The first American ship to call at this port since the bombing of the Dollar luxury liner President Hoover, as well as being the first ocean-going ship to enter the inner harbour for over ten weeks, the s, Steel Traveller came up the Whangpoo yesterday morning and berthed at the Shanghai Hongkew Wharf Co's shell-damaged and bullet-ridden Pootung Wharf. On board her was a small naval escort, and while she remains in port a detachment of U.S. Marines will be kept on board.
The Steel Traveller, members of the crew told the "North-China Daily News" representative who went down to meet her, had a fairly quiet journey from Japan, although the sound of gun-fre was heard when she was two days out of Osaka. Yesterday morning, as she came around the bend towards the wharf, a Japanese transport came downriver, and the crew of the American vessel had their baptism of fire as Japanese destroyers below her commenced to lay shells into the Pootung waterfront to keep down snipers while the transport passed.
The Steel Traveller, incidentally, had quite a royal welcome, for no sooner had she tied up to the wharf than six Japanese fighting plane started to dive over her, disappearing from view for a moment behind the godowns and as suddenly appearing again, to skim the roof-tops. Occasionally, one of them would file a few rounds, at nothing as far as could be seen.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.