RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v
197

From 1860 there is, firstly, a collection of China Medals and related items and eight drawings by a Royal Marines Light Infantry officer who served in the Second China War. There is also a vase and a gilded, seated, Buddha which were taken from the Summer Palace in that year.

The Marines were involved in the fighting occasioned by the Boxer uprising in 1900, and the Museum holds a number of relics of this involvement. A Boxer flag is, for instance, on display. This was captured by Sgt. Preston, Royal Marines Light Infantry, on the walls of Peking on July 14, 1900, an act for which he was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. The notes explain that Preston kept the Boxers at bay while an American Marine seized the flag.

A Victoria Cross was won at about the same date which is commemorated by the display of a large pike. This was captured by the RMLI detachment during the siege of the Legations. Captain L.S.T. Holliday led a sortie during which he had half a lung shot away. He later became Adjutant General of the Royal Marines and when he died in 1966 at the age of 95 he was the oldest holder of the VC. A squat, gape-mouthed, mortar about two feet high is also on show. This was seized at the capture of the Taku forts in 1900. A large brass shell case used by the Quick Firing guns at the Taku Forts is mounted in the museum as a gong. The case has the name Berndorfer stamped upon it, an Austrian firm.

Next came a quick visit to the National Army Museum, in Chelsea, London. Among the items which I spotted there were the following, and I am sure there must be others which I missed.

There is a large, full-length, portrait of Sir Hugh Gough, by an unknown artist. He is shown with what looks to be an Indian servant buckling on his sword and is impressively bemedalled. A tall, slim, figure, with a white moustache, the General was in his fifties or sixties when the picture was painted. A silver model pagoda commemorating the Treaty of Nanking, August 1860, is on loan from the present Viscount Gough. It was made by Richard Hennell and is hallmarked London 1860-61.

A long rampart gingall, manufactured at South Tientsin Arsenal in 1895 slants diagonally across a case which also features
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
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.

The 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."

Hong Kong, SAR, China

At midnight, 30 June 1997, Hong Kong was returned by Britain to China.

The 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.

This 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
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