RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v
130

A. D. BLUE

APPENDIX

Main Companies mentioned in this article with ships plying on

the Yangtse.

SHANGHAI STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY 1862-1877.

Founded by Russell & Co.

CHINA NAVIGATION COMPANY. Founded 1872 by John Swire. Managed by John Swire & Sons of London, and represented in the Far East by Butterfield and Swire. This Company still runs on the China Coast.

CHINA MERCHANTS STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY.

Founded 1873. Chinese owned. It still continues to operate.

INDO-CHINA STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY.

Founded 1881 by Jardine, Matheson & Co. Now operates in the Far East generally with occasional calls at China ports.

NISSHIN KISEN KAISHA. Founded 1907. Japanese owned.

SZECHUEN STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY. Founded 1908. Chinese owned.

1
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653
PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST

79

with sufficient knowledge of navigation and engineering for this. When Bias Bay or Mirs Bay was reached one or more of the ship's lifeboats might be used to take the pirates, their loot, and their prisoners ashore. Sometimes junks were used for this, which might be innocent junks which had arrived fortuitously, or pirate junks which had arrived by prior arrangement. Invariably at least one of the ship's officers would be held as a hostage during this operation, being released when it was completed.

If everything went smoothly in a piracy of this kind, no lives would be lost. But the pirates were ruthless if they encountered any opposition or if a hitch occurred. A few shots were usually fired in the opening exchanges, perhaps causing a few injuries, but this made the rest of the crew and passengers more co-operative. Towards the end of this era of modern piracy, when the Hong Kong Government and the shipping companies had adopted more effective anti-piracy measures, casualties became more common, as the pirates intensified their resentment to these measures.

One important anti-piracy measure was the isolation of the centre part of the ship—bridge, engine room, and saloon accommodation—from the rest of the ship by steel grilles. Access was by a steel door, locked and under constant guard. The guards were usually Chinese or Sikh policemen, under White Russian officers; but on special occasions, British soldiers from the Hong Kong garrison were employed. In spite of all these precautions, piracy continued to flourish along the South China coast right down to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. However, there were no attempts on ships with British soldiers as guards.

There were fifty-one major cases of piracy on the China coast in the years between the two World Wars. The great majority involved British ships, and twenty British Merchant Navy officers were killed. There were also many Chinese casualties, and many Chinese kidnapped and never heard of again. There were also many cases involving Chinese junks which received little publicity in the foreign press. The worst years were 1922, 1927, and 1928, in which there were five, six, and eight piracies respectively. A few of the most famous cases of this period are described below.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653
PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST

83

Another case which might be said to have had political undertones was that of the China Navigation Company's Shuntien in June 1934. The Shuntien was the latest addition to the China Navigation Company's large fleet, and was making only her second voyage at the time. She was captured by some thirty pirates after leaving Tientsin for Chefoo, and was taken to the mouth of the Yellow River where she was beached on soft sand. The pirates then made off inland, taking five European and twenty Chinese passengers as hostages. Before leaving, they told the ship's compradore that the piracy was a reprisal for the Chinese Maritime Customs having stationed an extra customs cruiser in Shantung Bay, thus interfering with their smuggling operations. The Europeans returned a few days later, but nothing more was ever heard of the Chinese hostages.

Bias Bay, sixty-five miles northeast of Hong Kong, was notorious as the pirates' stronghold in the interwar years. Unfortunately, it was just outside Hong Kong territorial waters, and came within the jurisdiction of the Cantonese authorities, who were either unwilling or unable to co-operate with the Royal Navy against the pirates. The nationalist and anti-foreign feelings of the Cantonese probably contributed to this, as did the fact that the warlords of Kwangtung were suspected of being in league with the pirates. Whether this was so or not, it was definitely established that pirates based on Bias Bay committed nine major piracies between 1924 and 1926.

