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to have given him the following information before now.
The fact of the matter is that during the Autum and Winter of 1934, I received a considerable number of warnings of ships carrying bullion sailing on this northern run, and these were a source of anxiety to me, as owing to the feeble wireless apparatus with which they were equipped, I found the greatest difficulty in maintaining communication with them when they were at sea on the Northern run.
Having failed to move the owners to spend money in regard to Grilles and Guards in their ships on the Northern run there was not much hope of getting them to spend money on improved W/T apparatus with increased range. It is to be hoped, however, that the TUNGCHOW' piracy will provide sufficient leverage to enable this requirement to be met.
16. to the
I have the following general remarks to offer in regard UNGCHOW" Piracy :-
MAIN FEATURES OF "TUNGCHOW" PIRACY.
No Bovel features in this piracy.
Old ship with inadequate grilles and insufficient guards. Guard posts unprotected and badly situated.
The guards were not sufficiently” alert or handy to their
weapons, and latter were inefficient.
officers' quarters remote from the bridge.
Methods of searching passengers and verifying their bona- fides quite inadequate and almost useless. Consequently pirates had no difficulty in getting on board and subsequently gaining control of the ship.
motion of Destroyers and Sircraft from HongKong, although arriving after the "TUNGCHOW" had anchored, was most fortunate and enabled the ship to be regained without loss of life or injury to passengers.
W/T COMMUNICATION.
17.
The various recommendations put forward in the reports for improvement of existing organisation of W/T Communication can be grouped under the following headings :-
(a) A similar scheme to that in use on Southern routes from
Shanghai to be adopted on Northern routes.
The scheme in use on the Southern Routes entails communication between one merchant ship (X) and various other merchant ships (Y) or (2) every 4 hours or so. At these periods the positions of ships are exchanged. X. before sailing, is given a list of reports which he should pass to Y or 2, or the Government Radio Station (D'Aguilar) at HongKong.
The difficulty of applying this scheme to routes north of Shanghai is the paucity of sailings on that route, articularly in the winter months. There is in any case no British Government Radio Station for X to report to, and frequently also no other ships within W/T touch.
Radio telegrams to their owners could, however, be sent by ships with sufficiently powerful W/T apparatus to communicate with the Chinese Coast Stations at Shanghai, Tsingtao, Wei Hai Wei or Chefoo.
(b) Naval co-operation in such a scheme.
Naval co-operation in W/ schemes is of little value unless we have ships less widely separated than are the sloops at Wei Hai Wei and Shanghai, and unless the W/T sets in the merchant ships are improved. Further, the sloop at Shanghai is already working at full pressure with purely naval traffic.