[
    {
        "id": 204975,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 83,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "74\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nthis time he visited Amoy, Foochow, and Shanghai several times, and it was in 1857 north of Shanghai that he captured his compatriot Eli Boggs. Hayes was a guest on H.M.S. Bittern when she attacked Boggs's fleet of between thirty and forty junks. When the junks fled into shallow water out of range of the Bittern's guns, Hayes persuaded Captain Vansittart to allow him to continue the chase in the longboat, and in this he personally captured Boggs. Boggs was taken to Hong Kong and found guilty of piracy. He escaped hanging, however, as no one could be found willing to swear to having seen him commit murder.\n\nHayes helped the Royal Navy on another occasion shortly afterwards, when he was on the steamer, Paoushan, and on this occasion obtained some of the pirates' ill-gotten gains for his trouble. He was a free spender, however, and everything went on a series of parties he gave for the officers and men of the Bittern in Shanghai, after which he left with his port dues unpaid and owing money to Chinese shopkeepers and tailors. This was a favourite trick which he repeated in Australian and South Pacific ports, and his final departure from the coast was in the same vein. He loaded a hundred coolies in Swatow for Australia, before Swatow was legally open as a treaty port, and did a large illegal trade in opium and emigrants. Hayes induced his passengers to pay him their poll tax for Australia as well as their passage money. After passing through Sydney Heads he flooded his bilges to give his ship the appearance of sinking, and then persuaded a tugboat to take the Chinese ashore to safety, by promising it the salvage work on its return. When the tugboat returned, however, Hayes and his ship had disappeared beyond the Heads.\n\nThe Navy had several spectacular successes against the pirates during this period, on a much bigger scale than those in which Hayes was involved. The most notable were Admiral Sir John Dalrymple Hay's actions against Shap-ng-tsai and Chu-apoo in South China waters in the summer of 1849, in which dozens of pirate junks were destroyed and hundreds of pirates killed. These actions cost the Admiralty £42,000 in bounty money, which was considered far in excess of the risks involved, and were responsible for the bounty system being modified. In spite of these naval successes piracy continued to flourish in South China, and new",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207060,
        "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-1974",
        "page_number": 131,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "The Hong Kong Region\n\n125\n\nthe inhabitants were less fortunate and had either to flee into the hills or stay to oppose or meet the pirates' demands. Walls were built or repaired, and a defence by desperate men of even these not very imposing defences might help to stave off an attack. Village refuges, into which cattle and livestock, valuables, women and children and old people were put, were also utilised. One of these places existed at Shek Pik, but was already in ruins by about 1900.1 Most villages kept arms and even cannon available for use up to 1899 and some of these remain to this day.2\n\nNonetheless, the villagers' position was pitiful in the event of attack, and their attitude towards pirates was probably too often similar to that recorded by Commander Vansittart of H.M.S. Bittern from the River Min in March, 1855:\n\n+ miserably poor boats followed the Brig begging assistance; one Village sent me a well drawn up petition; another a present of waste paper and Joss-stick; fishermen, and passage boats, small Traders, all telling the same pitiable story; landing on Hootow, I was quickly surrounded by Peasantry; desiring the Interpreter to ask them why so many fine looking fellows permitted strangers to molest them; they declared it was useless to resist Pirates, and so whenever Pirates came the villagers hid themselves and cried.\n\nThis extract, quoted from Miss Fox's book,3 shows how Chinese on land and sea suffered at the hands of their less scrupulous fellow countrymen.\n\nThings were no better on the sea at the end of the century. L. C. Arlington of the Chinese Maritime Customs, who spent six years 1893-1899 in charge of the Customs station at Cheung Chau, says;\n\n'as well as other numerous islands forming the Ladrones, [it] was the rendezvous of pirates, who kept all of us on the qui vive, foreigners and natives alike. Gangs of pirates would get together and attack the villages, even in broad daylight, and after looting and killing, escape either to Macau or Hong Kong, where they disposed of their booty. The Customs Officers had many tussles and narrow escapes from these pests of the sea.\n\n1 The elders told me about it after I had come across a reference to it as a place name in an old deed of sale of fields in the valley.\n\n2 R. L. Ozorio, personal communication on the village armoury of Kak Tin, Shatin Valley, 1973. These arms were, of course, sometimes used against other villages.\n\n3 Fox, p. 130.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    }
]