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Unfortunately, the termination of this abuse of the British flag did not put an end to the practice, but simply transferred it to the flags of other nationalities-to In 1925, out of the French first and subsequently to the Italian and Swedish. forty-eight steamers plying on the Upper Yang-tsze, there were seven registered as French, nine as Italian, and five as Swedish, but, in point of fact, these steamers were all really Chinese owned.
In 1926 there appeared on the Upper Yang-tsze a steamer owned by a company, composed of Chinese, incorporated in Hong Kong. The ship was registered in Southampton. In this particular case there was no abuse of the flag, as the individuals composing the company were all British subjects, but the incident illustrates a possible danger. There have indeed been one or two cases where Chinese have incorporated companies in Hong Kong with the object of owning ships to ply on the Upper Yang-tsze under the Red Ensign, and have only been prevented on technical grounds from carrying out this object.
It may be convenient in this connection to mention one serious abuse that has always afflicted every steamer on the Upper Yang-tsze--the smuggling of opium. With Szechuan producing the drug freely while its cultivation in provinces lower down the river was prohibited, such smuggling was inevitable, and there probably is not a single steamer on the Upper Yang-tsze, from the British gunboats down- wards, that has not at some time carried a cargo of the drug, but the worst and most notorious offenders have always been the Chinese steamers carrying foreign colours. In the case of the gunboats and the reputable steamers, where smuggled opium has been found, it has been in small quantities and in circumstances which showed that it was brought on board clandestinely by Chinese members of the crew, but in the case of the pseudo-foreign steamers, the quantity of smuggled opium on board has been so large, running at times into tous, as to make it practically impossible for it to have been brought on board without the knowledge of the ship's officers. The assistance of the steamers in the scandalous traffic would not be unwelcome to the Szechuan military, who derived a large revenue from the opium tax; at the same time, the connivance of Europeans in this abuse and the lending of European flags to cover it can only have discredited the flags in the eyes of the Chinese authorities. The illegal traffic in opium in China has been productive of as much attendant illegality and crimes as has boot-legging" in the United States, and it is reason- able to conclude that this traffic, and the atmosphere of lawlessness surrounding it, have contributed largely towards bringing about perpetual interference with shipping by the military which is the curse of Upper Yang-tsze steam navigation.
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Apart from the camouflaged Chinese steamers and the bulk-oil steamer of the Asiatic Petroleum Company (Limited), it was not until 1920 that the first British merchant steamer plied on the Upper Yang-tsze. This vessel, the Loongmow,” was owned by Messrs. Mackenzie and Company (Limited), but she has since been Wanliu." She sold to the China Navigation Company (Limited), and renamed the “ represented a new era in construction, as she was the first vessel of over 1,000 tons to appear at Chungking; also, she was the first steamer of over 200 feet in length, and was 15 feet longer than any previously trading. Unfortunately, she speedily "river hog"; à local became unpopular and earned a bad reputation as a contemporary doggerel described her as-
Dashing grandly through the water
Quite regardless of the slaughter; Why should she reduce her speed
To meet some wretched sampan's need?"
(This, be it noted, is now the "Wanlin," accused of upsetting a sampan full of Yang Sen's troops.) In the peculiar conditions surrounding navigation on the Upper Yang-tsze, there is, as explained below, an inevitable element of risk for native craft, and, apart from the 1910 rules already quoted, it was the tradition of the river that steamers should show consideration for junks. The "Loongmow," however, soon became notorious for her failure to observe this tradition; the explanation of this apparent callousness on the part of the master probably was that he received a commission on the steamer's freight earnings, so that it was to his interest to do everything in his power to ensure the steamer completing as many round trips as possible during the eight months or so that the river was navigable by her. At all events, the steamer acquired a reputation that has lasted, and this reputation may well have had its influence in determining the course of events up to the Wanhsien incident.
