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Witness History: The Yangtze Incident

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hms amethyst.jpg

09/08/2019 GMT

The Yangtze Incident

BBC World Service - Witness History, The Yangtze Incident

How a British warship escaped from Chinese Communists on the Yangtze river in 1949

In 1949 a British warship, HMS Amethyst, launched a daring escape after it was held captive for months by Chinese Communists on the Yangtze river. The ship had been badly damaged when it was fired on by Communist forces as it sailed up the river to help evacuate British citizens from Nanking during the final months of China's civil war. Using eyewitness accounts in the BBC Archive, we tell the story of HMS Amethyst.

Photo: The HMS Amethyst (F116) arrives in Hong Kong after it's epic escape down the Yangtse. (Photo Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

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