482
be mentioned, did not constitute insuperable obstacles. (These two vessels, it may patrolled the waters of the Upper Yang-tsze for over ten years, and are still, after twenty-six years' service, operating below Ichang.) A month later, in June 1900, another steamer owned by Mr. Little reached Chungking. This vessel, named the Pioneer, was much larger and more powerful than the tiny craft with which he made his first attempt, but it never had an opportunity to show whether or not it would be a commercial success, as before it left Szechuan for down-river the province was in the throes of the Boxer rising. The Pioneer was taken over by navy for the purpose of evacuating British subjects from Szechuan and was presently incorporated in the Royal Navy as His Majesty's ship "Kinsha," under which title she did service on the river for the next eighteen years.
Teal') Larger British gunboats (His Majesty's ships "Widgeon" and followed these, as well as French and German men-of-war, but, though the navigability of the Upper Yang-tsze by steamers had now been proved, it still had to be demonstrated that this was a commercially sound proposition. The next attempt in this direction was that of a German steamer, the "Suisiang ; this vessel was totally wrecked on its very first trip within a few miles of Ichang and a number of lives were lost. This tragedy revived all the former terrors of the river, and put an effective stop to attempts at commercial navigation for several years.
E
When the next attempt did take place, it was under Chinese auspices, and for several years steam navigation on the Upper Yang-tsze remained practically a Chinese monopoly an extraordinary instance of lack of enterprise on the part of British firms in China. None the less, it was due to British skill and British enterprise that the successful venture was made, and a British subject, Captain He was in Plant, may be styled the "Father of Upper Yang-tsze Steamers." command of the Pioneer' on her maiden voyage to Chungking; subsequently he became Upper Yang-tsze pilot to the French navy, and for many years he studied the difficulties of the river and the problem of its navigation in a way they had never been studied before. He succeeded in communicating a share of his faith to some of the merchants of Chungking; a company was formed, and a steamer, steamship "Shutung," was ordered from England (Thornycrofts). This vessel was specially constructed throughout, and was entirely of Captain Plant's design. It was in the autumn of 1909 that it arrived in Chungking, and since that date the commercial navigation of the Upper Yang-tsze has been an accomplished fact. The "Shutung," the real pioneer of the traffic, is still trading on the higher section of the river, from Chungking to Suifu, but is now under the British flag.
The instant success of this vessel converted its Chinese supporters into enthusiasts, and a second steamer, the "Shuhun,' considerably larger and of a much-improved design, was procured from England (Yarrows) by the same company as soon as the Shutung had been running long enough to demonstrate the directions in which it was susceptible of improvements. The enterprise was watched by British shipping interests with close attention, but the unsettled state of Szechuan before and after the revolution of 1911 (Szechuan was in a state of open rebellion four or five months before the revolution actually broke out) not unnaturally made them chary of investments there until there was some sign of stability; then came the Great War, which further hindered developments, so that, except for a small vessel belonging to the Asiatic Petroleum Company and carrying bulk oil, the Red Ensign was practically unrepresented on the Upper Yang-tsze until 1919. Numerous other Chinese companies followed on that owning the "Shutung " and "Shuhun," but they had no expert advisers in any way comparable with Captain Plant, and their steamers, built in China, were, as a rule, cheaply and poorly constructed and were short-lived. The following figures show the development of the trade up to the time when foreign flags entered seriously into it :-
1916 1917 1918
STEAMERS Entered and Cleared at Chungking.
Chinese.
47 89
British.
Total.
5
53
3
113
20
43
So long as all steamers were under the Chinese flag and subject to Chinese juris diction, there was no danger of any serious complications arising. In particular, it was possible to enforce drastic Provisional Rules for preventing collisions between steamers and junks and for the granting of collision indemnities between steamers and junks," which were promulgated by the provincial authorities and the imperial Maritime Customs in 1910. These regulations required steamers, save in
5
certain specified cases, to give junks the right of way, and in the event of an accident practically placed on the steamer the onus of establishing its innocence. Steamers were required to keep 10,000 dollars caution money deposited with the Super- intendent of Customs at Ichang and Chungking. In those days the junk guild held the whip hand and steamers plied only on sufferance, but the situation was speedily reversed when foreign flags appeared, and steamers were no longer subject to the fiat of the Szechuan authorities.
The circumstances in which foreign steamers first began seriously to participate in the trade were peculiarly unfortunate, particularly as regards the British flag. Civil war broke out in Szechuan in 1917, and the following year saw the course of the river held by various semi-independent military leaders. Junks were constantly being commandeered to convey troops, the trackers of the junks were frequently seized by the press-gang, and the chartered junk traffic was practically at a standstill. Steamers under the Chinese flag also dared not ply on account of the risk of seizure, and navigation on the Upper Yang-tsze was reduced to the foreign gunboats, with, later, one or two bulk-oil steamers.
It was apparent to the Chinese steamship companies that the only way for them to make use of their ships was to put them under a foreign flag, and, by an unfortunate chain of circumstances, the British company law at that time containerl loopholes which made it possible for these companies to secure British registration for themselves and for their steamers. The China (Companies) Order in Council, 1915, established a Registry of Companies at Shanghai; as a safeguard against Chinese companies securing British registration, the Order in Council contained a provision that a majority of the directors of a British company registered at Shanghai must be British subjects resident in China, but this safeguard did not prove an efficient bar. The various shipping companies that acquired British nationality in this way simply appointed two or three British subjects as nominal directors, allotting to them one share each, in order to provide the necessary British majority, but it was soon evident that these British directors were mere figure-beads, and that, although its ships flew the Red Ensign, the companies were managed and controlled altogether by the Chinese personnel.
The impression created on Chinese officialdom by this lightning change of nationality can easily be imagined. They insisted on treating the steamers as Chinese vessels, and subjected them to any taxes and regulations they thought fit. The task of His Majesty's naval and consular officers in endeavouring to protect the British flag from illegal treatment was, in these circumstances, a very difficult one, especially as, in the majority of cases, the steamers made no attempt to resist the extortions, and as often as not did not take the trouble to report them. Occasionally the British master of one of the steamers would object to allowing the Red Ensign to be made the prey of the Szechuanese army and would run past the toll-station, with the result that he would be fired on from the banks. It was, however, useless for any master to attempt to resist the taxation, as the shore agents of the steamers were all Chinese, and every steamer was practically in the control of the Chinese compradore, or supercargo, and the agents or compradores were never prepared to resist the demands of the military leaders except, more sinico, with the object of effecting a compromise over the amount of the levy.
As the only British interest involved was the flag, which was, in effect, illegally borne, and as the real interests were all Chinese, which their owners were not prepared to defend for themselves, the action of His Majesty's officers was necessarily limited to formal protests. These may have had some weight-the ships, at all events, were not commandeered but, in view of the attitude of the Chinese owners, it can have been but little, and it is quite clear that the principal effect of this unpleasant episode was to bring the British mercantile flag into contumely on the Upper Yang-tsze and to engender in the minds of the military the idea that it would be outraged with impunity. There can be little doubt that in this series of events were sown the seeds of all subsequent illegal treatment of British shipping, Wantung and culminating in the seizure by General Yang Sun of steamships
Wanhsien.
เ
It was, as a matter of fact, but for a short time that these pseudo-British ships were able to operate. The coming into force of the China (Companies) Amendment Order in Council. 1919, which required that the person actually exercising the general or substantial control of a company on the Shanghai register should be a British subject resident in China meant that these shipping companies must either reform themselves out of knowledge or go into liquidation, and one by one they chose the alternative and passed out of existence, but the damage had been done."
[1422 z-1]
B 3
1