[
    {
        "id": 204263,
        "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-1961",
        "page_number": 31,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n28\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nEnkianthus quinqueflorus (Chinese Bell) Callistemon rigidus (Red bottle brush) Melastoma candidum (Melastoma) Musseander pubescens (Buddha's Lamp) Ixora chinensis (Flame flower)\n\nCLIMBERS Bauhinia glauca (Pink climbing Bauhinia)\n\nPyrostegia venusta (Fire cracker vine) Lonicera confusa (Honey suckle)\n\n4\n\nHERBS\n\nBongainvillea spectabilis (Bongainvillea) Nelumbium nelumbo (Lotus)\n\nPlatycodon grandiflora (Hong Kong Canterbury Bell) Epiphyllum sp. (Night Blooming Cactus) Mimosa pudica (Sensitive Plant) Hemerocallis fulva (Day Lily)\n\nLilium brownii (Local Chinese Lily) Iris speculatrix (Hong Kong Iris) Arundina chinensis (Bamboo orchid)\n\nHabenaria susannae (Susan orchid)\n\nShort comments were made for each slide and some perhaps deserve recording.\n\nIn temperate countries, plants bearing legume fruits are mostly herbaceous, but in Hong Kong the woody habit of trees, shrubs, and climbers of this order predominates. There are the many different species of Bauhinia, recognized by their bilobed leaves; Delonix regia, or Flame of the Forest, first introduced to Hong Kong in 1908 from Madagascar; the many different species of Cassia with their pink, white, or yellow blooms, and the Erythrina with their coral red flowers. The cultivation of these has greatly beautified our landscape.\n\nThe indigenous plants of Hong Kong require popularizing. Examples are Bauhinia blakeana, discovered in 1908 by Fathers of the Mission Etrangères at Pokfulum and named after Sir Henry Blake, the Governor of Hong Kong at that time; Rhodoleia championi, collected in 1849 by Captain Champion who recorded it as \"the handsomest of Hong Kong's flowering trees\", and noted by Hance in 1870 \"for the extreme beauty of its flowers and its rarity\", Iris speculatrix, discovered and described by Hance in 1875 and regarded as a most interesting discovery because it was then \"the only Iris yet known as a native of S.E. Asia.\" Lastly, there are the Camellias of Hong Kong, members of the Tea family with its close relative Camellia sinensis whose leaves provide us with that \"Indispensible adjunct of daily life: tea\". Hong Kong is specially noted for at least two out of the five indigenous species: Camellia hongkongensis with pure crimson flowers, and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204658,
        "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-1963",
        "page_number": 139,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE \n\n125 \n\nand enthusiasm of Captain Cornell Plant who occupies the place of honour next to Archibald Little in the history of Upper Yangtse navigation. Little met Plant in London when the Pioneer was nearing completion, and infected Plant (whose previous experience of river work had been command of a paddle steamer on the Euphrates) with his enthusiasm for the Upper Yangtse. Plant took over the Pioneer and commanded her on her early voyages, and the Upper River fascinated him as it had Little. After the Pioneer was taken over by the Royal Navy, Plant built himself a large houseboat and traded successfully between Ichang and Chungking for several years, studying the Upper River in its varying moods and seasons. In 1907 he persuaded a group of Chinese merchants and officials in Chungking to make a further attempt to establish a regular steamer service, and the Szechuen Steam Navigation was formed, 40% of the capital coming from official sources. Their first ship, the Shuting, was built by Thorneycroft at Southampton under Plant's supervision, and he commanded her on her first voyage in 1908, and for the first five years of her successful operations.16 The Szechuen Steam Navigation Company's Shuting was soon followed by the China Navigation Company's Shutung, and both ships maintained a regular service between Ichang and Chungking, except for the three winter months — January to March — of low water. Both the Shutung and the Shuting were about 115 feet long with a draft of 3 feet, and both towed a float alongside for both passengers and cargo. If the current was too strong at any of the gorges or rapids the steamer went ahead on her own, tied up at the head, and then pulled the float up after her. Sometimes the steamer half steamed and half pulled herself up by her windlass. For this reason the Upper River steamers had very powerful windlasses and capstans, but even with this help there were some rapids it was impossible to overcome without further help. Then gangs of coolies called trackers, were employed, and there were villages at certain places whose sole raison d'être was to supply these trackers. The first steamer to go up the whole distance from Ichang to Chungking solely under her own power was the Szechuen Steam Navigation \n\n10 Plant joined the Chinese Maritime Customs in 1913 as River Inspector for the Upper River, which post he held at his death in Hong Kong in 1921. He is buried in Happy Valley alongside his wife. See his Glimpses of the Yangtse Gorges, 2nd edn., (Kelly and Walsh, 1936) which contains some interesting photographs.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207798,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 186,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n171 \n\nwhich was brought out in sections and assembled in Shanghai. The Chinese, however, refused to allow the Kuling above Ichang, and after a year of wrangling, Little sold her to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, reputedly at twice she had cost him, and she was put on the Hankow--Ichang service. \n\nLittle was not disheartened, however, and set himself up in business in Chungking, among other activities specialising in insuring cargoes on the Upper Yangtze. At last in 1898, three years after the Treaty of Shimonoseki, he had the satisfaction of taking his wooden twin-screw launch Leechuan through the gorges to Chungking, acting as his own captain and chief engineer. The Leechuan was too small to carry any cargo, and needed trackers to pull her up the rapids; but this success enabled Little to enlist support from friends and form the Upper Yangtze Steam Navigation Company. The new company built a much larger steamer in Britain, the Pioneer, at Dennys of Dumbarton. This was a paddle steamer 180 feet long, sixty feet across the paddle boxes, drawing six feet when carrying a full cargo of 150 tons deadweight, and several hundred deck passengers. \n\nThe Pioneer made her first voyage between Ichang and Chungking in 1900, a few months after two British river