YANGTSE RIVER.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Album of photographs taken while cruising with the river steamer Wenchow. An appealing group of photographs, the unnamed photographer perhaps an oil consultant sent upriver to Jiujiang to evaluate the impact of the Battle of Wuhan, a four-month engagement that saw one million Chinese troops defend five provinces. Japanese troops took Jiujiang in summer 1938 and killed almost 100,000 civilians.According to the accompanying booklet of captions, the images were taken between December 1938 and May 1939 while travelling with Wenchow, a steamer built in 1923 for the China Navigation Company. The ship travelled under the protection of HMS Ladybird, a British gunboat with experience of clashing with the Japanese on the Yangtze.The images are far more varied than typical travel albums, documenting the impact of Japanese aggression. Four show members of the crew dealing with a Chinese mine in the river. After attempts to blow it up with gunfire fail, they try TNT. "We didn't get a big bang, because it was found to be water-logged, and therefore, a dud." Other photographs picture one of the many unexploded Japanese destroyer shells encountered during the cruise and ongoing minesweeping activities. Elsewhere, they encounter houses destroyed by the Japanese advance.The Jiujiang oil installation of the Asiatic Petroleum Company is visible in the distance of the third image. Heading to the installation, they see the village that sprang up around the installation as Chinese residents fled th

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