TIMES
12.12.20
STAGING A PIRACY
CHINESE METHODS (FROM A HONG-KONG CORRESPONDENT) Staging a piracy on the China coast is not unlike the preliminaries of certain forms of company promoting. Capital is needed and is generally forthcoming. There is much bargaining and negotiating behind closed doors, and, though pro- spectuses and lists of directors and share holders are not published, they exist. When the necessary capital has been found, a capable managing director is ap pointed. To recruit a reliable gang, select a likely victim, gather the essential in- formation, carry through the enterprise itself, and plan a retreat with spoil and prisoners, requires no ordinary ability.
When the victim has been selected the chief and his principal subordinates make several preliminary voyages to learn the ship's geography, her routine, and the qualities of her officers. In consequence, Chinese frequenters of any vessel are at once suspected, but the saloon pas- senger of one voyage is a deck hand a month later, and is hard to identify. When the preliminary sur- vey has been completed, the whole gang goes on board, some in the saloon, the majority in the steerage and one or two among the crew. They are not slink- ing, cowardly ruffians, but men who know their job and usually try to do it efficiently and humanely-provided that humanity is compatible with efficiency.
Their first task is to get arms and ammunition on board. At Shanghai, Hong-kong, and Singapore Chinese pas- sengers and their baggage are overhauled by the water police, but when over a thousand Chinese are swarming in a thick line
up the gangway a search is difficult, and at ports such as Amoy, Foochow and Swatow precautions are of a desultory nature, giving the pirates the chance they need. But at a word from some pas- senger or seaman that "plenty piecee bad men come ship side," the anti-piracy grilles are locked, the guards become alert, and officers carry louded revolvers at their waists. Guards are always carried-about four Sikhs or Annamites-on board ships in the South Chinese passenger trade. The grilles consist of stout iron-bar doors shutting off the promenade deck and the bridge.
HOW THE PIRATES WORK Imagine the scene at sundown on board one of these coasters wallowing in the heavy swell of the south-east monsoon. The holds forward and aft have been turned into whitewashed dormitories, where a huddled mass of humanity, men, women, and children, bivouac on mats and bundles with the close economy of a Chinese crowd. Some are preparing chow, others are washing clothes, or squatting in groups are gambling. Under the boats and on the beams are sleeping figures, half naked if the night is fine and warm. Amidships, on the raised promenade deck, there are a few saloon passengers, English and Chinese, the officers' quarters, and the bridge. At dinner time, when the officers off duty and all the passengers are seated unarmed at the saloon tables, a signal is given once it was the lighting of a cigarette-a sharp "Hands up!" is called, the startled diners find themselves staring down the muzzles of automatics held by coolies, merchants, and seainen. Weapons are demanded, every one is seized, searched, and locked up either in the cabins or in the saloons; armed pirati cal guards are set who make it clear that death is the penalty of resistance. On the bridge, in the guards' quarters, in the wireless room, and on the engine room starting platform the same story is told: a sudden order, a pistol, and inevitable surrender. Then the polite instruction: "You will steer for Bias Bay, getting there at 7 a.m. No one will be hurt-un-
less you attempt to retake the ship." Routine will go on as usual, watches being relieved as if nothing were wrong. Mean- while the cargo is ransacked and every jewel or valuable garment stripped off the terrified passengers.
crew. At this stage of the battle, ammu- nition being short, Mr. Houghton, a less certain shot than the master, acted as loader and look-out.
The pirates were an amateur lot, several being members of a semi-Bolshevised crew sacked some weeks before for in- subordination. A simple ruse finished their ebbing spirits. Captain Sparke suddenly blew four blasts on his siren and
altered
course. The pirates, thinking that a gunboat was sighted, jumped over by the stern. But their troubles had not ended. Captain Sparke put his ship about and with his gallant engineer opened fire on the swimming heads. The noise having attracted the militia of a near-by village, some 15 of the gang were captured and sent in chains to Canton, where they suffered the usual fate of pirates.
The first real blow to piracy on the China coast was a patrol of Bias Bay by British submarines. A darkened ship was seen to approach one evening in Octo- ber, 1927, and she failed to answer signals. A shot across her bows was followed by another into her engine room and the ship started to sink. It proved to be the Chinese-owned vessel Irene, packed with steerage passengers. The submarine took off 226 passengers and captured seven pirates, who were hanged in Hong-kong gaol. There was bother with Chinese authorities and the
some
ship's owners, but the Admiralty stood squarely behind the captain of the L4, and commended his resource and excel- lent seamanship. Then Marshal Li Chai- sum, the able and enterprising Kwang- tung Dictator, took the matter in hand. A military post with wireless was built and a gunboat placed on patrol.
initial expenses are heavy and the re- But piracy is not a paying game; the
turns uncertain. The Sunning and Irene piracies were failures and the returns from the others were disappointing. The looting of the San Nam Hoi produced $10,000; out of the Hsin Wah they got $25,000; out of the Tean only $7,000. The Hsin Chi and the Anking were good hauls, each being worth about $100,000, but there can have been very little profit in the others.
Navigation and cabin lights are put out, and in complete darkness the ship sets course for Bias Bay, a place of sinister significance on the China coast. It is a big sheet of shallow water landlocked by the sandy scrub-covered hills of that part. There are a few Chinese villages, a few sampans fishing, a suggestion of peace, seclusion, and beauty. But, as the pirated ship drops anchor, swarms of sampans push off from the shore; their crews hail the pirates with grim impassivity, and these weatherbeaten, tattered men of the coast set to with a will in the task of stripping the ship. Even chronometers, sextants, and brass fittings are often taken. There are piteous scenes when families are divided, a father or mother being roughly urged at pistol point into a sampan to be carried off to the moun- tains, perhaps to be rescued, probably to die of hunger and exposure during the endless haggling between in- termediaries over the ransom. The dis- tressed ship steams painfully back to Hong-kong, where the police take charge, inventories of the robbery are made, and public interest slowly fades.
AN AMAZING FIGHT
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But it is not every piracy that works smoothly. Often the Indian guard on duty is shot dead by a treacherous volley, and when the Norwegian coaster Solviken was captured the master, Captain Jastoff, was murdered because he did not imme-
diately open his cabin door. In another big piracy, that of the Anking, a volley at close range cleared the bridge, killing the chief officer and quartermaster and severely wounding the captain. The chief engineer was murdered from behind, while sitting in a deck chair, and the second officer was knocked on the head.
The
pirates were particularly careful of him, however, because they needed some one who could navigate the ship.
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(Continued)
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