gunboats, Woodcock and Woodlark had also made the passage; but these only drew two to two and a half feet of water. These gunboats, later, sometimes went a further 130 miles above Chungking to Suifu, at the junction of the Yangtze and Min Rivers. A similar type of French river gunboat also made the passage between Ichang and Chungking in 1901, the Orly, under the pilotage of Captain Plant who had commanded the Pioneer on her successful voyage. In later years these, and similar gunboats, made regular patrols along the open stretch of the Upper Yangtze above the rapids and gorges, between Wanhsien and Suifu. \n\nIn December 1900 the first of many serious casualties occurred on the Upper Yangtze, when the German steamer Suichsiang was wrecked at the Tungling Rapid thirty-six miles above Ichang on her maiden voyage. This and the Boxer and other political troubles delayed further attempts to establish a regular steamer service on the Upper Yangtze for many years. When this eventually came about in 1908 it was through the initiative of Captain Plant of Pioneer fame. The Pioneer was requisitioned by the Royal Navy during the Boxer troubles, and used to evacuate British subjects down the Yangtze, and rechristened H.M.S. Kinsha. Afterwards",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207800,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 188,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA \n\n173 \n\nlords then fighting for power in Szechuan. Before the 'Incident' closed nearly a month later, another two China Navigation Company ships had been seized by Yung Lin. All available ships of the Yangtze Squadron were involved, and H.M. ships Dispatch, a light cruiser, and Hawkins, the flagship of the China Station, had been sent to Hankow. In addition the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company's Kiawo had been requisitioned by the Navy to carry reinforcements to Wanhsien. During the sometimes severe fighting which occurred at times, the chief engineer of the Wanliu and seven servicemen lost their lives, and several others were wounded. It was nearly two years later, and after Chiang Kai-shek had expelled the left wing elements of the Kuomintang and his Russian advisers, before the situation on the Yangtze returned to something approaching normal.\n\nAfter the Royal Navy took over the Pioneer, Captain Plant built a junk and traded between Ichang and Chungking, and made a thorough study of the Upper Yangtze. In 1908 he persuaded a group of Chinese business men and government officials to form the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company, forty per cent of the capital coming from official sources, and the balance from private Chinese merchants. The Company's first ship, the Shutung, was built by Thorneycrofts in Southampton under Captain Plant's supervision. She cost £26,000 and arrived at Ichang in 1909. The Shutung was 115 feet long, sixteen feet beam, and six and a half feet depth, and was described as 'a mass of machinery.' She towed a float alongside in which her cargo and passengers were accommodated, and in spite of only being able to carry sixty tons dead-weight of cargo, twelve first and sixty-six steerage passengers, was a great success financially and comparatively trouble-free. The Shutung's success was largely due to Captain Plant's intimate knowledge of the Upper River, his ability to inspire confidence in Chinese official and commercial circles in Chungking, and in his Chinese crew. Until 1914 the Shutung was the only steamer on the Upper Yangtze; but in April of that year she was joined by the Shuhun, a larger and more powerful sister ship, also built in Britain, sent out in sections, and assembled in Shanghai. At the same time the Szechwan Railway Company, then planning a railway from Hankow to Chungking, put three smaller steamers on the Upper Yangtze. Two of these ran between Ichang and Chungking, and the third between Chungking and Suifu. By 1914, therefore, the technical",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207802,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 190,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n175\n\nthe Upper Yangtze-eight British, seven American, three Chinese, six French, five Italian, and three Japanese.\n\nPolitical troubles, however, had forced the pioneering Szechwan Steamship Company out of business in 1920. During the previous few years its Shutung and Shuhun had so often been forced to carry troops for the different war lords as to make their operations uneconomic. After 1920 the Chinese flag was flown by the China Merchants Steam Navigation and the Ming Steamship Company, both of whom seemed more able to accommodate themselves to the political changes. Captain Plant, however, was still active on the Upper Yangtze, but in a different capacity. He had left the Szechwan Steam Navigation Company in 1913 to become River Inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs, and his work was one of the factors contributing to the development of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze in the early 1920s.\n\nThere was a period during the brief heyday of the Kuomintang government between 1927 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when shipping on the Upper Yangtze almost settled into a regular pattern. Probably 1928 was the peak year, when there were seventy small steamers in regular service between Ichang and Chungking; the smallest about thirty tons and the largest just over 1,000 tons. The average time between Ichang and Chungking was three days, as against an average of a month by junk. Britain had fifteen ships of 5,357 tons; China twenty-six of 3,672 tons; and America eleven of 2,934 tons.\n\nLosses, however, were heavy. Several of the smaller companies were forced out of business, some selling their ships to the China Navigation Company. In this manner, the latter acquired the famous Loong Mow in 1923, which was renamed Wanliu I, and the Alice Dollar in 1926, which was renamed Wantung. This company also built six ships at Yarrows on the Clyde between 1922 and 1926. These included the Wanhsien, 210 feet long with a loaded draft of eight feet and reciprocating engines of 3,000 indicated horsepower, the most powerful ship on the Upper Yangtze; two turbine steamers of less than half this tonnage, the Kiating and the Kintang, for the low water season; and two small motor ships, the Siushan and Suiting, of 296 gross tons for the Top River above Chungking. British shipping was supreme on the Upper Yangtze for the last few years of the treaty port era, since political troubles hampered",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
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    {
