The Yangtze Patrol was a prolonged US Navy operation that patrolled America's Yangtze treaty ports and protected US citizens and property and Christian missionaries on the Chinese coast.
The patrol began in 1854 after the Battle of Muddy Flat, during which American, British, and Shanghai Volunteer Corps soldiers fought off Qing soldiers who were harassing Shanghai's international settlements. The East India Squadron's ships were sent to oversee the patrol, and American merchant ships became prominent on the lower Yangtze from the 1860s to 1870s, operating up to the deepwater port of Hankow 680 miles inland. The patrol often proceeded as far upstream as Wuhan, and its strength increased in the 1890s as China's stability deteriorated. In 1913, USS Palos and Monocacy were built specifically for service on the Yangtze, while the US Navy also sent four captured Spanish gunboats from the Spanish-American War to join the patrol. During the 1920s, the patrol found itself fighting both warlords and bandits, and the Navy built six new gunboats in Shanghai from 1926 to 1927. During the 1930s, the Japanese took control of much of the middle and lower Yangtze, while the National Revolutionary Army took over much of the north bank. The climax of hostilities came with the 1937 Rape of Nanking and the sinking of the USS Panay in a Japanese aerial attack. In the leadup to the attack on Pearl Harbor, most of the river patrol ships were withdrawn, and the patrol was formally dissolved on 5 December 1941. The evacuated ships were either scuttled or captured with their crews after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Some river patrols were resumed in September 1945, but the patrol finally ended in 1949 when the Chinese Civil War reached the Yangtze valley.
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