Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare ‘Yangtze incident’ M.B.E. group of eight awarded to Lieutenant-Commander G. B. Strain, Royal Navy, one of only four officers who remained on board the Amethyst for the duration of her captivity and her dash down-river to freedom

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, M.B.E. (Military) Member’s 2nd type breast badge; 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Pacific Star; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Yangtze 1949 (Lieut (L). G. B. Strain. R.N.) official correction to second initial, mounted on card with a copy Korea pair for display purposes, good very fine (8) £4,000-£5,000

M.B.E. (Military) London Gazette 2 January 1950: ‘Lieutenant Commander (E) G. B. Strain, R.N., H.M.S. Amethyst.

George Blackstock Strain, more commonly known during his service days as ‘Jock’, was born on 25 August 1917 to Janet Brown Glen (née Blackstock) and Weatherall Ritchie Strain, of Oban, Scotland. His birth certificate shows that his father was employed as a Mercantile Clerk and that his parents had married in November 1913 in the Kelvin District of Glasgow.

His name first appears in the Navy List as an Acting Temporary Sub Lieutenant (Sp.Br) Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve with seniority of 6 March 1944. The abbreviation ‘Sp.Br.’ indicates that he was an officer of the ‘Special Branch’; the abbreviation ‘Sc’ that precedes his name in the Navy List indicates that he was an officer employed on ‘Scientific Duties’.

On 1 October 1944 he was appointed to the convoy escort ship H.M.S. Antwerp serving as a Fighter Direction Ship with the Mediterranean Fleet. His next appointment on 14 May 1945 was to the 2,650-tonne Minelayer Ariadne.

In 1946 he was offered and accepted the opportunity to transfer to the Royal Navy with the rank of Lieutenant (E) with seniority backdated to 25 July 1941 - the abbreviation (E) signifying that he was an officer of the Electrical Branch. On 17 June 1946 he was appointed to Collingwood, the Royal Navy Electrical School at Gosport, Hampshire. He remained in this posting for eighteen months, and during this period underwent specialist training and qualified as an officer of the Electrical Branch.

The Navy List for January 1948 shows him as being unattached and therefore with no indication of where he was serving. The Navy List for January 1949 shows that in November 1948 he was appointed to the 1,250-tonne frigate H.M.S. Black Swan, then serving with the Far East Fleet, and was later appointed Electrical Officer, Yangtze Flotilla.

On 19 April 1949 as part of his Yangtze Flotilla duties, during the Chinese Civil War, he took passage aboard the 1,350 ton frigate H.M.S. Amethyst to Nanking where she was to relieve the ‘C’ class destroyer Consort as guard ship to the British Embassy. At that time, Nanking was the capital of the Nationalist Republic of China. Following hand-over, it was intended that he would return down river aboard Consort.

Whilst on passage, on 20 April, Amethyst came under heavy and sustained artillery fire from well-concealed Chinese Communist troops on the north bank of the Yangtze River; the south bank of the river was held by the Nationalists, and the north bank by the Communists.

About 9.30 on 20 April 1949, a Communist shore battery opened fire on Amethyst, hitting her bridge, mortally wounding her captain, Lieutenant Commander B. M. Skinner, and injuring First Lieutenant Geoffrey Weston, before he could pass on the captain’s order to return fire. A second shell hit the wheel-house wounding the coxswain and, in trying to take evasive action, Amethyst slewed to port and grounded on a sandbank near Rose Island. Other shells exploded in the sick bay, the port engine room, and finally the generator. The loss of power also disabled the gyrocompass and electrically-controlled firing circuits. Amethyst was now a helpless target and had grounded in such a way that neither of the two gun turrets at the front of the ship could be brought to bear on the P.L.A. (People’s Liberation Army) targets.

The shelling continued, ripping large holes in the hull (some near the waterline), the sickbay and the port engine room. Only one turret was able to bear on the hostile batteries; it fired under local control until it was disabled. Just after 10.00, the wounded First Lieutenant ordered the evacuation of all but essential personnel. Just over 60 men reached the southern shore. Shelling stopped at 11.00; 22 men had been killed and 31 wounded (the wounded were taken off by sampan the next day, and the evacuation of nonessential personnel completed). The ship had received over fifty hits, and P.L.A. snipers continued to fire at any visible movement on board.

During this time H.M.S. Consort was sighted, flying seven White Ensigns and three Union flags, steaming down from Nanking at 29 knots. Consort came under fire from the shore batteries and returned fire with her 4.5 inch guns, destroying the enemy shore batteries before she attempted to take Amethyst in tow. Consort turned about wit all guns blazing at the north bank batteries, destroying an enemy position. However, Consort came under heavy fire, and the attempt was abandoned with 10 killed and three injured.