        "id": 212750,
        "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-1992",
        "page_number": 59,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "44\n\nacknowledging the initial concept having been his, or so he claimed.\n\n+\n\nHe has been described as 'an adventurer and an explorer, a plant collector and a Chinese general. He was certainly an adventurer though nowadays he would be referred to as a soldier of fortune, an adviser, an opportunist, and even a mercenary.\n\nThe question remains, how successful was he? Money certainly came his way at times though judging from his Will, he was not a particularly successful businessman. He certainly collected plants and sent them back to the British Consul in Canton and has one specimen, Jasminum Mesnyii, named after him. He bore the brevet rank of Lieutenant General in the Chinese Imperial army but to what extent this was a genuine rank rather than an honour and a courtesy rank, though fully earned during his military service, is hard to judge. Again, though accurately described as an explorer, he was in fact much more of a traveller in parts of China already settled by Chinese and visited earlier by other foreigners. The trek he made, as recorded by Captain Gill, from Ch’eng-tu in Szechuan province to Burma through what was then called lower Tibet has a different slant to what would have been Mesny's account. In Gill's Mesny is scarcely mentioned and he would appear to have been taken along by Gill as his interpreter. It would have been interesting to have read what Mesny would have, and indeed may have written about his journey of very nearly four months with Gill.\n\nHe saw himself as what nowadays would be called a go-between, a consultant, and in those days regarded, perhaps, as a fixer. Mesny had a few major bees in his bonnet the most barefaced of which was the value he put on the advice he constantly proffered to every senior Chinese official whose ear he could reach on how to modernise China. He had, for example, prepared a list of some nineteen items, suggestions presented to the Viceroy Chang Chih-tung, and although Mesny assures us that Chang accepted the list there is no evidence that he did anything about it or if he did, that he even mentioned Mesny in any memorials to the throne. Mesny wrote indignantly at one point in his Miscellany about his list of suggestions to Chang having been ignored, or put into practice piecemeal and inexpertly, penny pinching and ineffectually without any reference whatsoever to Mesny.\n\nIn 1906 at the very end of his fourth and final volume of his Miscellany he prided himself on his advice with the words 'All those great industrial",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214159,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 17,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "visits or persons who helped in any other way. We are pleased a number of you who have helped have been able to accept our invitation to dinner here tonight. I would add however that, in spite of their many hours of work, no Council member receives a free dinner this evening!\n\nThe position of Activities Chairperson is demanding and, this year, it has been ably filled by Valery Garrett. Her Committee has consisted of the Reverend Carl Smith, Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase and Joseph Ting, as well as Sarah Parnell, Peter Stuckey, Jason Wordie and Geoffrey Roper. The considerable amount of work put in by Geoffrey, planning and organising the two trips to the China Mainland, underwrote their success. We are extremely grateful to all the above members, together with anyone else who made the past year of activities so eventful.\n\nProjects\n\nProjects carried out during 1998/1999, in addition to the photographic exhibition on the Landmark Bridge mentioned earlier, included two projects in conjunction with the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA) (see Appendix C). One project was to try to trace seven graves of Europeans buried in Hong Kong or elsewhere in China. The second project, also in conjunction with the BACSA, was to help two of our overseas members, Rosemary Lee and Captain A C Bromfield, research the life of Master Mariner Samuel Cornell Plant, who died at sea in 1921. Research on the latter project is continuing. In another case our member, Dr K Gaseltine, assisted the National Library of China for one week in Beijing (see Appendix C). It is laudable that your Branch has been able to link up with other associations or institutions to undertake these projects and we are extremely grateful to all our members who gave of their time and efforts (and in the case of the library project supported herself financially).\n\nThe RAS Volunteers\n\nIn 1991 a number of RASHKB members, together with members from the Hong Kong Society of Architects, formed a working group to assist the Government Antiquities and Monuments Office with the inspection of buildings. In 1997 this group was reactivated and it now consists entirely of RASHKB members. Believing that one volunteer\n\nxvi",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214166,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 24,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "Appendix C\n\nRASHKB Projects Undertaken during the 1998/9 Year\n\n(a) Photographic Exhibition: From 25 to 27 May, 1998, the RASHKB held a photographic exhibition on the overhead walkway leading from the Landmark building to Swire House. The RASHKB photographs of Western and Sheung Wan aroused considerable interest among the public. The main purpose of the exhibition was to boost RAS membership. Although many RAS members helped mount and man the exhibition, most of the planning and the bulk of the work was undertaken by Robert Nield and Tim Ko. Members Philip Bruce and Arthur Hacker also helped plan the recruitment drive, with the latter designing a new RAS brochure assisted by Dr Michael Lau for the Chinese translation. We are grateful to all who assisted in any way.\n\n(b) Tracing Graves: From July to September our Branch was involved with tracing seven graves for the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia. The requests to trace these graves came from descendants of the deceased living in Britain. Four of the graves were traced in Happy Valley and Carl Smith was able to trace, from his card index system, that the fifth person had died in Ningbo. The bulk of the research in Hong Kong was undertaken by Dr Dan Waters with help from the Government Urban Services Department.