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: -ing the side lights, and such junks are after all only a small proportion of those that are to be met with on the Coast of South China. These side lights are comparatively expensive costing from $16 to $20 a pair, and it is difficult to conceive from what source the thousands of junks that frequent innumerable fishing and trading harbours other than Treaty Ports on the Coast of China could procure them if they wanted them.
Moreover, a junk, owing to the low freeboard of all but the largest of them, is not structurally suited to carry such lights which would have to be fixed in the rigging in order to be visible. In such a position, they would be an inconvenience owing to the character of the sails carried by junks.
7. Now the original object of the legislation was to prevent those collisions which unfortunately frequently take place between steamers and junks, and I submit that as the efforts to make junks carry side lights have failed, an endeavour should be made to induce them to carry some other lights. What is wanted is some simple and cheap system of lights compulsory in the waters of the Colony, and outside our waters indispensable to success in our Courts in case of collision.
The lights used on the Canton River, where the comparative narrowness of the water and the numbers of steamers and junks using them render even the junk Master alive to precaution, are a white light at the masthead and another white light in the stern, which in a junk is high above the water. These lights are, in the opinion of those best competent to judge, the most suitable for Chinese junks, and I recommend that they be adopted. I have accordingly to submit for your consideration the enclosed draft Ordinances, the object of