In fine weather these "red-boats," as, owing to their usual colour, they are commonly called, lay up in creeks or shelters while the crews pass their time at leisure, but as soon as a storm arises they immediately put out and ride to a drift-anchor, ready at a moment's notice to hoist sail and dash to the rescue of any craft in distress.
At Hankow, where a north-easterly gale against a four-knot current raises a choppy and heavy sea most dangerous for small craft, I have seen four red-boats racing from different directions to rescue the occupants of a capsized sampan. With sails fully hoisted before the gale and smothered by the waves, in an incredibly short time they were on the scene of the accident, where, rounding to, the work of salvage was carried out in a most plucky and seamanlike manner. These boats have no stem, the bows, which are square and about four feet in width, sloping away underneath in a gentle curve, so that their tendency is to skim over the water like a dish instead of cutting through it. They are decked forrard flush with the gunnel for nearly half their length, when a low cabin takes up the space as far as the well, which is quite aft.
Flat-bottomed, and using lee-boards, they draw very little water, while a single mast and sail of the light and convenient Chinese pattern render them extremely handy. Hand-lines are looped round the sides in the customary manner, but there is no cork belt.
Their qualities are so good that our own National Lifeboat Institution would do well to study the model for use in places where a sandy beach and shoal water make it sometimes impossible to launch the type of lifeboat now in general use.
Gun-boats, or police junks, are ubiquitous. A very low freeboard and no cabin, with the exception of a kind of deck-house quite aft, where the helmsman stands, one mast hoisting a gracefully-cut sail with alternate blue and white cloths, a small muzzle-loading cannon in the bows, and a crew of ten or a dozen in quaint uniforms, who, when wind fails, take to the sweeps, and standing up facing the direction in which they are going, and keeping good time, propel the boat at a fair pace. When at anchor an awning in blue and white stripes affords a commodious shelter. Being official vessels they are spic and span in light yellow varnish, and frequently fly a number of really beautiful flags of marvellous design and brilliant colouring. The tout-ensemble is smart, weird, pleasing and eminently suitable for a Drury Lane pantomime. Of shallow draught, and of size varying in accordance with the waters they are destined to patrol, I have seen them as large as twenty tons and as small as a skiff, having an old flint gingall mounted forrard with all the circumstance of a 12-inch gun.
Between the treaty-port of Ichang, which is a thousand miles from the sea, and the treaty-port of Chungking, which is four hundred miles higher up, lie the celebrated Yangtse Gorges.
Ichang is, for all practical purposes, the present terminus of steamship traffic, for although a few small steamers have passed through the Gorges and reached Chungking, there have been many failures, and one German vessel, the ss. Shuihsiang, built expressly for the run, was dashed on the rocks and sank when on her maiden trip.
The scenery of the Gorges is the grandest I have ever seen, and made a greater impression on me than even that of the Rocky Mountains.
My trip there was in the month of November, when the river was low and the current slack, albeit it raced by at five or six miles an hour.
Having hired a suitable boat at Ichang we set sail before a strong up-river breeze, and by carefully following all indentations of the river bank managed to keep in fairly slack water, until we reached a point where the Gorges actually commence. Here a tow-line was got out, and by the frantic efforts of half-a-dozen trackers, in addition to the sail, we slowly forged ahead but at not more than two miles an hour, although the foam breaking over our bows and a broad wake astern showed that we were passing through the water at the rate of eight or nine.