[ { "id": 206484, "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-1972", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "26\n\nP. H. COLLIN\n\nMajor George Augustus Schomberg was then aged 36, and in command of the artillery company which accompanied the Royal Marine battalions. After staying at the Bogue for some days, the attacking forces moved up towards Canton. The authors of The Royal Marine Artillery, 1804-1923 give the general plan of attack: “It was arranged that the ships should bombard the city on its river front, in conjunction with a bombardment by a battery of heavy mortars, in charge of the marine artillery, which was placed in position on December 24th and 25th on Dutch Folly Island, opposite the southwest front of the city. Under cover of the bombardment the military and naval brigades were to land to the east of Canton and carry by escalade the eastern wall of the city. The First Brigade comprised the two Marine battalions and was led by Colonel Holloway. The mortar battery on Dutch Folly Island was manned by the Royal Marine Artillery Company, under Major Schomberg.”\n\nThe bombardment at first proceeded according to plan, though Wingrove Cooke suggests that Schomberg's battery had difficulty in finding the range of Gough's Fort which was over 4000 yards away, on the other side of the city. After the successful landing of the troops, relates the Royal Marine Artillery history, \"Major Schomberg's gunners, whose task it was to clear the way for the assailants at the point of escalade, began shelling the eastern wall between the two gates, firing across the city, at daylight. They kept up their bombardment until the moment fixed for the assault, just before nine o'clock; until, indeed, after the first scaling ladder parties had reached the walls and the foremost of the stormers had mounted to the ramparts. Major Schomberg was watching with his glass from a crow's nest above the battery, a signaller beside him, but, in spite of that, some of the leading men of the stormers, who had swarmed up the ladders too impetuously and got in advance, were hit by pieces of shell before their presence on the ramparts could be made out from Dutch Folly Island.”\n\nDetails of the casualties occasioned in this incident vary according to the source of information. Cooke simply states that \"the men had been brought up so near the walls, that the shells from our ships were falling among them\", while Fisher says \"the French escaladed on our left, but advanced to the attack a few minutes before the time agreed upon, an act of impatience which caused", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206485, "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-1972", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NINETEENTH CENTURY WATER-COLOURS OF CANTON\n\n27\n\na loss to them as well as to ourselves, from shells fired by the Navy\". On the other hand, Mr. Loch, Lord Elgin's attaché with the attacking forces, reported back to Lord Elgin on 5th January 1858 that \"by the bombardment being continued till 9 o'clock instead of ceasing at 6 o'clock a.m., as was originally intended, we came under the fire of our own shells from the ships\".12\n\nOnce Canton was taken, the Artillery company formed part of the garrison. The authors of the official history of the Royal Marine Artillery make no reference to the \"Jingal pic-nic\" incident, but do mention a sortie against the Chinese on June 2nd 1858, in which Major Schomberg took part. Col. Fisher also relates this incident, in which the British forces lost several men and suffered from the extreme heat, but again does not give the names of the officers concerned.\n\nFor the rest of the summer after the voyage to the Peiho (not mentioned in The Royal Marine Artillery), Major Schomberg seems to have spent his time amusing himself as best he could in Canton. In September the garrison was enlivened by the visit of \"poor Albert Smith\" as Col. Fisher calls him. Their visitor, who seems to have been permanently suffering from stomach trouble and the heat, was taken on a round of the sights, including the Honan Temple (picture number XXXIII), and on 12th September 1858, notes that he had dinner with \"Captain\" Schomberg.\n\nFisher comments that apart from horse-racing \"cricket was one of the first sports we introduced; and the Tartar parade-ground at the foot of the heights formed really a very good ground\". Major Schomberg was not much of a cricketer, and the \"Hong Kong Register\" for the 9th March 1858, reports that in a match played in Canton between two military teams he scored a duck in both innings.\n\nThe Royal Marine Artillery gives the date of Schomberg's return to England as January 1859, which fits in well with the date on the last of the paintings: curiously, there is no mention of his name on any of the lists of passengers in Hong Kong newspapers for that month, but this may be because he returned on a troop-ship.\n\nIn later life Schomberg went on to be Deputy Adjutant General of the Royal Marines. He was made a general in 1877 and was knighted in 1896. He died at the age of eighty-six in 1907.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206486, "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-1972", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "28\n\nP. H. COLLIN\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Wingrove Cooke, China, London, 1858. p. 254.\n\n2 Ibid., p. 279.\n\n3 This was J. Scarth, who in 1860 published Twelve Years in China, illustrated from his own sketches. In this work Scarth has little to say of the events in Canton during the Arrow War, pointing out that the subject had been fully treated by Wingrove Cooke.\n\n4 Albert Smith, To China and Back, London, 1859, p. 27.