RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 219 161 Lived in Canton and Macau, 1841-1849, where he was a partner in Nye, Parker & Co. and Vice-consul for Chile. Later partner in Bull, Nye & Co. Buried at Shantung Road Cemetery. 162 ORNE, Charles W. 1857-1858 Mercantile assistant Russell & Co., partner from January 1, 1857. 163 PROBST, W. 1865-1866 First lived in Canton, then Shanghai. Unknown in which firm he was employed; Consul for Oldenburg 1861. Member of the Shanghai Society for Relief of Distressed Foreigners of All Nationalities, 1865. 166 Member of the Recreation Fund Committee; NCBRAS till 1870 (non-resident). 168 His wife died November 28, 1864 at the age of 28. 169 RANKEN, Andrew Archibald 1856-1857 member Partner in Smith, Kennedy & Co., May 1855 till December 31, 1858. 171 Trustee British Episcopal Church 1857; member Committee Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society 1858. 172 Portrait. 173 REID, David 1863-1864 174 He was among other interests a real estate agent; partnership with John George Dunn as Reid & Co. from January 1, 1864. Member of the NCBRAS 1873-1878 (last year as non-resident). Trustee Recreation Fund Committee 1872, 1873. Member Committee VI and VII. REID, Robert 1859-1860 Partner in Birley, Worthington & Co. 1862. 178 Page 240 Page 241 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 210 Pollard, Samuel (1864-1915), In Unknown China a Pioneer Missionary Among Tribes in Western China, Philadelphia Lippincott, 1921 Poussielgue, Achille, Voyage en Chine et en Mongolie de M de Bourboulon, Ministre de France, et de Madame de Bourboulon, 1860-1861, Paris L Hachette, 1866 Powell, Lyle Stephenson, A Surgeon in Wartime China, Lawrence (Kansas) University of Kansas Press, 1946 Power, William James Tyrone, Recollections of a Three Years Residence in China, including Peregrinations in Spain, Morocco, Egypt, India, London R Bentley, 1853 Pritchard, Earl H, Anglo-Chinese Relations During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, 1929 Purcell, Victor, The Boxer Uprising, Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1963 Rabe, Valentin H, The Home Base of American China Missions, 1880-1920, Cambridge (Mass) Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1978 Rachewiltz, Igor de, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans, London. 1970 Rasmussen, Albert Henry, China Trader, London Constable, 1954 Reed, James, The Missionary Mind and American East Asia Policy 1911-1915, Cambridge (Mass) Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983 Reid, Archibald, From Peking to Petersburg, London E Arnold, 1899 Reinsch, Paul S, An American Diplomat in China, Garden City (New York) Doubleday, 1922 Rennie, David Field, Peking and the Pekingese During the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking, London John Murray, 1865 Ricalton, James, China Through the Stereoscope, a Journey Through the Dragon Empire at the Time of the Boxer Uprising, London Underwood, 1901 Ripa, Matteo, Memoirs of Father Ripa, During Thirteen Years' Residence at the Court of Peking in the Service of the Emperor of China, with an Account of the Foundation of the College for the Education of Young Chinese at Naples, translated by Fortunato Prandi. New York Wiley and Putnam, 1846 Roberts, Frances Markley, Western Travellers to China, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1932 Rockhill, William Woodville, The Land of the Lamas, Notes of a Journey, London Longmans, 1891 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 321 NOTES AND QUERIES A TALE OF SOUR GRAPES: MESSRS. LITTLE AND MESNY AND THE FIRST STEAMSHIP THROUGH THE YANGZI GORGES KEITH STEVENS In 1898 Archibald Little was the first man to take a steam-vessel up through the dangerous Yangzi Gorges amidst great acclaim. This was a red-rag to William Mesny who, in 1905 in his Shanghai periodical Mesny's Chinese Miscellany, furiously wrote that had he been listened to in 1875, a steamboat could have completed the journey up the Gorges within a year or so of that date. The 3,200-mile long river, referred to by westerners as the Yangzi is known to the Chinese as Changjiang, Long River, or Da Jiang, the Great River. The foreigner name, Yangzi, is a misnomer from the Chinese reference to the first stretch from the Yellow Sea, approximately a day or so sail up from Shanghai to Yangzhou, hence Yang. The River can be divided into four sections. The first stretch from the sea to Wuhan [Hankou and Wuchang], some 600 miles upstream, is navigable for blue water vessels during the summer and small draught steamers at all times of the year. It may come as a surprise to read of the emergency run in September of 1931 of the British aircraft carrier, H.M.S. Hermes to Hankou during major floods. The Chairman of the Nationalist Flood Relief Commission, T.V. Soong, requested the British C-in-C for assistance using RAF reconnaissance aircraft from H.M.S. Hermes to assist the Chinese in flood survey patrol work. The second stretch upstream from Wuhan to Yichang is always navigable to small draught vessels and is a very boring run passing, as it does, through a flat plain with many dykes. The third stretch from Yichang to Chongqing is fast flowing downstream through the narrow and dangerous succession of Gorges, so popular with foreign tourists. The great variations in water level ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 411 The 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. Unless 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. The 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. As 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. We 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. What was a young woman of 24 years doing in Bushire and how did she meet Captain Plant? In 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.' ================================================================================