C.O. 45417 451
His Majesty's Consul to Viceroy. 11 FC 08 60itto.
CANTON, June 12th, 1869.
The undersigned has the honour to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency's despatch of the 6th instant, with reference to the question of stationing a guard at the Prata Shoal for the purpose of preventing acts of piracy on vessels in distress, a step which Your Excellency declines to take as not being provided for in any Treaty &c., &c.,
and in reply he begs to point out that his former communication appears to have been misunderstood, or at all events, misquoted, as in Your Excellency's reply reference is made to "stationing steam gunboats at the Prata Shoal", whereas the undersigned in his despatch made no mention whatever of gunboats, requesting only that "one or two war junks" be stationed at the Prata Shoals.
What he referred to was the ordinary class of armed junks, and he had no thought whatever of causing steam vessels to be sent to a spot for which they are so ill-adapted as that in question.
The matter is one however to which he has given careful consideration, and he must call Your