Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 08, 2003 at 19:21:38 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: Some Gunboat History : was The Real Missee Lee? posted by Dan Lind on August 08, 2003 at 18:50:12:
I am not at all sure that piracy on the China Coast was "as good as over" by 1851! The thing that stopped it was the efficient government of New (aka Red, or Communist) China.
I used to work for the China Navigation Company, a British shipping line, still very much in business, which sued the British Government for failing to protect its ships against pirates in the late 1930's, and which routinely issued its officers with rifles, revolvers and ample ammunition into the late 1960's. (Come to think of it we had three ships pirated in 1990, but that was Indonesians!)
Piracy of the Missee Lee type was still a very serious threat to merchant shipping at the time AR was writing. However, the characteristic mode of attack was not to sail up in a junk, but to buy tickets as deck passengers, smuggle arms aboard, and then rush the bridge, after which the cargo and selected passengers for ransoming would be offloaded into junks or the ship would be taken to Bias Bay, just north of Hong Kong and the model for Missee Lee's little fiefdom, the valuable cargo would be removed and wealthy Chinese passengers detained for ransom.
On one occasion, three British officers were seized off the SS Namchang and held for several months, because the Company, as a matter of policy, never paid ransoms! One of them, Archie Blue, later became Dr A. Blue, D. Litt., of Glasgow University, but I don't know if he recorded an opinion on AR. He was the author of an article in Blackwood's Magazine called "Squeeze", which created a good deal of consternation in expatriate circles at the time!
Ships were fitted with "anti-piracy grilles" which isolated the bridge and engine room by way of substantial iron bars, and armed guards, usually Sikhs, were employed to patrol them.
AR must have been familiar with such ships and travelled by them - there was no other way to get around the China coast.