34.1
GENERAL GORDON
An enquiry by a reader (7-7-33) about one Charles Taffs, believed to have been here in 1863 in the Royal Engineers, and to have been one of those who greeted Gordon when he visited Hongkong, has so far elicited no replies. The history of Gordon in China is probably well known, and his connexion with the suppression of the Taiping rebellion, his commemoration by the Chinese almost as a deity, and his subsequent tragic fate in Egypt, are matters of history not coming within the province of these notes. I am unable to verify that Gordon arrived here in 1863, on his early visit to China, but there is a record to prove that he was in Hongkong in 1880. He arrived here in the summer of that year, and spent two weeks here and in Canton. He made various suggestions as to the defence of the Colony, and it is interesting to learn that he specially advised the removal of the Naval Yard, military barracks, and military and naval stores to Causeway Bay (at this time there were also barracks in the West Point area). His advice, obviously, was not acted upon!
Another interesting fact is that "Chinese Gordon" as he became known out here, leader of the "Ever Victorious Army" was locally commemorated in Gordon Terrace.
At the time I wrote a brief note on General Gordon (10-7-33) I had mislaid the excellent "Life" written by A. Egmont Hake, and published in 1884. This has since been rescued from the back of a pile of old volumes, and gives a definite date for Gordon's first visit to Hongkong, but unfortunately no details of his sojourn here.
He left England for China in the middle of July, 1860, travelling via Paris, Marseilles, Malta, Alexandria, Aden, Ceylon, Singapore and Hongkong, and he arrived here at the beginning of September that year. While stopping off here, he received the news by mail of the fall of the Taku forts, and he was provided with a passage to Shanghai, leaving Hongkong for the northern port on September 11, 1860, staying one day in Shanghai before proceeding to Tientsin, and soon afterwards taking part in the Allied capture of Peking from the rebels. As commander of the Royal Engineer unit in the field, he stayed in North China until the spring of 1862, when he moved down to the Shanghai area, where the Taiping rebels had become troublesome. Not long after this commenced the campaign against the Taipings in which, leading the Chinese Imperial forces, he won fame as "Chinese Gordon". He took command at Sung-kiang in March, 1863, and as he fought continually in the field until the rebels were crushed (and was wounded in the course of the operations), it is unlikely that he again visited this Colony until his departure for home, at the end of 1864. As we have seen (10-7-33) he again came out to China on a brief advisory visit in 1880.
Mention might also be made here of the fact that one of the jubilee memorial proposals was for a home to be named after General Gordon; but the idea fell through.
In a leading article on the approaching celebration of the Colony's jubilee in the Hongkong Telegraph of December 4, 1890, readers were reminded that among the many suggestions which the Committee would receive for consideration was that of the establishment of a "Gordon's Home" for the waifs and strays of the Colony's numerous population. The paper states: