PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 882
8
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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and the weight after discharging and re-handling. This is a recognized fact in coal trades, and the natural loss usually counted on from natural conditions is, as a rule, about 2
per cent.
32. To the Directors of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company in Singapore, to the Managing Director, to the Manager, and to Europeans of the staff of the coal department, I have repeatedly declared that these irregularities are in practice, and have explained how they are accomplished, and I have urged many ways of stopping or checking these practices.
33. But though month in and month out I have worked at and directed means to frustrate and check the practice, it has gone on, at times in suppressed degree, at others with no little success to the conspirators.
34. The bias of most responsible European officers of the Company, from Managing Director down, is naturally against the admission that it is possible for such irregularities, under their management and supervision, to happen. And, where the security of office of an European employé of the Company, and his comfort in his situation, may more or less hang on the favour and goodwill that he earns in the work that he directs and supervises from Directors who are coal merchants and steamship agents, from his superiors to whom in the service he is responsible, from the constituents and clients of the Company-then his desire to avoid open disclosure of serious irregularities, or a scandal, that might affect his position or repute--all these considerations have made it, and must make it, extremely difficult for anyone to get such complete co-operation from the Company's European officers as would at once kill out the practices that I refer to in this memorandum.
35. I have not written on what I merely suspect happens. It is what I know has happened.
36. Though I found myself handicapped in getting the full co-operation that I had hoped would be given in my efforts to get these practices checked and stopped, I made it one of my duties as Chairman of the Company to work at the matter behind the scenes; and, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, I obtained disclosure of what was being done and how it was done, from Chinese employés who had been participators in these conspiracies.
37. It is a coincidence here worth noting that Chinese employés of the Company chiefly responsible for coal handling (whose dismissal I ordered as the result of my investigations) entered the Company's service in poverty, served it for salaries that could never admit of large savings, and, when put out, were worth thousands of pounds.
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38. But, if my own discovery of what was taking place requires confirmatory evidence, it is afforded in a letter of which a copy happens to have come into posses- sion of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company. It is a letter, dated Cardiff, 31st December, 1903," written by the captain of the steamer "Khalif" to the owners of that steamer-Messrs. W. and R. Thomson, of Liverpool. In a paragraph of that letter the captain frankly informs his owners of how these irregularities are worked.
39. A proper course to take in regard to a man such as the master of the s.s. "Khalif" (or others known to be guilty of these practices) would be for the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company's Directors to resolve that no steamer commanded by him would ever again be allowed alongside the wharves of the Company. But, so long as the Directorate of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company is as at present con- stituted, it can never be counted on that such a salutary lesson would be decreed. Most of the gentlemen on the Tanjong Pagar Dock Directorate-and on the London Committee which rules or influences the Directorate-are men whose firms in Singapore are the agents for, and representatives of, many steamships that do as the "Khalif" did. These Directors would run the risk of losing the steamship agencies possessed by their firms if they became parties to placing their clients in a position of awkwardness, or if they even failed to fight a battle defending the master of the
Khalif."
40. The present wharf superintendent of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company (Mr. F. H. Brooksbank) can tell, if he would dare to do so to an outsider, how the master of another steamer discharging a large cargo of coal at the Company's wharf fell into the trap of disclosing to him, in confidential friendship, how he (the captain) had arranged with and paid the Chinese employés of the Company's coal department to show a "surplus" on the weighing out of his coal cargo.
41. It will be asked, "But how, without finding shortage or discrepancies, does the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company manage to re-deliver to 'Smith & Co.'s' order
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4,625 tons of coal by Atlas' if the true landed weight of her cargo was only 1,500 tons, or less"? This, too, is manipulated by the Chinese employés of the Company in charge of coals, and who also attend to accounts of stock.
41A. On the coal-storing grounds of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company there is rarely less, at any one time, than 150,000 tons of coal-the quantity sometimes running up to about 200,000 tons.
42. There are coal cargoes continuously in process of being landed practically speaking every day; and, at one and the same time coal is continuously being taken away by consuming steamers. Roughly speaking, the quantity landed and the quantity sent away again, are about the same.
43. The entire stock of coal at Tanjong Pagar is never cleaned up. There will be between 300 and 400 stacks or piles of it, and in the case of Japanese coal, many of these piles run into one another; I have known them one upon the other. It may
be said to be an impossibility to accurately check the various stocks of this kind of coal held at any one time on the premises.
44. As the cargo of the "Atlas" is delivered in its outgoing, the full weight of 4,625 tons may be accounted for to "Smith & Co." in two ways, viz., by scrimping consuming steamers in the weight of bunker coal that they are supposed to be given (here, again, is sometimes practised the trick of arrang that the one basket weighed out of every ten for ascertaining weight by average shall be a heavier basket than the average); or, as is more commonly the practice, by taking from some other cargo of Japan coal as much as is needed to bring deliveries "ex "Atlas"" to 4,625 tons, this being entered in the books as still delivered ex Atlas cargo. And so the interchange or "supplying" process goes on from cargo to cargo; on paper all seems correct; but I am convinced that the coal cannot fully be there in kind"; and, if there could be a final "clean up," I am sure that the stock shown on paper would be found deficient.
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45. There is another form of roguery practised by those Chinese employés of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company in charge of the outward delivery of coals from Tanjong Pagar. The conspiracy in this case is with persons who buy coals from coal-importing merchants (let us say from " Smith & Co."), and who go to the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company's premises to get it.
46.
47.
Vast quantities of coal are purchased in Singapore by Chinese owners and Chinese managers of local steamers. The morality of many of these is like to that of the proverbial " Ah Sin," of Bret Harte's creation.
The coal used by these Chinese-owned and Chinese-managed steamers is nearly all conveyed to these steamers in the open roadstead. It is rarely that these vessels go alongside a wharf to take in their bunker requirements. The Chinese owners employ native-owned lighters; they send these and their own supervising clerks (Chinese) to the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company's wharf to obtain delivery; the coal is there loaded into the lighters that convey it to the roadstead alongside the steamer requiring it. The method of the swindle in these circumstances is as follows:-
48. The Chinese steamship owner goes to "Smith & Co.," coal merchants, of Singapore, and buys from them 200 tons of coal. Smith & Co.," having sold him the coal, give him an order or warrant for delivery addressed to the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company. That order says: "We have sold to this Chinese steamship owner 200 tons of Japanese coal. Please deliver to him that quantity, supplying him from our cargo in your keeping er steamer "Atlas."
49. The Chinese owner sends his Chinese clerk and his own service of lighters to the Tanjong Pagar Dock wharf to get the coal there, and to convey it to his steamer in the roadstead.
50. To the Chinese coal clerk of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company, whose business it is to deliver this coal, the steamship owner's clerk says: "Look here; I am entitled on this delivery warrant to receive 200 tons of coal; but if you will manage to give me 220 tons in fact, in place of 200 in name, I will pay you so much for yourself."
51. The Tanjong Pagar Dock Company's coal clerk (Chinese) takes in as participators in the swindle all of his fellow employés-weighing-clerks, “tally- men," &c., who are concerned in delivering these coals,-all concerned are "squared " and made so interested as to co-operate and hold their tongues,—and operations are successfully carried out by which while a delivery of 220 tons has actually been given out of the "Atlas" cargo, only 200 tons are shown as delivered.