Although the Navy was unable to suppress piracy on the China coast, so much of which took place almost on its own doorstep, the mere fact that naval ships were in the vicinity must have reduced its incidence. The pirates rarely boarded ships at Hong Kong, partly because of the strict naval and police control there, and also because passengers joining ships there were unlikely to have much money or valuables. In the case of the second Sunning piracy in 1926, it was definitely established afterwards that the pirates came on board at Amoy, and that their weapons were smuggled on board by stevedores. The lack of co-operation from Canton meant that the Navy was unable to follow up action at sea by punitive expeditions against the pirates' shore bases. The Kwangtung authorities had been much more co-operative in the first few decades after the cession of
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d
176

BOOK REVIEWS

THE SENIOR JOHN SAMUEL SWIRE 1825 - 98: MANAGEMENT IN FAR EASTERN SHIPPING TRADES, Sheila Marriner & F. E. Hyde; (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1967) pp. xiv, 206, appendices, illus. 42/-

This book is the latest product of the Liverpool School of Business History which, under Professor Hyde's direction, has published a number of converging and complementary studies of the Liverpool merchant and ship-owner. Although it is claimed for these studies that "they are collectively an expression of ideas and techniques in the progression towards more sophisticated types of analysis in the handling (sic) of business records", a common feature of all of them is the endorsement of Charles Wilson's credo: in the history of business, biography is a powerful element.

We come to this book, then, with the previous knowledge from these other Liverpool Studies that 'The Senior' was a tenacious, aggressive character, described by a business rival as "a person who lived by and for business alone"; with, as well, a considerable understanding of the part played by Messrs. Butterfield and Swire in the Far Eastern shipping trades and, in particular, of J. S. Swire's role as architect and protagonist of the Eastern Shipping Conferences. The commercial history of Butterfield and Swire, and to a lesser extent of Holt's Blue Funnel Line,* has already been examined from several angles which means that the reviewer of this present study has had to read three books instead of one! (The third one is K. C. Liu's study of the Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China (Harvard, 1962) and which drew, if indirectly, on the Butterfield and Swire records.) This effectively strikes the note of competition arising from the establishment and operation of the China Navigation Company.

What we have new in this latest piece of research, principally, is the story of the 'Great and Ancient' (Taikoo) Sugar Refinery and, later, of the Taikoo Dockyard in Hong Kong. This project stemmed, as the authors make quite clear, as much from the conflict between Swire's and Jardine's - Swire swore to oppose the Princely House at all points—as from a calculation that it might further the shipping interests of the firm. Indeed, one of the most valuable sections for the historian of the China Coast trade is the

* Blue Funnel: A History of Alfred Holt and Co. of Liverpool from 1865 to 1914, F. E. Hyde and J. R. Harris, Liverpool University Press, 1957.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
304

She first arrived in Hong Kong in May 1857 under the agency of Dent & Co, one of the major trading companies in the rapidly expanding colony. For the next three years the Norna carried general cargo along the China coast between Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports.

In 1860 Dent & Co. decided to move her to the more profitable tea trade route to Australia. The Norna, under the command of Captain Wilson, received orders to make sail for Foo Chow, load her cargo of tea and proceed to Sydney. For crew, Wilson had eight Europeans and twenty lascars. As was not uncommon at the time, he also took along his wife and young son.

On the 27th September 1860 the Norna, loaded with tea chests, made her way down the Min River and headed south for Australia where she arrived two days before Christmas. Within two weeks the Norna had completed unloading and sailed in ballast the short distance up the coast to Newcastle. Here she took on coal for delivery to Hong Kong.

On the 3rd March the Norna had taken on over 400 tons of her cargo and put to sea for the return passage to Hong Kong. Lying in her path in the Western Pacific, just north of the equator, were the Caroline Islands. This group of islands stretch for about 2,000 miles east/west between Palau and Ponape (Pohnpei) and consist of about 560 coral islands, islets and atolls, the majority uninhabited.

As the evening closed in on the 31st March 1861, the wind had increased to a strong breeze and the Norna was sailing at a steady 10 knots on a west nor'west course. Unknown to Wilson, he had his bows pointed directly at the coral-rimmed Oroluk Lagoon. Somehow his precise navigation had failed him.

At 2200 hours that night, the Norna struck hard and remained held fast in the coral, her timbers splintered and beyond repair. The following morning Wilson established that the atoll was about 15 miles in diameter with the small half-square-mile island of St Augustine 12 miles to their north-west.

The crew worked feverishly around the wreck for a week to salvage what they could, and in the three ship's boats rowed across the lagoon to the uninhabited St Augustine island. After ten days
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j
26

Run, it is difficult to assess Tang's personal wealth accumulated during his compradorial years due to the absence of sources. However, it is not impossible to have an idea of his business activities through his connections with other Cantonese merchants and compradors.

