An item of considerable interest

_____________________________________________________________________________________ I recall it fairly well actually

HM Ship Amethyst in 1949 steamed 104 miles about 160 kilometres down the Yangtze River and rejoined the fleet being fired on by the people’s liberation army of the red Chinese.

This account here by Wikipedia has not given all the facts really in actual fact the ship whilst on a routine mission to Nanking (now called Nanjing) was driven ashore by heavy gunfire with a considerable loss of life.

Damage and casualties also occurred with HM Ships London, Black Swan and the consort who gallantly tried to aid the frigate HMS Amethyst.

What is not so well known is the fact that the radio operator sent messages back to the British fleet for a good twenty days without proper sleep and was awarded a bravery award of some kind.

This incident was also made into a movie starring Richard Todd.

The ship’s cat Simon had a job on his hands when a particularly large rodent named “Mao Tse-Tung (I love that) was eventually killed by Simon who was awarded the Dickin Medal sadly posthumously

A little bit of history now almost forgotten strangely the actual ship was used in the movie, the skipper was Lt Cdr J.S. Kerans D.S.O RN.

Sourced