594
C
COLONIAL SECRETARY'S OFFICE,
Hoxakosa, 2nd Felinary, 1892. SIR,-I am directed by the Governor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 28ch ultimo, requesting on behalf of the Committee of the Chamber of Commerce that His Excelloucy will forward to the Secretary of State for the Colonies a letter addrossed to Lord KNUTSFORD by the Chairman of the Committee regarding certain corrospondence between the Naval Authorities and the Agent of the Scottish Oriental Steamship Company Limited respecting the missing steamer Somdetch Phra Nang.
In reply, I am to state that in accordance with the desire expressed, the Governor will forward the enclosure to your letter, unless the Committee of the Chamber shall alter their intention after a perusal of the accompanying copy of a letter which His Excellency has received from Admiral RICHARDS in reference to this matter.
His Excellency concurs in Sir FREDERICK RICHARD's views as to the correspondence in question.I have, &.,
W. MEIGH GOODMAN, Acting Colonial Secretary,
F. HENDERSON, Esq..
Secretary, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
17
"IMPERIEUSE
at longhong.
Sin, I have the honour to enclose for your consideration copy of a letter addressed to me by the Committee of the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce covering a correspondence relative to the missing steamor Somdetch Phra Nang which it is thereia stated has been forwarded to your Excellency for transmission to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies.
2. Under ordinary circumstances I should not have considered it necessary to address your Excellency on a subject you are not concerned in dealing with directly, but as the manner in which this question has been entered upon by the Committee of the Chamber of Commerce appears to me to be so improper, and misleading both as regards the spirit in which it is treated, the false issues which are raised and the unworthy imputations cast upon myself, I deem it proper to deal with the question locally, rather than to follow the ordinary course of allowing the correspondence to go forward without comment, as the light in which the subject is presented is calculated to cause false and mischievous impressions as to the facts which it is right should be exposed.
3. I have to premise by remarking that the correspondence as far as I am concerned begins and ends with the letter of the Agent of the Scottish Oriental Company and with my reply thereto, as no further representation of any kind has since been made to me, nor has he taken the trouble even to correct my impression conveyed to him that the Company had a regular fine of steamers engaged in the same trude.
4. This is however unimportant, as my decision was not based upon the supposition that the Company would take any measures for their own part, but on the futility of instituting a search under the circumstances of the case as presented to me.
5. The circumstances are as follows :-d
The steamer Somdetch Phra Nang bound for Hongkong was
sighted North of Cabra Island at the entrance of the Gulf of Manila on the 22nd December, and "terrible weather" WAS experienced by the steamer Nam Chow bound on the same voyage which caused that vessel to run back to Manila, arriving at Hongkong finally on the 2nd of January, and what I was asked to do by the letter received on the 12th January or 21 days after the missing vessel was last seen off the entrance of the Gulf of Manila, was to send a vessel, in the height of the N. E. Mousoon, over 600 miles, to search the coast of the Island of Luzon where it was suggested she might be lying all that time short of coal.
6. Now the great Island of Lauzon is the principal Island of the Philippine Group, with main telegraphic enramanication throughout its length, and large coasting trade, and it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that a British vessel could be in any of its bays or wrecked upon its coust for two days without the fact becoming known to Her Majesty's Consul at Manila &c, with whom it would seem the Company did not even think it necessary so much as to communicate by telegraph, and yet at the end of three weeks a request was made for the services of a ship of war to proceed upon such a useless quest as to search the coast of that Spanish Island.
7. Equally useless would it have been to send a vessel to the Scarborough shoal, for uo ship striking on that dangerous reef in the height of the N. Ë, Moonsoon would hold together for three hours to say nothing of three weeks and it must have been patent to any practical man that search in the manner indicated would have been absolutely useless and unavailing.
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