Tang Tingshu left Jardines in 1873 when he was appointed General Manager (Zongban) of the recently organised China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co. The reason why he was appointed to the post was first his political patronage from Li Hongzhang; and second, his experience in organising steamship business. Tang put capital in Jardine's associate companies such as the Canton Insurance Office in 1868 and China Coast Steam Navigation Co. in which he had 40% of shares at 40,000 taels. Tang was mostly interested in this modern steamship business; he invested in and became one of the directors of the Union Steam Navigation Co. and also North China Steamer Co. established in 1867 and 1868 respectively. In 1870, Tang with his friends, purchased the steamer Nanzing and sold it to Jardines in which he had a personal investment of not more than fifteen thousand taels. At that time, Tang also put his capital into the steamer Suwonada of Augustine Heard & Co. and ships of two small steamship companies, Morris Lewis & Co. and H. Muller & Co. Although no evidence shows why the foreign owners of these companies invited Tang to join in partnership other than the motive of raising capital, it is certain that Tang was not inexperienced, for he was, as expressed by Liu Kwang-ching, "in some cases actually performing full managerial functions" in the modern steamship enterprises. More interesting is that Tang brought with him Cantonese capital as well as managerial staff to the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Co. Tang and Xu had entered with many management officers. Starting from Shanghai, these Cantonese spread to other treaty-ports such as Tianjin or Hankou.

Tang frequently joined with Xu Run and another Cantonese comprador at Shanghai, Zheng Guanying, in coordinating business investment. For example, with Xu Run, he invested in Anhui Guichi mines in 1877; Pingchuan Copper Mines in 1887 and Qian'an Iron Works in 1888. With Zheng Guanying, he invested sixty-five thousand taels in Tianjin Tanggu Cultivation Co. in 1881, and ten years later, they planned to build a paper manufactory. Tang and Zheng united to open two wharf companies, one at Foshan in 1882 and one at Canton in 1890. And last but not least, Tang and Xu as well as Xu's uncle, contributed a thousand taels each in founding, in 1872, the first Cantonese Chamber of Commerce in
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
26 

Jan, 1869). Ferdinand Nissen retired in 1876 because of ill-health (DP 2 Jan. 1877). Hans Christian Heinrich Hoppius — usually known as Heinrich 

died in Hong Kong on 12 December 1894 aged fifty-four. He had arrived in Hong Kong in 1862 at the age of twenty-one. He had been the President of the German Club since its establishment (DP 13 Dec. 1894). He was apparently unmarried as he mentions neither wife nor children in 

his will. 

When Mr. Joost left the firm in 1873 two new partners were admitted, Albert Gultzow and Paul Gerhard Hubbe (DP 28 Jan. 1874). Mr. Gultzow is not on the Hong Kong jury list after 1885. Mr. Hubbe retired from the firm in 1886 (DP 2 Mar. 1887). Nicolaus August Siebs joined the firm in 1881 (DP 2 Jan. 1882, though the original text refers to 1877, it is likely to be a typo or OCR error as the context suggests a later date). The branch at Canton was closed for some years but reopened in 1877 (ibid). The business of the Foochow branch was transferred to Gustav Siemssen in 1888 for him to continue in his own name (DP 30 Jan. 1888). 

At the time of liquidation in 1914 the partners were A. Fuchs in Hamburg, O. Stuckmeyer in Shanghai, H.A. Siebs in Hong Kong, E. Sibert in Hankow and E. Hoeft in Tsingtau. 

The firm was operating a coastal steamer service of three vessels in 1872. Within twenty years the firm's shipping interests had expanded to the China Coast Navigation Co, the German Steamship Co. of Hamburg and the Kingsin Line. In 1893 the firm represented some twenty insurance companies, most of them were German-based. 

Arnhold, Karberg and Co, 

Arnhold, Karberg and Co. was established in September 1866 by Jacob Arnhold, Peter Karberg, and Alexander Levysohn. The new company was a reorganisation of the former Oxford and Co. which in turn was the reorganised firm of L.E. Lebert and Oxford of Canton. The following notice was published in a Hong Kong newspaper: "Interest of L.E. Lebert of Hamburg ceased 4 December last [1857] in L.E. Lebert and Oxford of Canton, from this date business will be carried on as Oxford and Co. A. Bourjau and C.A. Hubener are authorized to sign. Macao, 12 February 1858," (FC 18 Mar. 1858). Messrs. Bourjau and Hubener later opened a business under their own names. In June 1865 Joseph Oxford, Henry Danziger, Jacob Arnhold, and Alexander Cosman Levysohn, trading under
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