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pirate fleets appeared. The Hong Kong press was very critical of both the Navy and the Hong Kong Government, claiming that the latter was criminally careless in granting convoy and gunpowder licenses, and pointing out that scarcely a pirate junk was captured without having Hong Kong men in its crew and that many pirate junks were fitted out in Hong Kong. They omitted, however, to point out the connection between the opium trade and piracy. Opium was highly prized, and on one occasion in 1851 one hundred and fifty chests were seized from a Jardine opium clipper, and two of their European employees taken prisoner.
The steamship, more than the Royal Navy, was responsible for the decline in the old-fashioned style of piracy, in which a fleet of junks had an overwhelming advantage over a sailing ship becalmed in coastal waters. Steamships appeared on the coast in increasing numbers in the years between the two China Wars, and by the end of the Second War most of the foreign coasters were steamships. A steam hose was more effective against pirates than joss sticks, and the comparative immunity of foreign steamships from piracy was another powerful inducement for Chinese merchants to patronize them, thus weighting the balance more heavily in their favour.
An action in which the Peninsular and Oriental river steamer Canton was involved displayed other advantages which steamers brought to anti-piracy operations. The Canton was on her way from Canton to Hong Kong when she met H.M.S. Columbine, a sailing ship, engaged with a fleet of pirate junks. When the Canton arrived on the scene the wind had fallen, and the junks were using their oars and sweeps to get out of range of the Columbine's guns. The Canton took the Columbine in tow, enabling her to sink a number of the junks before they got clear. Two years later another river steamer called Canton, belonging in this case to the Hong Kong and Canton Steam Packet Company, captured a pirate junk in the river.
In these actions, in which dozens or hundreds of junks were involved, it would probably be more accurate to describe the Chinese as bandits or rebels, than as pirates. Such fleets attacked towns and villages as often as they attacked ships, and like the Japanese pirates of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, plundered
PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST
75
pirate fleets appeared. The Hong Kong press was very critical of both the Navy and the Hong Kong Government, claiming that the latter was criminally careless in granting convoy and gun- powder licenses, and pointing out that scarcely a pirate junk was captured without having Hong Kong men in its crew and that many pirate junks were fitted out in Hong Kong. They omitted, however, to point out the connection between the opium trade and piracy. Opium was highly prized, and on one occasion in 1851 one hundred and fifty chests were seized from a Jardine opium clipper, and two of their European employees taken prisoner.
The steamship, more than the Royal Navy, was responsible for the decline in the old-fashioned style of piracy, in which a fleet of junks had an overwhelming advantage over a sailing ship becalmed in coastal waters. Steamships appeared on the coast in increasing numbers in the years between the two China Wars, and by the end of the Second War most of the foreign coasters were steamships. A steam hose was more effective against pirates than joss sticks, and the comparative immunity of foreign steam- ships from piracy was another powerful inducement for Chinese merchants to patronize them, thus weighting the balance more heavily in their favour.
An action in which the Peninsular and Oriental river steamer Canton was involved displayed other advantages which steamers brought to anti-piracy operations. The Canton was on her way from Canton to Hong Kong when she met H.M.S. Columbine, a sailing ship, engaged with a fleet of pirate junks. When the Canton arrived on the scene the wind had fallen, and the junks were using their oars and sweeps to get out of range of the Columbine's guns. The Canton took the Columbine in tow, enabling her to sink a number of the junks before they got clear. Two years later another river steamer called Canton, belonging in this case to the Hong Kong and Canton Steam Packet Company, captured a pirate junk in the river.
In these actions, in which dozens or hundreds of junks were involved, it would probably be more accurate to describe the Chinese as bandits or rebels, than as pirates. Such fleets attacked towns and villages as often as they attacked ships, and like the Japanese pirates of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, plundered
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