A U.S. Navy sailor grins for the camera while a shipmate tends a deck gun aboard a warship of the China Station, circa the 1930s. In this era, American gunboats and destroyers patrolled China's coast and the Yangtze River to safeguard U.S. citizens, missionaries, and commercial interests amid regional unrest, giving rise to a generation of 'China sailors' whose personal photo albums, like the one this image comes from, documented daily shipboard routines far from home. Project: 218176