CHINESE BANDITS

Shannon News, 7 December 1926, Page 3

CHINESE BANDITS

BRITISH NAVY IN INLAND WATERS The guns of the Chinese Bolsheviks are booming to-day very far away from the high seas, yet it is the Royal Navy, not the Army, whbse job it is to protect the Britons of Hankow. There is a British Navy that does not go to sea, writes David Neville., in the "Daily Mail," It consists of ships that go abroad as dismantled fragments in the holds of cargo-vessels, to be assembled when they reach Shanghai or som e other of the ports that are the gates leading from the sea to the inland waterways.

They are the. river gunboats of the "bird" and "insect" class, the Bee, the Moth, the Widgeon, the Woodlark, and the rest that flit up and down the ever-shifting shallows of the mighty Yangtse-kiang, guarding our isolated fellow-countrymen from the bandits—mostly disbanded or deserting soldiers —who infest the more remote districts or the pirates who prey, upon the peaceful shipping or the river highways.

They are like no craft that the landsman has ever visualised as warships. They are simply floating platforms for one or two guns, guns that f sometimes, as in the case of the great six-inch of H.M.S. Bee, the flagship of the Yantse patrol seem to dwarf the frail hull upon which tlwy rest. • To pick their way through waters that would barely afford draught sufficient for a rowing boat they mu3t be keel-less. Because of that, again, meir top-hamper must be cut down ( until they become mere funnelled '.; rafts. It is for that reason that most of them are not seaworthy enough to venture from home to a distant station. under their own steam Yet when need arises they can, in a roadless country, bring up their guns where wheeled artillery might arrive too late. .

Upon their captains, more than upon any other naval officers, there develoves a tremendous individual responsibility. In the nature of things a river gunboat must often be isolated and out of touch with . the higher authority. Her captain may be for the moment commander-in-chief —ambassador, minister plenipotentiary—and he is usually a. young lieutenant R.N.