\n\n(c) Samuel Cornell Plant (1866-1921): Commencing in September as an ongoing project, two of our overseas members, Captain A.C. Bromfield and Mrs Rosemary Lee, have been assisting the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia research the life of Captain Plant. He was an inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs on the dangerous upper section of the Yangtze River and he and his wife are buried in Happy Valley. The RASHKB has been involved at the Hong Kong end where research has been undertaken by Dr Dan Waters.\n\n(d) The National Library of China: From 17-24 January, 1999, RASHKB member Dr Kazimiera Gasztine worked in the National Library in Beijing, in an honorary capacity, assisting staff translate passages into English, and writing synopses of the contents of old and rare works. It is understood there is in the region of 4,000 such books in the Beijing library in languages about which the staff at the National Museum...\n\nxxiii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215236,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 13,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "Elizabeth Teather - Deathspace in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Seoul: A Review of Recent Research, 1995-2001 .... \n\nChiu Hang Shi - Unicon Dancing in Pat Heung \n\n329 \n\n341 \n\nKeith Stevens - A Contentious Christian Missionary in Central China, 1887 \n\n353 \n\nKirsty Norman - Friends of the HKBRAS Trip to Cornwall....... 357 \n\nDavid Akers-Jones - Tea and Opium: Some Further Notes on Macartney's Role \n\n367 \n\nJennifer Welch - Coincidence? \n\n... 373 \n\nDan Waters - Another Donation to the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society \n\n375 \n\nRichard Garrett - Taipa Fort and a Nineteenth Century Cannon 379 \n\nPeter Halliday - More Thoughts on Han Suyin's A Many Splendoured Thing: A Tribute to Ian Morrison...... \n\n391 \n\nRosemary Lee and A.C. Bromfield - The Life and Times of Captain Samuel Cornel Plant \n\n407 \n\nAnon. - More on the Two Obelisks at Tai Tam \n\n417 \n\nBOOK REVIEWS \n\nDan Waters - Long Night's Journey into Day: Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941-1945 \n\n419 \n\nJames Hayes - Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away:Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton \n\n423 \n\nPatrick Hase - Hong Kong Metamorphosis \n\n427 \n\nPeter Halliday - Searching for Frederick and Adventures Along the \n\nWay. \n\n430 \n\nX",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215678,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 455,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "407\n\nTHE LIFE AND TIMES OF\n\nCAPTAIN SAMUEL CORNEL PLANT, MASTER MARINER AND SENIOR INSPECTOR, UPPER YANGTZE RIVER,\n\nCHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS\n\nA.C. BROMFIELD WITH ROSEMARY LEE\n\nHow it started!\n\nGrave Number 8496 28479\n\nSection 12\n\nHong Kong Cemetery\n\nIn memory of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant Upper Yangtze River Inspector of the Chinese Maritime Customs\n\nThe first to command a merchant steamer plying the river (1900). Born Framlingham Suffolk 8th August 1866 Died at sea 26th February 1921\n\nAlso in memory of Alice Sophia Plant, Captain Plant's wife and devoted companion throughout his 20 years of toil on the dangerous section\n\nof the Yangtze River between Ichang and Chunking. Born 29th November 1870. Died at Hong Kong 28th February 1921.\n\n(Restored by members of the Merchant Navy Guild, Hong Kong 1957. Researched by\n\nRosemary J. Pyatt, 23rd December 1997)\n\nArchibald Little and the Three Gorges\n\nIn 1859, a young Scot named Archibald Little, (he was a very large man), started working as a tea-taster for a German company in Kiukiang. He came of a prominent, expatriate, Shanghai family, one of his brothers being a doctor in Shanghai and another the editor of the North China Daily News. He soon became bored with tea-tasting and set up in business for himself, becoming interested in many aspects of trade, brokering and insurance. He was one of the first expatriates to",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215680,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 457,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "409\n\nbeginning of 1900 she was under construction at the yard of Dennys of Dumbarton. She was a side-wheeler, 180 feet long, 60 feet beam across the paddle boxes, drawing 6 feet and having a deadweight of 150 tons with accommodation for many deck passengers.\n\nHaving made all the arrangements for \"Pioneer\" to be shipped to Shanghai in pieces, Little returned to London. Whilst having lunch at the Oriental Club with some of his backers and advisors, he was introduced to Captain Samuel Cornel Plant. Captain Plant had recently returned to England having served for several years in command of steamers on the Tigris and Euphrates, rivers well known for their navigational difficulties. When Little learned of the captain's previous experience, he did his best to persuade Plant to come to China and take command of \"Pioneer.\" Plant promised to give the matter some thought. For whatever reason, he subsequently agreed to go along with Little.\n\n\"Pioneer\" was shipped to Shanghai and reassembled. Plant and his wife, Alice Sophia, took ship to China, joined \"Pioneer\" and in early June 1900 the attempt on the Three Gorges began. With Plant in command, \"Pioneer\" made the trip from Ichang to Chunking in 73 steaming hours over seven days. She was held up for three days at Hsin T'an Rapids. On arrival at Chunking she was greeted by most of the expatriates living there and it is said that the banks of the river were black with hundreds of junkmen who had crowded to see this latest barbarian wonder.\n\nThe Aftermath\n\nBad luck again struck Little. There were rumblings of trouble along the river that were to culminate in the Boxer Uprising. The British Consulate in Chunking commandeered \"Pioneer\" and used her to evacuate expatriates from the trouble spots. (It is not known whether Little was compensated for the loss of \"Pioneer\" or not. She was eventually handed over to the Royal Navy, renamed H.M.S. \"Kinshi\" and finished life as H.Q. Ship, Senior British Naval Officer on the Yangtze River.)\n\nPlant's Career\n\nPlant, having left the employ of Little, bought himself a houseboat",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215681,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 458,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "410\n\njunk and used this to trade up and down the river between Ichang and Chunking, all the while studying the river and its treacherous rapids. He soon gained the deep respect of all the junkmen he came in contact with and was given the name Pu Lan Tian by them.