire on the Cicala; five men were sentenced to imprisonment by court-martial over the matter. Cicala afterwards served on the China station, acting against pirates. She was at Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded in 1941 and provided fire support for the unsuccessful British defence. On 21 December 1941 she was struck by Japanese bombs and was afterwards scuttled.
United Kingdom
