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Pi San.
Page 3 of Enclosure No.4(a)
Served as a Constable for 5 years. He hes three entries on his conduct sheet for minor offences and was discharged for releasing a prisoner.
When the foregoing was reported to the Captain Super- intendent of Police in Hongkong, he refused to grant the men permission to carry arms within the waters of the Colony, but nevertheless we are continuing to try them out, and they are being issued arms at ser, at the discretion of the Master. Although, so far, in the short time they have been employed,
have carried out their duties reasonably satisfactorily, it is too soon yet to venture an opinion as to whether it would be suitable to employ similar men on a large scale; also, il is questionable if sufficient numbers would be forthcoming.
they
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(a) Ships' compradores have a very real interest in preventing piracy because they stand to lose not only considerable sums of money, but possibly their lives.
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(b) A conference of compradores is impracticable because only a very small proportion of the Fleet is in part at any one time. In any case, during the many years the piracy menace has existed, compradores have been given every possible opportunity to say everything they can upon the subject. Actually, they have no practical ideas whatever about it, other than asking for internal defences and the provision of adequate guards preferably Furopeans, because they do not like the Indians and do not trust Chinese. Whenever any one of our steamers carrying passengers has to sail without a guard, the compradore is more often than not the first to cry out. With the large numbers of passengers carried on the China coast, it is generally impossible for the compradores to find bad characters among them, but it is not our experience that compradores are ever backward in reporting when their suspicions are aroused.
5, In compliance with Ordinance, police searches are compulsory at Hongkong on ships carrying passengers out of the port to destinations within a prescribed zone, but at no other port in China is searching by police possible, except at Shanghai (by the French Concession Police in the case of China Navigation Comorny's steamers) and perhaps at Weihaiwei where the question has not arisen. With the above exceptions there are no facilities at Chine coast corts for foreigners to search intending Chinese passengers and if the aid of the Chinese authorities was invoked it would lmost certainly open the question of the boarding of British steamers by Chinese military or police authorities, which is at present illegal and definitely prevented on the instructions of H.. Government. It is not forgotten that at the present time the Chinese Maritime Customs have certain rights of search over British vessels, but such duties are not curried out for what may be termed "police" purposes bub solely for the protection of Customs revenues. It will be obvious that if British steamers only were to put bona fide passengers to the inconvenience of having them and their luggage searched as they come on board, it would tend to drive them to other ships. This, of course, does not apply to Hongkong, where all steamers of whatever
nationality,.
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