Amethyst incident

Uncommon card · No. 198553

The Amethyst incident, also known as the Yangtze incident, was a three-month international confrontation on the Yangtze River in the summer of 1949 during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War. The incident involved the Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), who were in the process of a river-crossing offensive to overthrow the Nationalist Government, and four British Royal Navy ships HMS Amethyst, HMS Black Swan, HMS Consort and HMS London. The British warships, whose claimed right of passage along the Yangtze had been unchallenged since the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin with the late Qing dynasty, came under bombardment by PLA artillery and were forced to withdraw permanently from Chinese territorial waters. The incident was described in the British press as a dramatic escape, while in China it was celebrated by senior Communist officials such as Mao Zedong and Peng Dehuai, who viewed the incident as the end of foreign imperialism in China.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Royal Navy official photographer, Public domain