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A United States Midshipman in China

Chapter 2: Introduction
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About This Book

Two young United States naval officers aboard a gunboat patrol the Yangtse River during rising anti-foreign violence, answering urgent calls to protect missionaries and consular outposts. Local diplomacy breaks down amid treachery and factionalism, and several foreigners are seized and imprisoned. The officers and their allies devise a daring escape and undertake risky river operations to bypass enemy batteries. Reinforcements join the effort, a coordinated assault rescues the mission, and hostile forts ultimately surrender, after which the participants sort out the events and their immediate consequences.

COPYRIGHT
1909 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY

Introduction

Those who have read “A United States Midshipman Afloat” will recall that Philip Perry and his friend, Sydney Monroe, recent graduates of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, had been but a short time in the regular naval service when the battle-ship “Connecticut,” to which they had been assigned, was ordered to a South American port. Here they found a revolution in progress, and it became the duty of the young men to prevent the delivery of certain machine guns and other war material which had been shipped from America to the insurgents. In this they were successful after some stirring adventure on land and sea.

The present book shows the same young officers on a United States gunboat in the Yangtse River at a time when the lives of foreigners in China are in peril. A further account of their experiences in Eastern waters will be found in “A United States Midshipman in the Philippines.” In all of these books the endeavor has been to portray some of the bold enterprises which are all in the day’s work for a naval officer, and to show how our modern navy accomplishes big things in a quiet way.