Dragonfly-class gunboats during the 1937 Shanghai crisis

An account from August 1937 describes destroyers Duncan, Delight, and Duchess transferring refugees from the Yangtze approaches to the liner Empress of Asia. While the destroyers performed the evacuation, Dragonfly- and Insect-class gunboats remained on patrol around Shanghai. A contemporary American account describes Japanese bombers overhead, Chinese anti-aircraft fire, and large numbers of sampans gathering near an American gunboat in the hope that it would not be attacked. Evacuation and armed presence were complementary naval tasks rather than interchangeable ones. This was the Dragonfly class in its intended China Station environment before the Second World War redirected most of the class elsewhere.