First Lieutenant Weston refloated Amethyst on 22 April and moved her out of range of the P.L.A. artillery. The British Assistant Naval Attaché, Lieutenant-Commander J. S. Kerans came on board and took over command of the ship and the 50 or so crew members, including Strain, who remained on board during the entire Yangtze incident. On 26 April an attempt to free Amethyst from the mud was successful and the ship then proceeded to move up river and anchored off Fu Te Wei. Later that day a signal was received: ‘H.M. ships London and Black Swan are moving up river to escort the Amethyst down stream. Be ready to move.’ Both ships were heavily shelled as they attempted to help Amethyst, and they were forced to retreat with 3 killed and 14 wounded.

Amethyst remained under guard by the P.L.A. for 101 days and vital supplies were not permitted to reach her. After a fourth attempt, the R.A.F. Sunderland flying boat from 88 Squadron succeeded in landing a replacement doctor, and medical supplies. Negotiations with the Communists made no progress, because they insisted as a precondition that Kerans must begin by confessing that the ship had wrongly invaded Chinese national waters and had fired upon the P.L.A. first (in 1988 the Chinese commander, Ye Fei, admitted that it was his troops that opened fire first).

According to Lawrence Earl in the Yangtze Incident: ‘As early as mid-May Kerans reserved a corner of his mind for thinking about a possible break-out from the river in case his negotiations for a safe-conduct should fail. With this in his mind he decided to get the ship into seaworthy shape as soon as possible. He appointed Garns and Saunders, under the supervision of Strain, as Damage-Control Party, but he did not mention to anyone his secret fears that a break-out might eventually become the only avenue to freedom. The damage control party used hammocks stuffed with mattresses and blankets and old clothing, anything they could lay their hands on that could be spared. Then they used from one to three of these at a time according to the size of the hole. After that they shored up the damaged area with planks, using the stock of timber, taken on board in Malaya sometime previously, which they cut down to proper sizes. In a month they had succeeded in adequately filling in eight holes along the waterline, but one waterline hole, dead astern and directly over the rudder, resisted all their efforts.

Kerans was feeling pretty good about the break-out now that the decision had been made. He had worked out all the angles, quietly and alone, during the long, tiresome wait. He drew up a list of seventeen petty officers and key ratings, and ordered them to meet in his cabin at about eight that evening. The seventeen trooped silently into Kerans’ small cabin. There was not much room to spare. The door was shut, and almost at once the air became stifling. ‘“I’m, going to break out tonight,” Kerans said matter-of-factly.’

Under cover of darkness on 30 July 1949, Amethyst slipped her chain and headed down-river, beginning a 104-mile dash for freedom, running the gauntlet of guns on both banks of the river. She followed the merchant ship Kiang Ling Liberation, which distracted the P.L.A., and guided the way through the shoals and sandbanks. The hole in the stern at the waterline now began to let in water at a fast rate and pumps were deployed. At 5.00 of 31 July, Amethyst approached the P.L.A. forts at Woosung and Par Shan with their search lights sweeping the river. Amethyst, at full speed ahead, broke through the boom at the mouth of the river and made contact with H.M.S. Consort before arriving in Hong Kong on 11 August 1949.

The signal transmitted: “Have rejoined the fleet off Woosung…God save the King.”

On 25 July, a few days prior to Amethyst’s escape down river, the officers and men on board held a small celebration to mark Lieutenant Strain’s promotion to Lieutenant Commander.

Shortly after Amethyst’s successful escape Lieutenant Commander (L) Strain returned to Black Swan and continued to serve aboard the ship during 1950-51 during which time he was engaged in operations of the Korean Coast. The ship’s company later received both the Queen’s and the United Nations Korea War Medals.

Following Black Swan’s return to the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951, he was again appointed to H.M.S. Collingwood where he served in the electrical school’s ‘Equipment & Trials Section’ and remained in this posting until the autumn of 1954. Rather unusually the Navy Lists for the next 18 months do not state where he was serving. His next recorded appointment, on 17 October 1955, was to H.M.S. Hornet, the Coastal Forces Base at Gosport, Hampshire until his retirement in 1962.

On leaving the Royal Navy, he found employment as an electrical engineer and was working in this capacity when he died in West Highland Hospital, Oban, on 14 August 1980, from multiple injuries received in a road accident.

Sold with copied research.