\n\nAfter trading in this way for some years he was approached by the Chinese owned Szechwan Steam Navigation Company to assist in the design of a purpose built steamer to trade on the Upper Yangtze. This vessel \"Shutung\" was built in Southampton by Thorneycrofts for £6,000. She was 115 feet long, 16 feet beam and drew 3 feet. Under Plant's command \"Shutung\" operated a 14 day service between Ichang and Chunking. She carried 12 First Class passengers, 66 deck passengers and 60 tons of cargo in lighters lashed alongside the vessel. The service proved to be very popular and a second vessel \"Shuling\" was commissioned.\n\nIn 1910 Plant was offered the post of Senior Inspector, Upper Yangtze in the Chinese Maritime Customs (CMC). He accepted and, in the course of the next few years, compiled a 'Handbook for the Guidance of Shipmasters on the Ichang-Chunking Section of the Yangtze River.' He also wrote a slim volume entitled 'Glimpses of the Yangtze Gorges.'\n\nPlant retired from the CMC in 1919. In recognition of his outstanding service, the CMC and the Chinese Government built him a small bungalow on the outskirts of the village of Xintang. This bungalow perched on a small promontory overlooking the mouth of the Xiling Gorge and the Hsin T'an Rapids. Steamers using this stretch of the river saluted Captain Plant by sounding their whistles and he would reply by waving his hat or handkerchief.\n\n1921 and the Plants decided to return to England for a short holiday before returning to Xintang to live out the rest of their lives. They were feted everywhere they stopped on the journey downriver to Shanghai. Here they took the Blue Funnel ship which was to take them to England. Sadly, en route to Hong Kong, Captain Plant came down with pneumonia and died at sea on 26th February, 1921. Tragedy struck again when Mrs. Plant died in Hong Kong shortly after arrival. They were buried together in the Colonial Cemetery, Happy Valley (now called Hong Kong Cemetery).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215682,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 459,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "411\n\nThe British Consulate in Chunking collected subscriptions from amongst the expatriates and other interested people to raise a memorial to Plant. This took the form of a 30 foot high obelisk constructed of dressed blocks of pink granite on a brown sandstone base. It was erected at Xintang Village where the Dragon Horse Stream flows into the Yangtze. The inscription, which was in both English and Chinese, was eradicated by the Red Guards in 1968 after they had, unsuccessfully, tried to blow it up.\n\nUnless it is moved, the monument will be inundated by the raising waters when the dam across the Three Gorges is completed.1 Plant's beloved rapids will become small eddies on the surface of a huge man-made lake. Hundreds of tracker villages will have been moved to other locations, some far from the river. A tradition of 5,000 years endurance will be gone forever.\n\nThe above is an account of Captain Plant's professional life in China. However, gaps occur in both his early professional life and in his private life.\n\nAs you have read, Archibald Little met Samuel Plant at the Oriental Club in 1900. Prior to this time Plant had commanded steamers on the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates but we have been unable to find information on his Mesopotamian career.\n\nWe know Samuel Cornell Plant was born on 8th August, 1866 in Framlingham, Suffolk. His wife, Sophie Alice Peters was born on 29th November, 1870 in Hoddesdon in the County of Hertford to an illiterate shoemaker and his wife. Samuel Cornell and Alice Sophie, as she appears on the Entry of Marriage, were married in the Consulate General in the District of Bushire in the Province of Fars, Persia on 16th April, 1894. His profession is listed as a master mariner, nothing is given for Alice Sophie.\n\nWhat was a young woman of 24 years doing in Bushire and how did she meet Captain Plant?\n\nIn 1921, en route to Hong Kong and home leave, Samuel Plant died on board the \"Teiresias\" on 26th February. His death certificate gives as the cause of death ‘right lobar pneumonia and heart failure.'",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216216,
        "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-2002",
        "page_number": 515,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "PROJECTS AND ENQUIRIES\n\nDAN WATERS\n\n449\n\nThe main role of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is to organise lectures and visits both within and outside the Territory. We also publish an annual Journal together with other occasional publications and mount infrequent exhibitions. But in addition, the HKBRAS also undertakes various projects. Some of these are carried out by its Volunteers who assist the Government Antiquities and Monuments Office. See JHKBRAS, Volume 40, 2000, page 231.\n\nYour Branch also receives enquiries, often from overseas, requesting assistance or information about Hong Kong history and the like. We normally help the enquirer if we can and treat it as a form of community service.\n\nA typical example was in 1998 when we received a letter from the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. They had received enquiries about the locations of seven graves thought to be in Hong Kong, 'Could we help?' Yes, we would try. This project has been written up in some detail under the title, “Tracing Graves in Hong Kong: Research Methodology,” by Dan Waters, see JHKBRAS, Volume 38, 1998-1999.\n\nThen again two of our members living in England, Mrs Rosemary Lee and Captain Tony Bromfield, were undertaking research for the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, about a Captain Samuel Plant. He was an authority on navigating the Upper Yangtze. There is an article about the good Captain and his wife in JHKBRAS, Volume 41, 2001.\n\nIn 1999, we received an enquiry from Australia from Victoria Brown. She wanted information about her great-grandmother, Miranda Main (née Mann), who was headmistress of Kowloon British School during the first decade of the 20th century. Again we were able to help.\n\nThen we had an enquiry from a relative of Lieutenant Henry Dallas who died in Hong Kong in 1844. Up to World War Two there was a memorial to him in Saint John's Cathedral. 'No,' we were informed, it",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216246,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 5,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "regarding a clandestine relationship that he had many years before with a Chinese lady and which produced three children.\n\nRoderick O'Brien addresses a totally different subject. