14. Following the defeat of the Republic of China, thousands of refugees fleeing the People’s Liberation Army were packed aboard an overcrowded steamship which subsequently struck a World War Two mine.
A Chinese passenger steamship, the SS Kiangya was a steamship owned by the Shanghai Merchants Group. With the imminent collapse of the Republic of China and the advance of the People’s Liberation Army, refugees fled into the port city seeking a means to escape capture. Carrying 2,150 listed passengers, as well as an estimated 2,000 more unlisted – far in excess of her stated capacity of 1,186 – whilst crossing the mouth of the Huangpu River on December 4, 1948, the Kiangya suddenly exploded. Believed to have struck a mine laid by the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second World War, it took many hours for rescuers to reach the scene.
Saving seven hundred, it is thought between 2,750 and 3,920 people perished in the inadvertent devastation. Not the only or indeed last group of Chinese refugees to suffer a nautical disaster during the Chinese Civil War, on January 26, 1949, the Taiping packed on board more than 1,500 to escape the advancing People’s Liberation Army. Bound for Keelung, Taiwan, whilst traveling at night in the early hours of the following day the Taiping collided with a cargo ship near the Zhoushan Archipelago. Designed to carry only 580 passengers, all 1,500 aboard were killed in the incident.