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1927

I found Hankow a fascinating city quite different from Shanghai in ways that I can't explain. It looked different, smelled different and the people worked and lived at a different pace. One English department store that I remember, named the Whiteaway Laidlaw Company was the very epitome of the British Empire in the Far East. I couldn't go into the building without thinking of Kipling's stories. I visited all the bars but cafes were the most fun because the dancing partners seemed to have come from all parts of the world. One girl was sort of a curiosity because she was what we would call today a drop-out from an American church mission. In the process she seemed to have dropped further than all the other girls.

The anchorage in Hankow was a very uneasy one because of the immense amount of silt in the river. Once a day we had to start the ship's engines, move up slightly and haul up the anchor and let it down again so that it wouldn't get buried too deep in the bottom to extract. We had the small boat landing stairs lowered down from the quarterdeck to the water's edge and sometimes at night a body of a chinaman would become stuck on it and a deck hand would have to go down and push it off with a boat hook. The river current is very swift here and the exact color of a muddy field. It was so dangerous that three floating lines were trailed aft for a hundred feet to give any sailor unfortunate enough to fall overboard a fighting chance to save his life.

The electrical shop where we worked and slept was down below the water line and the portholes were about four feet above the water's edge. While at anchor was the only time we could keep them open for ventilation. We soon discovered the prime joke of river sailors. In the middle of the night when everyone was asleep some wise guy would rush into the compartment waking fellows as he ran past and yelling, "Close the ports, the river's rising!", then he would disappear before anyone recognised him. The fact of the matter was quite the opposite because what we had to worry about was that in the fall of the year the source of the great river way up in the Himalayas was beginning to freeze up and the level of the water dropped a little each day. Since the Marblehead was a very large ship to be that far upriver we had to get out in time or be marooned in Hankow for the duration of inter. It was determined by the river experts that it would be dangerous to stay any longer than October 12th. On the day before we were to leave we became aware of some trouble at the Japanese Concession. It was rumored that a mob of Chinese had formed in front of the main gate and were threatening to break down the barrier and rush in. All of a sudden all the deck guns on the Japanese cruiser fired volley after volley directly at the area of trouble. The point of contact was just out of sight from the Marblehead so I have no idea how many casualties there were and we never heard anything about it afterward but I have a vivid memory of hearing and seeing for the first time big guns fire in anger.

We made a very fast passage with the current down river, leaving Hankow at daybreak on October 12th. We anchored the first night at Anking. Steaming dawn to dusk the next day brought us to a place called Siennumiao Creek the second night and a full day's run the third day found us at Shanghai by nightfall. Once we got there we got rid of our steel machine gun nests, took on a lot of new supplies. A man from the State Department came aboard with his staff assistants. Also very quietly a small group of navy radio men who understood Japanese joined our regular radio crew. Of course nothing was ever said about them but we were pretty sure the men were from Naval Intelligence. They certainly didn't mingle with the rest of the crew during the trip to Japan. Of course it was rumored in 1927 that the Japanese were fortifying islands of the Pacific against all treaty commitments. We were to be the first naval ship to have men going ashore on liberty for some time because the Japanese government was cool toward us after the 1923 earthquake. They were suspicious that we had learned some of their military secrets when our ships were helping out after the disaster. However we were to find out that we were quite welcome this time.

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