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia, after the defeat of Lon Nol's Khmer Republic forces, and entered Phnom Penh. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge remained in power for nearly four years, pursuing policies which resulted in the death of nearly two million people through execution, starvation, and disease. The question of a tribunal to bring those responsible to justice has been on the drawing board for several years but has yet to materialise. Roderick has lived and worked in Cambodia and provides a factual, objective and unemotional account of the tragedy of Cambodia and what may lie ahead.\n\nThe exploits of H.M.S. Hermes on the China Station in the 1930s occupy Jonathan Parkinson. Hermes was the Royal Navy's first purpose-built aircraft carrier and was, by all accounts, a happy ship. She was ultimately sunk by the Japanese off Batticaloa in 1942; a sad end to a distinguished career spanning nearly 20 years.\n\nWhere would our Journal be without the redoubtable Keith Stevens? Keith has produced another splendid article for this volume. It recounts the Russo-Japanese War fought largely on Chinese soil - and with scant regard for the Chinese people who suffered greatly - almost exactly 100 years ago.\n\nThe Notes and Queries section is an important miscellany of this and that. Each little and not so little piece represents an investment in time and effort by the individual concerned. Included is another piece on the Chinese Labour Corps in Europe during World War I (See The Chinese Labour Corps in France, 1917-1921, Vol. 40, JHKBRAS, pp. 33-111, and various Notes and Queries in Vols. 41 and 42); some interesting photos which I will leave readers to mull over themselves; a further moving piece (which was almost an article) on Samuel Cornell Plant by his nephew Michael Gillam no less (see The Life and Times of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant, Vol. 41, JHKBRAS, pp. 407-416); a note on the Belilios Star (Hong Kong's official life-saving medal); and a piece on what became of the Tyndareus Stone which used to adorn the sitting out area beneath High West (Victoria Peak) before it was plundered - I see no other word for it - by the British Army in 1993.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216288,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 47,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "Our third event, in November 2003, was a lecture by Mr. Martin Palmer entitled 'Da Qin - An Imperial Christian Site of the Tang Dynasty.' Mr. Palmer, a sinologist and theologian and Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, has lectured world-wide, including to the Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong, and gave a riveting talk about the recent Da Qin excavations, which had brought to light the remains of the earliest Christian church in West China, dating back to the seventh century. Last, but not least, the Friends met over Chinese New Year for a good meal at the Joy King Lau Restaurant in Soho, to welcome in the Year of the Monkey. For the organization of the above events we again have to thank Mrs. Anita Wilson and Mrs. Rosemary Lee, ably supported by other members of the committee: Mr. Paul Bolding, Secretary, Mr. Roger Candler, Treasurer, Mrs. Kirsty Norman and Mr. Keith Stevens. As a committee, we try and meet at the Oriental Club in London two or three times per year; in 2003 we were especially pleased to have Dr. Patrick Hase at our August meeting. He brought us up-to-date with your events and other matters in Hong Kong. We value this interaction and I was particularly pleased to be invited to attend your December Council Meeting.\n\nThe Friends in the United Kingdom, like you in Hong Kong, continue to look to the future and broaden the activities and enlarge our membership. It is therefore very gratifying to report that on 19th May, 2004 arrangements have been made to hold a joint meeting with the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, 2 Belgrave Square, London, when our own Mr. Keith Stevens will lecture on ‘China/UK Training Chinese Guerrillas (1941-45): a token operation in war-time China.' It is hoped that further joint meetings with the RSAA can be arranged.\n\nOur annual general meeting will take place on 5th June, 2004 and any HKBRAS members are welcome to attend. It will be preceded by a light Chinese lunch at 'Poon's' and followed by what promises to be an interesting talk about Captain Plant, who is buried in the Hong Kong cemetery and who navigated the Yangtze River in the 19th century. Dr. Michael Gillam, a direct descendant of Captain Plant, will be our lecturer.\n\nOn behalf of all Friends in the United Kingdom, we send our very best wishes for 2004 and a successful annual general meeting.\n\nDAVID GILKES (CHAIRMAN)\n\nMARCH 2004\n\nxlvii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216476,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 235,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "185\n\nTHE MAKING OF CORNELL PLANT THE PILOT\n\nAuthor's note\n\nMICHAEL GILLAM\n\nAlthough Cornell Plant died some ten years before I was born, he had an important place in my early memories of family visits to his younger brother, Uncle Charles Plant, There I heard the story of this grand old man of the river and his untimely death and that of his wife on their way home from China. In later years, when his papers were passed down to my parents I became more interested, particularly in the account of his adventures in Iran, where I had spent a year working with the Iranian Navy.\n\nWhen the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich expressed an interest in his papers and undertook to take some of them into safe keeping, the valuable contribution he made towards the opening up of the Yangtse Gorges to steam navigation became all too evident. Eventually, his remaining books, papers, photographs and other memorabilia came into my possession and, once I had retired, gave me the opportunity to study them in depth.\n\nBut it was not until I read the article on Cornell Plant by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society [Hon.Ed.-Vol.41] that I became aware of the world wide interest in his life and achievements. This article dealt mainly with his time in China, with only a brief mention of his early life. It also posed a number of questions about him and his wife Alice. The papers that he left behind him and the information that has come to light through the research of Plant enthusiasts over the years enables some of the gaps in his life to be filled and shines some light on the making of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant - 'Plant the Pilot.'\n\nThe early days\n\nCornell Plant was the third of four children born to Samuel Plant, a Suffolk farmer's son and his wife, Harriet, neé Bennett, daughter of a Suffolk village baker. Perhaps it was the proximity of the North Sea that caused Samuel Plant to make his career in the Mercantile Marine",
