Kerans knew the river well enough, even at night, and managed with uncanny accuracy to avoid the sand spits and bars that might have brought the vessel to further grief.
At dawn they passed under the searchlights of Woosung Fort, where another Communist battery stood on the right bank, just where the Whangpoo entered the Yangtze. The searchlights briefly glanced off the hull—everyone on board holding their breath—and then the lights moved on. The
Amethyst
kept roaring onward. “Everything you've got!” Kerans instructed the engine room. “Damage to engines accepted.”
And then, finally, there in the dim light of morning, under a plume of smoke on the wide gray waters of the outer estuary, was the familiar outline of the
H.M.S.
Concord.
She saw the smaller
Amethyst
roaring down on her and made what has since become one of the Royal Navy's most famous signals:
Fancy Meeting You Again.
It was now beyond doubt that the H.M.S.
Amethyst
's saga was over. After 101 days in captivity, she had broken free—though at a terrible cost. All told, 46 men had died on the ship and on those that had attempted torescue her, and 93 more had been wounded. Even so, it was a moment of triumph for Britain, and one of the greatest, face-losing humiliations ever for the Chinese Communists.
But the Communists were determined not to see it in this light. “Do not make haste in celebrating the success,” they cautioned in an official statement released to the press. “The whole case will not be closed so long as the culprits are not punished.” Another statement warned: “As long as the British government still exists, the Chinese people must continue to go into the responsibility for the crime and insist on meting out severe punishment.”
In the West, such tocsins were widely dismissed as sour grapes. The H.M.S.
Amethyst
limped back to Hong Kong, then to Britain, doing a lap of honor through the eastern lands of the empire on her way home. Everywhere, church bells rang, celebration dinners were served, ladies swooned over the sailors, officers were handed medals, most were promoted—it was one of the very last of fading Britain's finest hours. The king congratulated everyone concerned, some personally at a reception in Buckingham Palace. The movie studio British Lion made a film—which everyone at my school was required to see—star-ring all of the gang (Richard Todd, William Hartnell, Donald Houston, Akim Tamiroff) who had recently brought the cinema-going public so breezily through World War II.
The film (black and white, of course, and with stirring music) was called
The Yangtse Incident.
In a story rendered simple and gripping were seeds rich in the pride of England, and of our sour contempt for the people of China. As a twelve-year-old—the film was released in 1956, seven years after the events on the river—I believed in it implicitly. It must have colored the thoughts of many who saw it and made them think of China, particularly Chinese Communists, with the utmost loathing and hostility.
There is something droll in considering what the Chinese did after the
Amethyst
made good its exit. It is said they sent down divers and located the an-chor—still attached to its several tons of chain—and pulled it from the river. They paraded it around town as a spoil of battle, a trophy that their men had wrested bravely from a fleeing imperial coward. How many of the locals accepted the story is anyone's guess, but it was not to be too much longer before the city of Chinkiang (Zhenjiang) had been swept clear of all its foreign residents, and the old British consulate had been turned into a revolutionary museum. It is said they dumped the relic there, in the gardens. The anchor, likethe consulate itself, was part of the dastardly enginework of foreign oppression that the revolution had so brilliantly driven away.
But to find the anchor today? A baffling habit I have encountered in many Chinese is their mute insistence that
they
At dawn they passed under the searchlights of Woosung Fort, where another Communist battery stood on the right bank, just where the Whangpoo entered the Yangtze. The searchlights briefly glanced off the hull—everyone on board holding their breath—and then the lights moved on. The
Amethyst
kept roaring onward. “Everything you've got!” Kerans instructed the engine room. “Damage to engines accepted.”
And then, finally, there in the dim light of morning, under a plume of smoke on the wide gray waters of the outer estuary, was the familiar outline of the
H.M.S.
Concord.
She saw the smaller
Amethyst
roaring down on her and made what has since become one of the Royal Navy's most famous signals:
Fancy Meeting You Again.
It was now beyond doubt that the H.M.S.
Amethyst
's saga was over. After 101 days in captivity, she had broken free—though at a terrible cost. All told, 46 men had died on the ship and on those that had attempted torescue her, and 93 more had been wounded. Even so, it was a moment of triumph for Britain, and one of the greatest, face-losing humiliations ever for the Chinese Communists.
But the Communists were determined not to see it in this light. “Do not make haste in celebrating the success,” they cautioned in an official statement released to the press. “The whole case will not be closed so long as the culprits are not punished.” Another statement warned: “As long as the British government still exists, the Chinese people must continue to go into the responsibility for the crime and insist on meting out severe punishment.”
In the West, such tocsins were widely dismissed as sour grapes. The H.M.S.
Amethyst
limped back to Hong Kong, then to Britain, doing a lap of honor through the eastern lands of the empire on her way home. Everywhere, church bells rang, celebration dinners were served, ladies swooned over the sailors, officers were handed medals, most were promoted—it was one of the very last of fading Britain's finest hours. The king congratulated everyone concerned, some personally at a reception in Buckingham Palace. The movie studio British Lion made a film—which everyone at my school was required to see—star-ring all of the gang (Richard Todd, William Hartnell, Donald Houston, Akim Tamiroff) who had recently brought the cinema-going public so breezily through World War II.
The film (black and white, of course, and with stirring music) was called
The Yangtse Incident.
In a story rendered simple and gripping were seeds rich in the pride of England, and of our sour contempt for the people of China. As a twelve-year-old—the film was released in 1956, seven years after the events on the river—I believed in it implicitly. It must have colored the thoughts of many who saw it and made them think of China, particularly Chinese Communists, with the utmost loathing and hostility.
There is something droll in considering what the Chinese did after the
Amethyst
made good its exit. It is said they sent down divers and located the an-chor—still attached to its several tons of chain—and pulled it from the river. They paraded it around town as a spoil of battle, a trophy that their men had wrested bravely from a fleeing imperial coward. How many of the locals accepted the story is anyone's guess, but it was not to be too much longer before the city of Chinkiang (Zhenjiang) had been swept clear of all its foreign residents, and the old British consulate had been turned into a revolutionary museum. It is said they dumped the relic there, in the gardens. The anchor, likethe consulate itself, was part of the dastardly enginework of foreign oppression that the revolution had so brilliantly driven away.
But to find the anchor today? A baffling habit I have encountered in many Chinese is their mute insistence that
they
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