The Sand Pebbles (1966) is a rare American film set in the history of China's Northern Expedition, which tells the story of the 1926 gunboat USS San Pablo who, in order to protect American commercial interests in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, american engineer Jack Holman (actor Steve McQueen, the protagonist of the American soldier on a motorcycle in the 1963 World War II film The Great Escape) boards the freshly launched gunboat USS San Pablo. Patrol the Yangtze River Basin. During the patrol, in order to rescue the missionaries surrounded by Chinese people, fierce clashes occurred between the gunboats and the people on the shore.
Movie "Gunboat St. Paul"
The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by American novelist Richard McKenna, who worked on the USS Luzon (hull number PG-47) of the U.S. Yangtze River Fleet at the age of 18, and is familiar with the Chinese social environment and yangtze river gunboats in the 1930s, but unfortunately, just two years after the novel's publication, McKenna died of a heart attack.
However, the novel "Gunboat St. Paul" is about China in the 1930s, but considering the date of its writing, it is now generally believed that it is actually a reference to the Vietnam War, in which the Americans sent more and lighter river gunboats to compete with North Vietnamese guerrillas in the rivers and jungles of the Mekong Delta. Director Robert Wise also confirmed: "This film shows the world that the US military may have been unpopular around the world for many years, and the slang phrase 'Yankees roll back' existed not only during World War II, but also in this era." ”
The gunboat ST. Paul
Although the film has a fictional component in the plot, it is not completely handy, and the closest prototype to the São Paulo in the film is the USS Villalobos (hull number PG-42). The ship was the second generation of the U.S. Yangtze River Fleet and was added after 1900. After the Northern Expedition captured Nanjing in March 1927, there were some riots, and the ship cooperated with the Japanese Marines who landed in Nanjing to protect the retreat of American expatriates.
With a displacement of 274 tons and a length of 47.6 meters, the Bialobos armament consisted of four 3-inch naval guns and two 1-inch naval guns, originally a river gunboat built by the Spanish Navy in 1896, captured by the U.S. Navy in the Spanish-American War, and later incorporated into the Yangtze River Fleet along with three other Spanish gunboats, so the classic ship was retired shortly after the end of the Northern Expedition and sunk by the U.S. Navy as a destroyer target ship off the coast of China.
PG-42 hand-painted, note its towering individual chimney
Considering that the Villalobos is too old and too different from the river gunboat launched in the plot for 26 years, director Wise, when adapting the novel into a movie, changed the prototype of the St. Paul to the American river gunboat Guam, that is, the ship that the author McKenna served on, as a memorial to it.
Guam is one of the six third-generation inland gunboats of the U.S. Yangtze River Fleet, and also the first guam-class gunboat, with a displacement of 350 tons, a length of less than 50 meters, and in addition to being equipped with 2 3-inch caliber naval guns, the ship is also equipped with 8 machine guns, which is more suitable for dealing with the bandit warlords and Red Army guerrillas along the Yangtze River. It is worth noting that the ship was still built and launched at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, although it was a concocted ship, but it was not easy for the poor republic of China.
Guam at Wusongkou, Shanghai in December 1927
Strictly speaking, however, the crew was not entirely right, because the Guam was only completed in November 1926 and officially put into use in June 1928, and it is unlikely that the film will go to China in 1926. In addition, guam is a double chimney, while the São Paulo is still the single chimney mode of early river gunboats, of course, this trivial problem is basically harmless.
Interestingly, while the film was being filmed, the GUAM was still in service, and you guessed it, served in the Republic Red Navy. The river gunboat had a tortuous experience, initially renamed Wick (HUR-3), captured by the Japanese early in the Pacific War, and renamed Tatara. After Japan's unconditional surrender, it was handed over to the Republic of China Navy and renamed Taiyuan. In 1949, the ship participated in the revolt of the Second Fleet led by Lin Zun in the Battle of the River Crossing, and was soon sunk by nationalist bombers and abandoned due to large damage.
In "Red Cradle", Mr. Peng adjusts the angle of the artillery
Students who have read "Peng Dehuai's Self-Description" may remember that after the Red Third Army captured Yueyang in 1930, Peng Zongzeng and Jin Wuting personally operated artillery, shelling an American and British gunboat and hitting several rounds, forcing it to stop provoking. The gunboat that was hit was actually the Guam, and according to the U.S. Navy's overseas casualty statistics table, in 1930 the U.S. Navy had a man killed on the bank of the Yueyang River, and this unfortunate brother was a sailor on the Guam.
What is puzzling is that such a legendary story, as the 2013 TV series "Marshal Peng Dehuai" of Peng Zong's biographical drama, did not mention a word, and although it was mentioned in the 2010 TV series "Red Cradle", Yueyang was changed to Changsha, and Jin Wuting was automatically blocked, which was really blind.
Nola D from a single chimney in Gunboat St. Paul
Finally, since the six third-generation river gunboats of the U.S. Yangtze River Fleet were all obsolete, in order to shoot the film "São Paulo Gunboat", the crew specially customized a diesel-powered barge on Hong Kong Island, and after the filming of the film was completed on Treasure Island, the ship named Nola D changed hands several times and was finally scrapped in Singapore in 1975.