\n\n5 J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese, 1900 edition, p. 38, gives the following description. \"Gingals, or Jingals, are long tapering guns, six to fourteen feet in length, borne on the shoulders of two men and fired by a third. They have a stand, or tripod, resembling one of a telescope”.\n\n6 Lt. Col. Fisher, Three Years' Service in China, London, 1863 p. 25.\n\n7 Ibid., p. 72.\n\n8 E. Fraser & L. G. Carr-Laughton, The Royal Marine Artillery. 1804-1923, London, 1930, p. 459. I am indebted to Miss J. S. Crockett of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, for drawing my attention to this work.\n\n9 Ibid., p. 462.\n\n10 Cooke, op. cit., p. 329.\n\n11 Fisher, op. cit., p. 4.\n\n12 Parliamentary papers on Lord Elgin's mission to China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214336, "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "158 days later, coincidentally, on 23 September 1861, a small postscript to the China coverage of The Illustrated London News established that there was indeed a link between Hong Kong and British actions in China.\n\nThe item took the form of an illustration of a Monument to the Royal Marines, erected in the Cemetery at \"Hong Kong, China\". In explanation of the illustration, it read: “The front inscription is as follows; 'In memory of the officers, non-commissioned officers, buglers, and privates of the Brigade of Royal Marines (Light Infantry); and the non-commissioned officers, buglers, and gunners of the battery of Royal Marine Artillery, who fell in the execution of their duty in China during the years 1857, 1858, 1859, and 1860. Erected by their comrades.' The slab on the right-hand side gives the names of three officers and 48 men killed in action; whilst that on the left shows the total loss from all causes to have been 257; and the numbers wounded were 27 officers, 16 sergeants, 20 corporals, four buglers, and 155 gunners and privates. The rear slab records the services of the brigade, from the taking of Canton in Dec. 1857, with the various expeditions in the neighbourhood, the Taku Forts in 1859, the defence of Shanghai, and the brilliant campaign in the north, which ended in the Treaty of Peking on Oct. 24, 1860.\"\n\nHong Kong, SAR, China\n\nAt midnight, 30 June 1997, Hong Kong was returned by Britain to China.\n\nThe Monument to the Marines \"who fell in the execution of their duty in China during the Years 1857, 1858, 1859, and 1860\" still stands, known only to the few Hong Kong residents today who take an interest in things of the past. And to most of these few, the past events which the Monument records are too distant in ethos as well as in time even to be uncomfortable; but are felt rather as irremediably alien.\n\nThis brief survey and commentary on the contemporary China coverage in one British periodical during the period 5 January to 23 September 1861 may perhaps offer reassurance that, like us today, the contemporary British public before, during and after Lord Elgin's China Campaign was also more comfortable when the soldiers could come", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215000, "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-2000", "page_number": 96, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "52\n\nfound four such phrases.\" They added, in answer to a question, that the CWGC commemorates all members of the Commonwealth forces who died in conflicts regardless of the circumstances of their death. Those who died following sentences given by Courts Martial are commemorated in exactly the same way as anyone else.\n\nOfficers and NCOs supplied by the British consisted of volunteers from the British Army as well as British officer-candidates from China, consisting of missionaries and members of the China Customs Service from Treaty Ports. Some were promoted from the ranks.\n\nThose from the Chinese Customs Service in Shanghai include Arthur H H Abel, who was gazetted as a 2Lt in May 1918; George B Appleton, who enlisted with the 16th Bn Middlesex Regt in February 1915 and transferred to the CLC in April 1917 as a sergeant, being promoted to 2Lt in May 1918; Charles N Cross, who in August 1917 joined the CLC as a 2Lt, transferred to the Royal Air Force in July 1918 and transferred back to the CLC in March 1919 as a captain; Arthur HF Edwardes served with the CLC from April to July 1917 as a 2Lt, and in August 1917 was promoted acting captain commanding No 59 Company CLC in Belgium; Ernest N Ensor, enlisted in December 1914 in the 9th Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers and, after promotion through the ranks, to captain in August 1916, was transferred in July 1917 to command No. 27 Company CLC. Amongst his medals, and being Mentioned in Despatches, he was awarded the Order of the Wen Hu, Fifth Class, for military services. Hugh G Lowder served in various Army battalions before transferring to the HQ CLC from which he was demobilised in March 1920 in the rank of captain. He also received the Order of the Wen Hu, Fifth Class, in 1919. Walter Moore served two and a half years with the CLC, from June 1917 to October 1919. John Murphy served with the Royal Marine Artillery, first in German New Guinea and German West Africa, then in France and also on HMS Warspite. In September 1917 he transferred to the Army and from the Armistice to May 1920 he was attached to the CLC conducting coolies from France back to China. Norman Travers was commissioned as a 2Lt into the CLC in May 1917 and was attached to the Royal Flying Corps, with Chinese, on forward aerodromes, subsequently working also in the forward area in trench, ammunition and lines of communication, finally assisting clearance of the devastated areas.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]