BOOK REVIEWS
215
The opium trade of Shanghai may have taken place "on the busy Bund", but not until after 1858. The authors apparently never have heard of Woosung and its hulks.
The authors, intent on opium, assert an oil painting of an island with a British flag on a pole on the shore is "Lintin”. In the background, with top masts housed, are ships. It is painted and signed "C. Cramer 1803", obviously an European artist. Evidently the authors do not realize that opium trading in 1803 was conducted at Whampoa and only reached Lintin in 1821. They also err when they state Jardine Matheson & Co. “diverted their ships to Lintin Island and other independents followed suit”. In 1803 Jardine Matheson & Co. was not in existence. They maintain the ships in the background are "Scandinavian flag-ships”. Of course there is no such thing as a Scandinavian flag, and a look at the poor photograph shows a white field and a dark cross on a flag, more indicative of the St. George ensign than either a Danish or Swedish flag with its dark field and light cross. You will find this Scandinavian error repeated 5 other times. To cap it all, one finds a British sailor rolling a barrel along the shore, surely an impossibility in 19th century China. Can the scene be somewhere in the Mediterranean where there are islands and mountains and British warships in 1803?
The authors manage to insert a most extraordinary amount of misinformation into their nautical writings. In plate 37, correct to a French "bark”, not a “schooner". The liner Empress of Japan is identified correctly in plate 44, but why date the picture "circa 1880" when the steamer begins service in 1891? The painting is on the "stern" of the Chinese Merchant Junk, plate 63, not the "prow", as the rudder shows clearly just below. For the English "clipper" dated 1866, substitute "bark". Evidently they know nothing of monsoons or they would revise "the cumbersome East Indiamen which could only make two round sailings each season between India and China”. Of course the answer is one sailing per season. The numerous islands between Macao and the China Sea "make a landfall at Macao" almost prohibitively difficult.
Some of the identifications of Port Scenes are ludicrous. Any person who locates "the Praya Grande bordering the bay of the inner harbor” at Macao or "the Governor's Palace at the northern