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    {
        "id": 216477,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 236,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "186\n\nalthough for the first few years after their wedding, the family home remained in Suffolk while he went to sea. It was in the village of Hoxne that their eldest son Robert Benjamin was born in 1860 to be followed by Emily Ada in 1864. Young Samuel came along in 1866 after the family had moved to Framlingham and was given the second name Cornell. It would appear from an entry in Harriet Plant's New Ladies' Memorandum Book 1829 in which she recorded important family events, that Cornell was a family name, possibly the maiden name of her mother or Samuel's mother. One entry records a visit to Chedburgh, a village in Suffolk, by a Mr and Mrs TH Cornell. Whatever the origin, Cornell was the name by which he was known throughout his life both inside and outside the family. Cornell's younger brother Charles Henry was born in 1870 and it was not long after that time that the family moved to London and into a house in Tottenham. Perhaps this move away from the country into the big city came about as a result of Samuel Plant's promotion to becoming a ship's master.\n\nIn 1881 he was in command of the Iron Ship Reigate, made of iron but powered by sail, for the trade with India. It so happened that the 1881 Census took place on the very day that Reigate was in Middlesbrough when, in addition to Captain and crew, those on board included Harriet Plant, the Master's wife, with Cornell and Charles, the Master's sons, all shown as passengers. But in truth, none of them were passengers - the 14-year-old Cornell had joined the ship for his first voyage while his mother and brother were there to see him off.\n\nThe start of a life at sea\n\nThe Reigate set sail from Middlesborough in early May, 1881 for the long passage round the Cape of Good Hope to Madras with no stops along the way. This was young Cornell's introduction to a life at sea and being a dutiful son, he spent some time every Sunday writing a few paragraphs of a voyage letter to his mother in strong, well-formed copper plate writing. It is a remarkably well written letter for a fourteen-year-old young man that now forms part of the Plant Archive at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Although the letter is in good condition, the writing on one side of the paper occasionally obscures the writing on the other side but it is still clear enough to make a full transcription. The letter is almost 2,000 words long but the following extracts give some idea of the young man who wrote them and the dramatic events that he experienced.",
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    {
        "id": 216479,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 238,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "188\n\nnight instead of walking the poop wet through with it blowing and raining hard. This week I began to learn to steer the ship. This week too we crossed the line.\n\nJuly 10th. My Dear Mother, You will have heard this sad, sad news long before my letter reaches you. I am very much afraid dear Mother that it has nearly killed you. It was a terrible blow for me, much more so for you. On Saturday morning July 2nd when I came on deck dear Father was looking quite well and walking the poop as usual. At II o'clock he was at the wheel and suddenly took ill and he fell down the companion ladder and hit his head. The 2nd Mate and David were there as soon as he fell and David came running forward and told the Mate what had happened. The Mate and I immediately ran aft and found my dear Father at the bottom of the ladder with blood coming from his head. The Mate immediately stopped the blood and got him into bed, bathed his head with cold water and poured a teaspoonful of brandy down his throat and did everything a man could to bring him to. But dear Father did not come to. His heart beat violently. He laboured very much in breathing and he shook violently, I had one of his hands in mine to keep it warm. After being in bed a while he grew warm and we thought he was better but he never opened his eyes or spoke and his breath became shorter and he laboured more. At a quarter past one our dear poor Father died without the slightest expression of pain quite calm. He never spoke or opened his eyes once the whole time. Anything that could be done was done to save him but God took him away from us. He had a very calm and peaceful expression on his face and I kissed him once for each of us and cut a lock of his hair from his head which I enclose in the letter for you dear mother.\n\nThe Mate, David and myself were by his bed when he died and when the 2nd Mate, carpenter, steward and sailmaker called in to see him everybody cried. The men forward were deeply touched. Something with me tells me that dear father has gone to heaven and is in a far better place.\n\nThe Reigate arrived at Madras some five weeks later on Sunday 7th August and Captain Samuel Plant's body was taken ashore in the afternoon and buried at six o'clock the following morning in the cemetery behind the Sailor's Home. Cornell Plant's letter goes on to describe these events and his feelings about them including his determination to continue his life at sea. Harriet Plant put the lock of",
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    {
        "id": 216484,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "page_number": 243,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "193\n\ndown the bank opposite the ship and fearing surprise, gave voice to his warning. It proved to be a false alarm, the supposed marauders turned out to be some jackals stealing down to the river to drink.\n\nMarriage and home again\n\nAt some time during his time in Iran, Cornell Plant met Alice Peters, the daughter of a shoe maker from Hertford. They were married at Bandar Bushire in 1894 by Colonel Wilson, the acting consul. Cornell was 28 and Alice was 24. What she was doing in South West Iran has not yet been satisfactorily explained - perhaps she had travelled with an expatriate family as a lady's maid or a children's nurse. Whatever her background and her reason for being in the Persian Gulf, for the next 27 years she was Cornell Plant's loyal wife and good companion in strange places and through turbulent times. There is a photograph of Cornell Plant at about this time taken in Iran by Joseph (Photographer, Est 1875, Gold Medals - Shah of Persia). It shows a chubby young man in a crumpled uniform and is one of only a very few photos of him that are in the family record.