[ { "id": 204651, "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": 132, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "118\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nthe Yangtse was now open to foreign trade and navigation for almost 1,400 miles from the sea, and access had been gained to the rich and populous province of Szechuen, of which Chungking was the chief port.\n\nThe section of the river between Ichang and Chungking was known as the Upper River, and the first steamer to navigate this section belonged to Archibald Little, whose Y-Ling had been the first steamer to navigate the Middle River. Little was a member of a well-known Shanghai family, and he was the real pioneer of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtse. He had commenced his career as a tea taster for a German firm in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon went into business on his own and was one of the first to appreciate the possibility of trade in Szechuen Province and beyond in Tibet. He settled in Chungking soon after it became a treaty port, and started up several industries connected with wool, bristles, and coal—to mention some of the more prominent, and also engaged in marine insurance, specialising in covering cargoes on the Upper Yangtse.1 The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce had sent two prominent British merchants—Alexander Michie and Robert Francis—up the Yangtse to Chungking as early as 1869, to investigate trade prospects there, but no important developments followed. In 1887 Little made a much more intensive trip from Ichang to Chungking by junk, and formed the opinion that there were great possibilities for trade in Szechuen Province and beyond. The following year he attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking with a stern wheeler specially built on the Clyde called the Kuling. Because of a clause in the Chefoo Convention stipulating that foreign steamers could only go to Chungking after Chinese steamers had gone there, the Kuling was not allowed to go beyond Ichang. Little then sold her to the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, who employed her on the Hankow-Ichang service.\n\nOne of his brothers was a famous editor of the North China Daily News, and another a well-known doctor in Shanghai.\n\n[Robert Swinhoe, British Consul at Amoy was sent up the Yangtse by Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, in March 1869 to enquire into the trade of the Upper River. He reached Chungking in May of the same year. His account of this journey was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society Vol. XL (1870), pp. 268-85. It is accompanied by a folding map of the Upper River from the Tungting Lake to Chungking compiled from the charts made by two survey officers specially sent up the Yangtse for this purpose. Ed.]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207797, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "170 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\ndays later rumours of an ambush by Chinese and Shan tribesmen led to Margary deciding to go in advance as scout, and he left the main party on 19th February with five Chinese companions. Three days later word came back that he had been murdered at Manwyne, with rumours that 4,000 Chinese troops were on their way to annihilate the whole expedition. Before Browne had time to recover from this blow, the camp was attacked by an advance guard of the Chinese force, but was beaten off by the Sikh and Burmese soldiers. Next day confirmation of Margary's murder came from the King of Burma's commercial agent at Bhamo, and on 20th February Browne's whole expedition retraced its steps to Mandalay and Rangoon.\n\nMargary's murder, and deteriorating relations between the British and the King of Burma, prevented further expeditions from Burma; but ironically led to further progress on the Yangtze,\n\nSir Thomas Wade, British Minister at Peking, took advantage of the Chinese government's failure to protect Margary to press for further trade relaxations, and the result was the Chefoo Convention of 1876 between Wade and Viceroy Li Hung-chang. This provided for the opening of five more ports to foreign trade, and of the 400 miles of the Middle Yangtze to foreign shipping. Among the new treaty ports was Ichang, located at the upper end of the Middle Yangtze and 400 miles below Chungking, the main port of Szechwan. When the Convention was ratified in 1885, a supplementary clause provided for Chungking to become a treaty port; but not for free navigation on the 400 miles of the Upper Yangtze between Ichang and Chungking. This was granted after the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan on the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95.\n\nMore than ten years before this, however, the remarkable Archibald Little had appeared on the Yangtze scene. Little began his career as a tea taster in Kiukiang in 1859, but soon started up business on his own. He was attracted to the possibilities of trade in Szechwan and West China, and fascinated by the problems posed by steam navigation through the famous gorges of the Upper Yangtze. He made a trip by junk from Ichang to Chungking in 1883 to investigate trade and navigational prospects, and in 1887 attempted to run a steamer service between Ichang and Chungking, by the Kuling. This was a Clyde built stern-wheeler of 450 tons", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "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": 212734, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "28\n\n[yun-yen].\n\nIn October 1874, at the age of 32, Mesny returned to Hankow from Kueichou with the rank of Major-General and, he claimed, an excellent letter of recommendation from the Governor of Kueichou, addressed to Prince Kung and the Ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen in Peking. In 1886 he was promoted to the brevet rank of Lieutenant-General.\n\nIn his autobiographical ‘obituary' in the North China Herald, Mesny wrote \"The confirmation of my rank as a Major-General in the Chinese Army with the decoration of the Kualing [hua-ling] Plume, the order of the Pa-t'u-lu and promotion to be Brevet Lieutenant-General, with ancestors ennobled for three generations, was published in the Peking gazette, and the documents handed to me by the British Legation officials at Peking, and by the British Consul at Canton\": His decoration, the San-tai Erh-pin Kao-feng, an honorary title and patent of retrospective rank conferred upon meritorious officials, their wives and their immediate ancestors for three generations, was recommended to the Throne by the Governor of Kueichou, Ts’en Yü-ying, in 1879. [Grandfather Guillaume Mesny, who had died many, many years earlier and who was now presumably in the Afterworld, must have been most surprised, to say the least!]