236: "Get Off My Bloody Ship!" The Defiant British Last Stand, Shanghai 1941
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236: "Get Off My Bloody Ship!" The Defiant British Last Stand, Shanghai 1941
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HMS Peterel: The Royal Navy's Defiant Last Stand at Shanghai, 1941
Chris Green is The History Chap; telling stories that brings the past to life.
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Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a small Royal Navy gunboat faced impossible odds in Shanghai.
When Japanese officers boarded HMS Peterel demanding surrender, her captain - 62-year-old Lieutenant Stephen Polkinghorn - gave them a defiant reply: "Get off my bloody ship!"
What followed was a one-sided battle against the armoured cruiser Izumo and shore batteries. With her main guns deliberately disabled, Peterel's crew fought back with Lewis guns and small arms.
She became the first British warship sunk by the Japanese in the Second World War - but she went down fighting, White Ensign still flying.
This video explores why British and American gunboats were in Shanghai, the strange "Solitary Island" existence of the International Settlement surrounded by Japanese forces since 1937, and the dramatic events of 8 December 1941.
It also reveals the remarkable story of CPO James Cuming, who evaded capture and spent the entire war as a spy in occupied Shanghai.
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