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Yangtze River Gunboats Powerful light draft naval vessels protect American lives, alleviating distress and assisting commerce on the upper Yangtze River. These gunboats penetrate regions over 1300 miles from the sea in a land where transportation and communication is primitive . |
Research into the historical events surrounding the bombing of the U.S.S. Panay, December 12, 1937 on the Yangtze River near Nanking, China
'Concerning the Panay sinking--and other Related Matters'
Socony Hill
"In Kansas--reflecting the opinion of some Midwest editors--the Concordia Press asked in an editorial, "What were Standard Oil tankers doing up the Yangtze River in the midst of a war zone? And why is it necessary to have U. S. war vessels plying up and down that river in the heart of China?"
page 61 The Panay Incident , Joseph B. Icenhower
The quote for weblog4 in the header is from this book too, but I've seen it on the web. I almost bought it--it's' from a Navy recruiting poster and one was for sale on ebay.
And I almost bought (it went too high) a 16mm film of the Alley's Panay movie--it was a Castle production. There was a photo on ebay of the first few frames falling out of the film cannister--the splash frames. I would really have liked to have had that, as I had found a blurry version of this film title on web, and tried to reproduce it.
I showed my efforts at this in Photoshop, Corel, Illustrator, to no less than five community college professors, trying to get their take on how to make 3-D type--BOMBING OF USS PANAY. I was going to use it for the booklet cover, and I became somewhat obssessed with it. At least now I have this original, the photo from ebay, albeit too small to read!!, for my digital scrapbook.
I purchased Icenhower's book through bibliofind. It's a nice book. Sometimes it's described as a "juvenile"--meaning intended for a young, high school age, audience. It has the best maps I've seen, and a photo of the crew all together.
I have the crew list with all the names spelled right and easy to read in the Our Navy article. The USS Augusta web site has the crew list after they came aboard naming the injured, but it's blurry and hard to read. One version of my booklet would have gone into naming the crew, and the civilians aboard too.
The three Standard Oil ships are as much of the story as the Panay, but what happens to them is a muddle in Perry's Panay Incident. In Icenhower's there is a good desription.
On Amazon I've located a book about the merchant ships on the Yangtze, but it's very expensive. Tolley's Yangtze Patrol might have story of these too, but it's expensive also, though I might get reasonable one through bibliofind, or ebay. Both on my want to read list.
Elseware in my site is the dispatches, the radio traffic, from Perry's book, and when I first read them I took note of "Jardine Junk". I know what a junk is but I didn't know what "Jardine" referred to. And when I read Bergaminni he calls the three Standard Oil ships, "Socony-Vacuum" ships.
Arriving new to all these things, I got to look them up. Jardine is from Jardine-Mattheson, a very big merchant, the biggest, in Shanghai. And Socony was early name for Standard Oil.
I went looking for Socony at deja.com and found a thread where they were trying to sort out the origin for the name SONY, the Japanese electronic firm. Not having read the thread carefully, I inserted my twobits, and suggested that Socony came from a Cherokee word for a Cherokee town in North Carolina called Socony! I had just found that searchwording Socony on Yahoo. The thread did bring out that Socony might be Standard Oil Company of New York, and that makes sense.
As near as I can tell now, and my searching is far from complete, Socony provided petroleum products to China--kerosine for lamps especially. (Now I'm looking for mei foo lamps!!) At first I thought they may have been taking oil from China--a real Persian Gulf self similarity, but China at the time didn't have any oil production to speak of-- Japan had to go all the way to Indonesia for it when we cut them off.
So, that's what Socony was doing in China, selling household kerosine, but their whole story I'm sure is much more elaborate. One site had back issues of Oil News on microfilm, and it would be worth a look to see what the corporate news version of events in China read like. (I have a post in works--"Corporate History"). Another site had son telling story of pop who worked for Standar Oil in Japan. Lot of "son telling story of pop" on the web.
In the book The Sand Pebbles, which I finally just got around to reading when I found a paperback copy for a quarter, has a battle scene with river bandits who rob a junk of it's kerosine. A post or two just about this book is in the works.
Socony Hill.
I find mention of Socony Hill in Nanking, but they're sketchy. In looking on the web, of course, I ran into Smedly Butler and his famous lashing out at Standard Oil. All the conspiracy hounds find this and quote it. Worthwhile stuff is in the conspiracy sites, but, they're all nuts!
Anyway, I first happend upon Smedly Butler in those old American Heritage Magazines, and his is quite a story. I didn't put his adventures together with the Panay story I read in those magazines then, but, they're together now!!
It's 1927, a contingent of China Marines was landed to protect against the warring of Chiang Kai-Shek (the "gear wheel" bunch in the book The Sand Pebbles--it's events too are set in 1927)--they came ashore at the Standard Oil docks in Shanghai. They were led by Smedly Butler, but fortunately things settled down before they went into any combat. Things didn't settle down without US and other treaty gunboats shelling Nanking...
During the Chinese revolution in 1926 and 1927, ELCANO's personnel required immense tact, patience and judgment in facing the turmoil of the times. She transported refugees from the interior and convoyed concentrations of those fleeing the lawlessness of the war-torn country. On 24 March 1927, a major clash occurred at Nanking where the American Consul General and others were besieged on Socony Hill, where they had congregated for safety. ELCANO joined in laying the barrage around the hill to prevent wholesale massacre.
Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol. II p 334. http://www.uss-salem.org/danfs/patrol/pg38.htm
(Yahoo keyword: el cano)
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At the time all this was happening the Panay and her five sister gunboats were being built at the Kiangnan (Jiangnan) Docks in Shanghai. Work was delayed while Chiang Kai-Shek took things over.
The launching/building of the Panay is in near proximity to events every bit as serious and portent filled for future world events as the battle for Nanking was ten years later when it was sunk!!
1927 was the time when Chiang Kai-Shek and the Koumintang really began, along with their civil war with Mao and the communists.
Next: Kiangnan (Jiangnan) Docks
I've posted maybe six or seven things to deja.com and I've hit upon a , whattocall it, ... strategy. I noticed right off in the deja forums that you can get a list of all the posts of the individual webizens.
Deja got a really nice plug on Sixty Minutes when they pointed out a sinsiter aspect of this--folk tracking buying habits can instantly follow the trail of a webizen's...habits.
I find it usefull to locate other posts of posters I find intetersting.
It's a fine tool!! What I can do is take my Panay weblog public sorta speak.
Insomuch as I'm all over the map here in the log, I always have an idea to insert into a Forum discussion topic.
That's how I got started with deja--I'd been keywording Panay and an engine kicked out a deja forum page with a thread about the Stark. I couldn't resist, and jumped in.
So, now, over there, is kinda one of my weblog posts, but it has other posts before and after it by other folk--neat.
To find my posts there just do the menu thing that lists them out--it will give all of them in all the different forum. Go to one, then find the the thread layout.
Unbeknownst to the deja webizens my posts are all related to my weblog here--I've made them into an extension of this!!
I've gone mad!!! I even feel a little neferaious. Maybe Yahoo's got one of these set ups...