The Opium Trade Bonanza

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31262, 7 January 1967, Page 5

The Opium Trade Bonanza

(Specially written for “The Press" by TERRY McGOVERNE) jyURING the last century there were among British and American shipping interests men who would stop at nothing to amass huge fortunes. The most lucrative cargo they could handle was opium which could be sold for huge profits in China.

From the very start the importation of opium into China was against the decrees and wishes of its rulers who knew only too well the harm done by the drug to all who fall under its influence. But the British and American firms engaged in the trade were not worried about this. They were nothing more than smugglers who made bigger profits than the world had previously known. The men who manned the opium clippers were game and took their lives into their hands every time they approached the China coast There is more than a little truth in the yarn that misfortune and unhappiness always caught up with those who had made their fortunes in opium.

For such a hazardous trade swift keels were necessary. At the close of the Government opium sales in India, the new crop was shipped into small clippers specially built for the trade. These ships had to make the passage around China under racing canvas in all seasons and weathers. At Linton or Macao they transhipped their cargo to gunboats with large fighting crews and other staff who attended to the sales. From the gunboats the drug was fed to clippers stationed along the coast between Hainan and Woosung. These men took the opium to places where no treaties or agents existed, the most arduous and most exciting task of all. They had to meet the Chinese opium smugglers in lonely creeks which had never been surveyed. They knew the same smugglers would be only too ready to capture their clipper given a chance or loot her and murder the crew if she stranded.

The clippers had to dodge the wiles of the hostile mandarins, defend themselves against war junks and fleets of Chinese pirates, sail through typhoons and, if damaged, refit at sea. They were also expected by their owners to open up trade with faraway and unknown ports, survey coasts and harbours, carry mails and dispatches, and even negotiate treaties.

in such a perilous trade the officers had to be carefully picked. In the British opium clippers many of them were former naval men and there was keen competition to get appointed to the ships. Most were younger sons of good families who had to wait a long time for appointments which were extremely hard to get. The applicants had to undergo stringent mental and physical tests of fitness. Among the officers were many sons of clergymen who after a period of service in the trade would retire to succeed to their fathers’ livings, practise at the Bar or stand for Parliament.

The pay was enough to tempt anyone and would make the present-day sailor’s mouth water.

Cutlass Drill

The captains, if they succeeded in avoiding capture, soon made fortunes and retired. Each officer was allowed his own boy or body servant while the captain had a butler and two boys. The clippers carried double crews of all nationalities including a sprinkling of deserters from the Royal Navy. Discipline was ruthless. Gun and cutlass drill formed a regular part of the routine and skill in sailhandling wks a point of honour.

Jardine, Matheson and Company and Dent and Company were the main British firms engaged in the trade. An opium cargo seldom had more than 200 or 300 chests which were exchanged for silver either as Mexican dollars or in bars. Ornaments of gold or silver were also accepted. In this way many a precious work of art found its way into the melting pot. Pirates were always on the look-out for a becalmed opium clipper. To overcome this danger, the clippers were fitted with huge oars which were run out of the gun ports

and with six men to each could move the vessels easily at three to four knots. Worse than pirates were the typhoons which more than once sent opium cargoes to their rightful place—the bottom of the sea. The most famous of the opium runners was the Falcon owned by the commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the Earl of Yarborough. He threw expense to the wind building the Falcon which in appearance looked like a 20gun corvette.

The Royal Yacht Club had been formed with more serious objects than summer yachting and at this date possessed several craft fitted as men-of-war.

Lord Yarborough is reputed to have paid his yachting crew extra wages to conform to the regulations of the Royal Navy. One of these justified the free use of the cat-o’-nine tails and before sailing the crew of the Falcon signed a paper setting out the merits of flogging and their willingness to undergo it for the preservation of discipline. The Falcon had her first bloodbath at the Battle of Navarino in 1827 and came through flying the colours of her sporting owner. Falcon Sold Eight years later Lord Yarborough sold his vessel after being badly injured when he was thrown across a sea chest. A London firm bought the Falcon for £5500 and fitted her with two 24 horse-power engines. The firm hoped the British Government would buy the ship for the Burmese war, but it did not and she was then sold to Jardine, Matheson and Company who removed the engines and refitted her for the opium trade. One officer who served in her described the Falcon as having qualities which made her an object of real pride

and affection. “She swam like a duck and steered like a fish. She was fast yet dry, lively yet stiff, sensitive to every yard of canvas that could be spread. She can do everything but speak.”