An album of 154 collodion and gelatin silver photographs compiled by an unidentified German sailor from photographs collected during his tour of duty aboard the German gunboat Iltis. The focus of the album is the German naval presence in China, documenting the Iltis and its crew in particular, but also including views of other German and foreign naval vessels. It also presents a picture of Chinese culture during the last days of the Qing dynasty, the revolution of 1911, and the birth of the Chinese Republic, and documents both domestic struggle and foreign intervention as well as scenes of daily life.

The SMS Iltis (Polecat) was one of several Iltis-class small and lightly armed gunboats that the Germans operated in Chinese waters in the early years of the twentieth century as part of Germany's East Asia Squadron. The Iltis was launched on August 4, 1898 at the Schichau shipyards in Danzig (Gdańsk) and put into service on December 1 of that year. She left Kiel on February 6, 1899 and never returned to Germany. Her first stop was Falmouth and thence to the Bay of Biscay where she towed the English steamer Port Darwin, to La Coruña, Portugal. She then sailed through the Mediterranean via Gibraltar to Port Said, through the Suez Canal, and on via Aden to Colombo (Ceylon), stopping at Penang, and the island of Pulau Langkawi in Malaysia and in Singapore, before reaching Tsingtau on May 18, 1899.

1.5 Linear Feet (154 photographs in 1 album)

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