\n\nThe exact movements of Captain and Mrs Plant in the years following their marriage are not certain. He wrote an 80-page account of his Persian adventures some seven years after he was first offered command of Shushan. At the end of this account he says that he became ill and returned home to the UK. He says his illness was diagnosed as typhoid fever, not the malaria that he suffered throughout his later life and which he mistook for the pneumonia that eventually brought his life to a close. Perhaps they returned home in 1896 or thereabouts. While recuperating back in England, Plant will have taken stock of his position and his future prospects. His selection by the Euphrates and Tigris Shipping Company to command the Shushan was evidently based upon his ability as a seaman, because the only formal certificate recorded in his name is that of Second Mate. Perhaps he did not wish to return to a life at sea after his experience in command and the success he had achieved in river pilotage. This may be the reason why in 1898 he wrote the long and detailed account of his Persian adventures - almost a description of his suitability for similar employment elsewhere.",
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    {
        "id": 216485,
        "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",
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        "page_number": 244,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "194\n\nThe move to China\n\nWhether his meeting with Archibald Little in the Oriental Club in London in 1899 was accidental as contended by some, or whether it was arranged by one or other of them is a matter of conjecture. The meeting itself was important to both of them. Archibald Little, an Imperial entrepreneur with an ambition to be the first to establish a regular passenger and steam service in the Upper Yangtse, was back in the UK to supervise the building of a paddle steamer designed for the task. He also needed an experienced and professional river pilot to command it. Cornell Plant needed just such employment. He must have been enthralled by Little's description of the great river, its problems and its dangers. The undoubted difficulties that Plant had overcome on the Karun River were trivial in comparison with the many natural hazards that existed in the Upper Yangtse that some claimed to make it the most dangerous river in the world. The annual snow melt in the high mountains and the seasonal rainfall over the whole area combined to produce variations in the height of water of as much as 150 feet - a scarcely believable phenomenon to a deep sea sailor. Plant was used to rocks, rapids and river water turbulence, but not the standing whirlpools, the moving whirlpools, the sudden holes that appeared in deep water and the rapidly changing nature of the river bed with every new rush of water down the feeder rivers of the great Yangtse Kiang. The talk must have whetted his professional appetite to such an extent that he even joined Little on his trip to Denny's of Glasgow where the new paddle steamer, the Pioneer, was being built. The result of their meeting was that Cornell Plant joined Archibald Little in China and took command of the Pioneer on her voyage up through the gorges, the first truly successful trip by a commercial vessel driven by steam.\n\nPostscript\n\nThis is the story of how Captain Samuel Cornell Plant came to be in China. His career as a trader, river pilot and finally Senior River Inspector of the Upper Yangtse is well covered in the article by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee. They also tell of the tragedy that occurred when Captain and Mrs Plant were on their way home on leave in 1921 accompanied by two young Chinese girls they were thought to have adopted.",
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    {
        "id": 216486,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "page_number": 245,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "195\n\n-\n\nCornell Plant died at sea shortly before their ship's arrival at Hong Kong. Alice Plant died a day or so later and they were both buried in Happy Valley Cemetery, Hong Kong. This posed the question what happened to the two young Chinese girls? This is partly answered by an extract from a letter written to Cornell's younger brother Charles by J.L. Smith, the British Consul at Ichang, an old friend of Captain and Mrs Plant:\n\nThe reference to the two girls as \"adopted daughters\" is a mistake. The two girls were waifs bought by Mrs Plant a number of years ago and brought up by her as servants in her own house. They were too young to marry and therefore Mrs Plant was taking them home with her, intending to bring them back at the conclusion of her furlough after which she intended to marry them off and give them a small dowry. They are now being sent back from Hong Kong to Miss Moore of the Church of Scotland (Ladies) Mission here: Miss Moore desires to keep them for four or five years in her excellent girls school so that they can get an education after which she will see that they are decently married off or settled down in some occupation in the same way as Mrs Plant would have done. There is a movement on foot amongst friends of Captain and Mrs Plant to raise a sum of money to meet the expenses that will be entailed in connection with the education, etc. of the girls.\n\nIn the event, some $4,000 was raised by the friends and colleagues of Captain and Mrs Plant to educate the two girls and set them up in life. Although the Royal Library of Scotland has some of the letters sent home by Miss Amelia Moore to the Church of Scotland, no mention has yet been found of the two girls and what happened to them.\n\nThe 30 foot granite monument overlooking the gorges put up in memory of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant show the high esteem in which he was held by his friends, his business associates and the Chinese Customs Service. On his death, tributes were received from the representatives of many countries including France, Japan, and the United States of America. More personal were the feelings expressed in \"Plant the Pilot\" a poem written shortly after his death and the inscription on the silver inkwell presented to him by Captain F Scurr, shortly before his final voyage in 1921 as a small memento of many kindnesses while 'dodging the dragon.' It was all summed up in the words of his good friend of over ten years, the British Consul at Ichang.",
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