Dennis L. Noble - The Sailors Homer: The Life and Times of Richard McKenna, Author of the Sand Pebbles

Titles in the Series

With Commodore Perry to Japan: The Journal of William Speiden Jr., 18521855

Whips to Walls: Naval Discipline from Flogging to Progressive-Era Reform at Portsmouth Prison

Crisis in the Mediterranean: Naval Competition and Great Power Politics, 19041914

Home Squadron: The U.S. Navy on the North Atlantic Station

New Perspectives on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology

James C. Bradford and Gene A. Smith, editors

Rivers, seas, oceans, and lakes have provided food and transportation for man since the beginning of time. As avenues of communication they link the peoples of the world, continuing to the present to transport more commodities and trade goods than all other methods of conveyance combined. The New Perspectives on Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology series is devoted to exploring the significance of the earths waterways while providing lively and important books that cover the spectrum of maritime history and nautical archaeology broadly defined. The series includes works that focus on the role of canals, rivers, lakes, and oceans in history; on the economic, military, and political use of those waters; on the exploration of waters and their secrets by seafarers, archaeologists, oceanographers, and other scientists; and on the people, communities, and industries that support maritime endeavors. Limited by neither geography nor time, volumes in the series contribute to the overall understanding of maritime history and can be read with profit by both general readers and specialists alike.

This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

2015 by Dennis L. Noble

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-61251-896-1 (eBook)

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

Gilgamesh, in Fossil Relief, reprinted with permission from Brian Turner, Here, Bullet (Farmington: Alice James Books, 2005), 53.

Hour of Panic story SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing Indianapolis, IN.

All rights reserved.

For Jos Madarietathis book could not have been written without his knowledge and assistance.

And

Dr. Vincent Patton III, EdD, MCPOCG, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.), who has given me help, encouragement, and friendship over the years.

History is a cloudy mirror made of dirt

and bone and ruin. And love? Loss?

These are questions we must answer

by war and famine and pestilence, and again

by touch and kiss, because each age must learn

This is the path of the suns journey by night.

BRIAN TURNER, Gilgamesh, in Fossil Relief, in Here, Bullet

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

a Short Story by Richard McKenna

I n 1962 a first-time author burst upon the literary scene. Richard McKennas novel The Sand Pebbles took place in a U.S. Navy gunboat operating on Chinas mighty Yangtze River during the turmoil of the 1920s. The novel resonated so well with the reading public that in 1964 it was made into a movie. McKennas novel is arguably not only the best fictional account of the upheaval taking place in China but also one of the best depictions of enlisted life on the old China Station. McKenna brought unusual qualifications to his writing: he served as a career enlisted man in the Navy for twenty-two years, ten of which were in Asia, including serving in a Yangtze River gunboat. Upon retirement, McKenna earned a degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then turned to writing, using some of his life experiences in his fiction. Even at a cursory glance, the life of Richard McKenna was as interesting as his novel.

My interest in McKenna began early in the 1970s while I browsed the shelves of a public library. It took only a few minutes of perusing The Sand Pebbles for me to decide to read the 597-page volume. At that time I had served seventeen years in the enlisted force of the U.S. Coast Guard and recognized that McKenna not only knew about enlisted naval service but also seemed to have captured the lives of sailors serving in an unusual ship and location in China. Like most people in the United States, I knew little about the U.S. military in China before World War II. Curious, I searched for nonfiction books on the subject and turned up only two volumes: Kemp Tolleys classic Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China (1971) and Charles G. Finneys The Old China Hands (1961), which examined Finneys time with the U.S. Armys 15th Infantry at Tientsin (Tianjin), China, in the 1920s. The search did yield a few articles published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, but there appeared almost nothing readily available in English.

The U.S. military in China and the paucity of material on this subject continued to pique my interest to such an extent that shortly after my retirement from the U.S. Coast Guard, I decided to return to university. My goal was to earn a PhD in history and write my dissertation on the U.S. military in China from 1901 to 1937. I chose this period to show the militarys actions between World Wars I and II and the armed forces views of China and the Chinese at a time when various political forces were attempting to remake the country. These actions and the militarys take on China and the Chinese at the time are part and parcel of McKennas The Sand Pebbles. When I finished my dissertation, I had a great appreciation for McKennas novel and wanted to know more about the author, who had otherwise been reduced to just a few bibliographical lines on the books jacket.

Like his novel, Richard McKenna had fired my curiosity, and I decided to write a biography of the man. I chose to tell his lifes story mainly because little is known about the enlisted forces of the U.S. military. So little is known because enlisted men and womenespecially those serving before World War IIrarely wrote diaries or left collections of correspondence. Years after he had retired from the Navy, Richard McKenna wrote that his shipmates in his first ship, Gold Star (AK 12), seldom wrote or received letters. McKenna, with his long service in a still little-known region of the world and his obvious writing ability, seemed the perfect subject to help illuminate the world of enlisted people in the Navy.

The second reason for my interest in McKenna was personal: McKennas life in many ways paralleled my life. McKenna had retired from the enlisted force of a naval service, as had I. He had attended university using the World War II GI Bill; I used the Vietnam War GI Bill to attend Purdue University. He had decided near the end of his service years to become a writer of fiction, whereas near the end of my active duty, I began work in nonfiction. Lastly, McKenna had won first place in an annual writing contest in