[
    {
        "id": 206778,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1973",
        "page_number": 55,
        "title": "RAS-1973",
        "content_text": "EARLY STEAMSHIPS IN CHINA\n\n49\n\nAlexander and Company of Calcutta. In 1846 she was bought by Jardine, Matheson and Company, and remained in their service until she was lost in the early 1870s.\n\nIn 1835, Jardine, Matheson and Company brought out the small steamer Jardine, intending to run her as a passenger and dispatch boat between Canton, Lintin, and Macao. She arrived at Lintin on 20th September 1835, but was never allowed to run on the river. The Canton Register of 13th November described one of her first excursions, contributed by a passenger.\n\nWe all assembled on board the steamer Jardine, alias 'fast ship Greig' (the name of her captain), and getting under weigh went round the different vessels lying in the anchorage, some of whom cheered the little craft on her experimental trip; she then started to make a tour of the island, which she accomplished in a little better than an hour; on her return she made another circuit round the shipping, and being cheered returned the compliment with a salute. It was indeed a pleasing scene; to see the velocity with which the little vessel (although not at her full power) ploughed the waters of the deep, and the readiness with which she answered her helm; to hear the echo of the music (which was kindly supplied by the commanding officer of the Balcarres, and which continued to play during the trip) reverberating from the adjacent hills, and made more distinct still by the still calm of the evening; to see the setting sun gilding the western horizon with his last, expiring rays; the shipping at anchor; the blue hills which on nearly every side bounded the view; the whole scene being heightened by the presence of the colleens, produced a calm in the mind, foreign to those engaged in the busy world; indeed, here you might have beheld in the reality all that the speculative imagination of the lover of romance could picture to itself.\n\nUnfortunately, Chinese reaction was much less enthusiastic. No reply was received to a letter signed by all the foreign merchants at Canton and sent to the hoppo through Howqua, the senior hong merchant; which requested permission for the Jardine to run on the river as an unarmed passenger boat. Eventually a trial run from Lintin to Canton was attempted, but the Jardine was fired on from the forts on both sides of the Bogue, and a Chinese district official who was approached said that the orders were peremptory that the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207288,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1975",
        "page_number": 56,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "INCIDENT BETWEEN HONG MERCHANTS AND THE SUPERCARGOES OF THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY IN CANTON, 1811.\n\nJ. L. CRANMER-BYNG*\n\nA detailed account of this incident was recorded by the senior officer on the British side, Captain the Hon. Hugh Lindsay,† the Commodore of the East India Company's fleet at that time. It is in the form of a letter to his sister, Lady Anne Barnard, undated, and was printed in The Lives of the Lindsays by Lord Lindsay, 2 vols., London, 1849. A full copy of this letter, retaining the original punctuation, has been supplied by Mr. Tom Lindsay, a long-time member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is worth printing because of the details it supplies which are missing in the brief account of the same episode in Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China, 1635-1834, Vol. III, Oxford 1926, p. 156.\n\nHistorians of early Anglo-Chinese relations, and of the British East India Company's trade with China, have to rely to a great extent for their material on Morse's five substantial volumes. It is worth examining, at this point, how Morse wrote these volumes which are based on a massive collection of hand-written documents.\n\n* Professor Cranmer-Byng belongs to the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He was the first Hon. Editor of this Journal and has contributed to it from time to time.\n\nHon. Hugh Lindsay was a younger brother of Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres and 23rd Earl of Crawford. A note at the bottom of page 400 of Vol. II of Lives of the Lindsays states:\n\nMr. Hugh Lindsay was for many years Member of Parliament for the burghs of Forfar, Perth, Dundee, Cupar and St. Andrews, and Marshal of the Admiralty.\n\nIn the text on the same page it is stated that he was also a Director and Chairman of the East India Company. He died in April 1844 in his eightieth year. The biographical note goes on:\n\nHugh Hamilton Lindsay Esq., his only son, and long a resident in China, is the author of the extremely interesting 'Voyage of the Amherst, — along two thousand miles of the coast of China,- published in 8vo. by a speculating bookseller, from his report to the East India Co., which was printed by order of Parliament.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    }
]