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Updated: May 8, 2025
The landing of the troops was a difficult task, for the roughness of the sea made it impossible for another vessel to lie alongside the transports, and we had to resort to the slow and somewhat dangerous method of transferring the men from the ships to a light-draft steamer in the ship's small boats.
During the same year Congress authorized the construction of three new vessels, to be of the class known as light-draft protected gunboats. These are of about twelve hundred tons displacement, and are designed for river service in China and elsewhere.
"Dick," said Ned, "Dad thinks we need a little vacation before going to work, and he offers to take us on a cruise in the Gypsey to the Bahamas and to Cuba, or to charter a light-draft boat that could go through the Bay of Florida and let us finish our cruise in the crocodile country, beginning where we turned back when the fresh water gave out. Maybe he will let Molly go."
Perry first disposed his light-draft schooners to cover his channel, and then hoisted out the guns of the Lawrence brig and lowered them into boats. Scows, or "camels," as they were called, were lashed alongside the vessel to lift her when the water was pumped out of them.
On the ocean side it was protected by forts and batteries and the harbor was guarded by a long line of reefs. Through the openings in this natural breakwater, the light-draft native craft could pass in and out to harass the blockading fleet. It was Commodore Preble's plan to make a carefully concerted attack upon this stronghold as soon as summer weather conditions permitted.
Situated at the eastern end of the gorges, this town of thirty thousand Chinese inhabitants and a handful of Europeans is just where all the merchandise going upstream must be shifted from the light-draft steamers of the lower Yangtse to the native junks of forty to a hundred tons which are still the only freight boats that venture regularly through the rapids and whirlpools of the upper waters of the Great River.
Jack Curtiss stood in her stern and waved a mocking hand at the Boy Scouts as the light-draft craft shot over the shoals and shallows with case while the Flying Fish had to lose much time and way by threading in and out seeking the deeper water. "Douse my toplights, I can't stand that," bellowed the irate Captain Hudgins. "I'll put a shot in that jackanapes' locker."
A little later in the season two very small and very light-draft stern-wheelers, referred to as "coal-oil Johnnies," plied intermittently between White Mountain and Council, as the condition of the streams allowed; but the usual and best-adapted means of transportation were long, shallow scows which a horse pulled up-stream freighted, and rode down upon empty.
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