The problem of reconciling the traffic of steamers and junks is a difficult one from every point of view, physical, economic and political, Szechuan is, after its
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centuries of seclusion, at last being brought within the scope of the industrial revolution, shipping being the particular phase involved at present. Whether it will ultimately be found possible so to accommodate the steamer and junk traffic to each other that they will be able to continue side by side, or whether the ultimate result is to be the complete displacement of junks by steamers, are questions which can only be solved by process of evolution. For the present, all that can be done is to examine the causes of the hostility of the junkmen towards the steamers. This springs from the fact that the steamers threaten both the physical safety of the junks and also their freightage.
Some degree of danger to junks from steamers is unavoidable. The Upper Yang-tsze junks are not constructed to meet heavy seas; they are usually loaded far in excess of what is safe; and they are often in a serious state of disrepair-the risks that a Chinese will run for the sake of a little money are proverbial and are especially well illustrated by the Upper Yang-tsze junkmasters. It is impossible for a steamer to avoid making a certain amount of wash, and, however carefully a steamer is navigated, its wash must always be more or less dangerous to some of the over-laden junks that are encountered on the river. Careful navigation will reduce this risk to a minimum, but will not abolish it. There are, moreover, circumstances This is in which it is impossible for a steamer to do anything to reduce the risk. particularly the case where a steamer is ascending a rapid, when a reduction of speed on its part might be fatal. Signal stations have been set up at all important rapids with the object of preventing a down-bound junk entering the rapid while a steamer is ascending, or vice versa, but the wash created by a steamer going through one of the great rapids may take half-an-hour or an hour to subside, and any junk entering the rapid until it has done so is courting destruction. I have myself seen a junk sunk this way; I was at the time a passenger in H.M.S." Teal.' We had passed through a rapid, and, in the quiet water above it, we passed a down-bound junk waiting in a backwater. As soon as we were clear of the rapid, the junk continued its downward journey, but it had not gone far before the waves created by our wash were breaking over it, and it speedily broke up and sank.
It may be remarked that there is reason to believe that the tales of loss of junks caused by steamers are very much exaggerated. The Upper Yang-tsze has always been and always will be a dangerous river, and numbers of junks are wrecked every year. Before the advent of steamers, if a junk struck a rock and sank, there was nothing more to be said about it. Nowadays it seems that in such an event the junkmaster watches for the next steamer, ascertains its name, and in due course makes a categorical report to his guild of how this steamer was responsible for the wreck. The guild transmits the report to the magistrate, he passes it on to the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, by whom it is communicated to the consul, with a request that he will investigate the sad case and order the steamer to pay compensation. By the time all these processes have been gone through, the prospect of eliciting the real truth is very faint. In one case that occurred in 1920 there was, fortunately, very definite evidence of the manner in which these tales were concocted.
H.M.S.Widgeon was coming down-river from Luchow to Chungking, when the remains of a newly-wrecked junk were observed floating on the water some distance ahead. Remarking that he should not be surprised if he were accused of sinking the junk, the commander took a photograph of the wreckage, showing it In due course the clearly ahead of the gunboat's bows. His forecast was correct, consul received the usual complaint, alleging in highly-coloured language that the Widgeon" had, by its reckless navigation and disregard for other craft, overturned and sunk the junk, and asking for a large sum for compensation, but in the face of the concrete evidence that the commander was able to produce, the Chinese authorities immediately dropped the case.
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Another constant, and perhaps even more deep-rooted, source of friction between junk and steamer is that feeling which always arises when machinery enters a new It seems field that the livelihood of the manual workers is being imperilled. probable that the opposition of the junkmen to the introduction of steam traffic would have been much more bitter, but for the fact that at the first the steamers were all Chinese, were not favoured vis-à-vis the junks by the local authorities, and were accordingly under the necessity of being conciliatory to the junk guilds. One form that the conciliation took was an understanding that steamers would refrain from shipping certain kinds of cargo, but would leave them to be handled solely by junks. The outstanding article that was thus reserved for junk transport was wood-oil, which is an export almost peculiar to Wanhsien. With the advent of foreign-owned
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