Sino-Western Yangtze River Family Stories
Archibald Little launched Leechuan, a wooden twin-screw steamer, from Shanghai on 15 January 1898 and arrived in Chungking 9 March 1898. Though the ship required trackers upriver through the rapids and was too small for cargo, it fulfilled its mission of securing interest and funding for a new Upper Yangtze steamship – Pioneer. Little piloted […]
Captain Cornell Plant’s Glimpses of the Yangtze Gorges was published in 1921, 1926 & 1932 and originally issued to coincide with the launch of S.S. Loong Mow, the first scenic passenger cruise ship in the Three Gorges. Ivon Donnelly illustrated the book. However, Captain Plant had launched commercial and passenger steamship service through the Yangtze’s […]
S.S. PioneerOn the morning of June 20, 1900 in Peking, German diplomat Klemens Freiherr von Ketteler was shot at point blank range by a Manchu soldier avenging Ketteler’s murder of a Chinese boy. Empress Dowager declared war on all foreign powers the next day. Meanwhile, 800 miles away in Ichang, Captain Cornell Plant set out to […]
Messrs. Mackenzie & Co launched S.S. Loong Mow, the first luxury river service from Shanghai through Yangtze’s Three Gorges in June 1920 under the pilotage of Commander Sidney Hall, R.N.R., marking the beginning of scenic cruises through the Gorges. Timed with this new service, Kelly & Walsh published Glimpses of the Yangtze Gorges in 1921 with […]