Yangtze Skipper

I found this book in Powell's Books in Portland last year while at the OOPSLA Conferece. Published in the mid-1930's, it describes the experiences of a young gunboat captain in China in 1919. It had been filed in the history section, and I bought it, thinking it was a historical memoir.

It is, after a fashion. The writer, Thomas Woodrooffe, did apparently serve on a British gunboat just after the First World War. The book is a fictionalized version of his experiences. Woodrooffe really doesn't have any deep insights on the history of the period, but makes some wry, and sometimes amusing, comments about both the Chinese population and the colonial society he's forced to live with. The inscription described in this copy of the book sounds as though it is a fairly accurate portrayal of the author, based upon his style.

The picture here is of the type of gunboat Woodrooffe would have sailed in, and is taken from this website on the subject.

Now that I've finally got around to reading this book, I'll have to see what I pick up in Montréal while at this year's OOPSLA next week.