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2 unusual facts about River gunboat


River gunboat

The Yangtze Patrol was formally established in 1922 as a component of the Asiatic Fleet.

The 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.



see also

Richard McKenna

McKenna himself served aboard a river gunboat on the Yangtze Patrol, but about ten years following the events in his novel and of more modern construction (San Pablo was an ancient gunboat seized from the Spanish in 1898).

The Sand Pebbles

Richard McKenna served aboard a Yangtze River gunboat in 1936 but set the novel a decade earlier, during the Nationalist Northern Expedition of 1925–1927, aboard the fictional USS San Pablo, a gunboat left from the Spanish–American War.