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Chapter II FORCED EXTRALITY When I Arrived at Changsha in -1924 for My First Duty in China the Old Gunboat Villalobos (200 Tons)

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Chapter II FORCED EXTRALITY When I Arrived at Changsha in -1924 for My First Duty in China the Old Gunboat Villalobos (200 Tons) Chapter II FORCED EXTRALITY When I arrived at Changsha in -1924 for my first duty in China the old gunboat Villalobos (200 tons) was sitting peacefully in the Hsiang River off the bund. "Sitting" is the right word because she was unhappily resting on the bottom of the Hsiang River from late autumn, when the water fell, until the freshets came in the spring. Periodically during the winter the propeller churned away the silt which had settled about the hull. In addition to this decided lack of maneuverability the Villalobos had a modest combat potential of only about sixty officers and men and carried antiquated guns. This unhandy vessel was responsible for the protection of a small island of three 11.undred Americans in the midst of a sea of Chinese. Although the Villalobos was hardly a shining example of gunboat protection, she was a symbol of the military force which brought about the development of the treaty or extraterritorial system in China. Gunboats on the rivers and in the treaty ports and larger naval vessels along the coast constituted the military instrument supporting the diplomatic arm to insure that the system was respected and that the persons and property of foreigners would be protected. The gunboat instrumentality was foreshadowed (although probably not foreseen by the drafters) in Article XXXII of the Treaty of Wanghia ( 1844) which reads in part as follows: "Whenever ships of war of the United States, in cruising for the protection of the commerce of their country, shall arrive at any of the ports of China, the commander of said ships and the superior local authorities of Government shall hold intercourse together on terms of equality and courtesy in token of the friendly relations of their respective nations. " 1 From this seemingly innocuous article, repeated with minor changes in the Sino-American Treaty of 1858, there evolved a protective naval apparatus which, in the period of this study, provided an American naval vessel at or near almost every open port in China. Vessels of other powers (Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy) were also present in greater or lesser numbers. The early American warships, subject of the treaty article quoted above, were more or 6 less casual, although frequent, visitors to China coastal waters, particularly in the vicinity of Canton. It was only after the Spanish-American War, it appears, that our vessels were assigned to permanent duty in China. The Villalobos and Elcano, captured from the Spanish at Manila, were so assigned sometime around 1900. In 1914, two shallow-draft gunboats, especially built for duty on the Yangtze, were sent to China and commissioned the Palos and Monocacy. Of passing interest is perhaps the unique circumstance that they were first constructed in an American shipyard, disassembled for shipment to China, and reassembled at Shanghai. They were also unique at the time as American gunboats because of their ability to ascend the difficult Yangtze rapids above Ichang and proceed to Chungking and even farther westward to areas where determined American missionaries had preceded them. (It was on the Palos, in the spring of 1927, after effecting the evacuation of the American com­ munity at Changsha in the face of the menacing attitude of the Chinese Nationalists and the closure of the consulate, that I withdrew to the relative safety of Hankow.) Following World War I, two converted mine sweepers, the Penguin and the Pigeon, originally built for war duty in the North Sea, were assigned to the Yangtze. At about the same time the Isabel, a converted private yacht, joined the heterogeneous naval assemblage on the Yangtze as flagship for the newly designated admiral commanding the Yangtze Patrol (Comyartgpat). The Sacramento, supported by the Helena, was the flagship of the South China Patrol. Wishing to ascertain when and how these designations ''patrols" came into use, the writer addressed an inquiry to Admiral Samuel Morison, the naval historian. His assistant in Washington replied: "I have had the records of the National Archives searched for the dates of the formation of the South China and Yangtze Patrols with no success. Apparently those designa­ tions were unofficial. The earliest use of the terms that the people in the Archives were able to find is in the 1920 Naval Directory which shows the duties of Divisions 2 and 3 of the Asiatic Fleet as South China Patrol and Yangtze Patrol respectively." _The roster of the two patrols was completed in 1927 when six more vessels of an improved Palos type were assigned for duty in China waters. One of them, the Panay, made tragic history in 193 7 when, during the Sino-Japanese .
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