\n\nMesny also handed out awards and decorations: During his first campaign in Kueichou, Mesny had a supply of Meritorious Warrants (kung-p'ai [which confers the right of the recipient to wear a button on his hat, normally the fifth or sixth degree with blue feathers]). His supply was already sealed with the commander-in-chief's seal, and Mesny bestowed them on meritorious men after each battle, adding the name of the recipient, the date, etc., and Mesny's own seal. He also had hundreds of the Military Silver Medal [Chung-kung Yin-pai] made during the war in Kueichou from 1867-1874, at his own expense, and bestowed them as rewards to deserving soldiers. It consisted of a thin piece of silver about three and a half inches at its longest diameter, with a slit in it for a ribbon, and the character Shang \"Bestowed\" in repoussé work stamped upon it.\n\nHis ranks and grades during his service with the Chinese Imperial forces are a more complex subject and one that is far from clear from Mesny's own writings. He portrayed himself as having 'senior' mandarin rank, and this has been reflected in one of the postage stamps produced by the Jersey Post Office in 1992, on which he is depicted as a 'Mandarin'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215596, "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": 373, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "323\n\nhusband of Mrs. Archibald Little who was a traveller and writer in her own right and who in 1895 founded the Heavenly Foot Society for the suppression of the cruel practice of binding and spoiling the natural feet of Chinese girls.\n\nThe story now goes back thirteen years. In 1885 Little planned to set up a company to build a couple of steamers after his own design to sail up to Chongqing to open up the vast and fertile province of Sichuan. This led him first to spend six months in one of the ordinary boats of the river learning all he could about the rapids, swirls, currents, depth and other details of the upper waters of the river.\n\nHe went back to London where he soon formed a company, and an experimental steamer of five hundred tons burden was put on the stocks in Glasgow from designs drawn by Mr. J McGregor, the chairman of the company, conforming to the designs furnished by Archibald Little. The steamer was completed during the summer of 1887, and shipped in sections to Shanghai, where she was put together by one of the local ship-builders and launched towards the end of 1887.\n\nShe was christened the Kuling, and was about five hundred tons burden, one hundred and seventy-five feet long and twenty-eight broad. She was eight feet deep, perfectly flat-bottomed and drew only two feet four inches of water empty, a mere trifle over four feet with a full cargo, and was especially adapted for navigating rocky and dangerous rapids. The boilers and engines were amidships. She was driven by two sets of compound engines, with a stroke of five feet, and worked with a pressure of one hundred and sixty pounds of steam. She had two stern wheels and a balanced rudder astern of the wheels.\n\nThe Kuling reached Yichang at the end of February 1889 and all was ready for the passage through the Gorges, when Mr Gregory, the British consul, backed by the Chinese authorities, refused to allow the steamer to proceed, as no permit had been received from either the Zongli Yamen [Chinese Department of Foreign Affairs], or Sir John Walsham, the British Minister at Peking.\n\nThe rest of the story was so characteristic of Chinese procrastination and delay. To put it simply and bluntly, the British Minister refused to coerce the Chinese in any way, and so the Kuling was eventually sold and the scheme abandoned.\n\nThe matter of the Upper Yangzi navigation remained in abeyance until the Chinese defeat by the Japanese in the war of 1895 when the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215679, "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": 456, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "408\n\nsee the immense possibilities of trade in Szechuen Province and beyond in Tibet. He became convinced that the only way to develop this was to find a way to bring steamers through the Three Gorges between Ichang and Chunking.\n\nLittle, still of the opinion that the Upper Yangtze could be navigated by steamships, made the passage in a junk from Ichang to Chunking in 1887. En route he carefully surveyed the main areas of risk and, on completion of this 400 mile journey, was even more sure that he was right.\n\nHe raised the money to build \"Kuling,\" a stern-wheeler, built on the Clyde and designed specifically for service on the Upper Yangtze. She was shipped out to Shanghai in pieces and reassembled there. However, when she arrived in Ichang, the Chinese authorities would not let her proceed. Apparently the Chefoo Convention stipulated that Chinese steamers had to be the first to ply this section of the river. (This restriction was abolished after the Sino-Japanese War by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.)\n\nIn any event, Little had to abandon this attempt to realise his dream. \"Kuling\" was sold to Chinese owners at a vast profit and traded on the Yangtze up to Ichang for many years, but never beyond.\n\nNot in the least deterred, in 1898, Little built a wooden-hulled, twin screw, steam launch named \"Leechuan.\" Once again he made the passage from Ichang to Chunking. Apart from having to be pulled up the stronger rapids by trackers the trip was a brilliant success. (Trackers were Chinese coolies who lived in villages near the rapids on both banks. Several hundred would be employed to haul vessels up the rapids.) Unfortunately, being only 55 feet long and full of engine, \"Leechuan\" carried no cargo.\n\nHeartened by his achievement with \"Leechuan,\" Little returned to London in 1899 to raise money to build a vessel that could navigate the Three Gorges and carry sufficient cargo to make its service financially viable.\n\nHow Samuel Plant came to China\n\nLittle was successful in raising money to build “Pioneer.\" By the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]