English and American steamers on the daily run, and for a limited time afterwards, armed men watched at the Hong Kong and Canton gangways and on board the river steamers. A similar precaution is not now done, except under rare and peculiar circumstances. Quarter Masters are unarmed, of course; a duty (or duty) is to look after the safety of the ship against piracy. But it is almost unnecessary to add that there is no analogy between the river steamers
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has been removed as there is no clear indication of missing text in the original passage, and the last sentence seems incomplete. However, I've kept the original meaning and corrected the obvious errors. Here is the revised output in HTML format as requested:English and American steamers on the daily run, and for a limited time afterwards, armed men watched at the Hong Kong and Canton gangways and on board the river steamers. A similar precaution is not now done, except under rare and peculiar circumstances. Quarter Masters are unarmed, of course; a duty is to look after the safety of the ship against piracy. But it is almost unnecessary to add that there is no analogy between the river steamers