CHINESE PIRATES

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 September 1927, Page 3

CHINESE PIRATES

A DEGENERATE RACE. The last outrage committed by Chinese pirates on a British ship, the case of the China Navigation Company’s steamer Sunning, betrays a sad falling off in the code of ethics that they have maintained for time immemorial (writes Frank C. Bowen, the the Marine Review). In China, piracy is not regarded in the same light as it is in Europe, but is quite an honourable profession for a young man of spirit —provided always that he is not caught. There are whole communities who have been pirates for generations and live quite openly in their guarded headquarters. The chief of these is on the delto of the Canton River, and is a township of three or four thousand souls set in the middle of a big tract of marshland and approachable only by a number of tortuous channels which are defended by stone barriers until they become a perfect maze, through which it is impossible for the unitiated to find a way. These people have been robbers for centuries, and quite openly follow the vocation of pirate, while some miles further down the river, where two important . trade ...lanes cross, they maintain a regular watch-tower on a big bluff overlooking the stream. Here a. regular guard is kept, which signals all useful intelligence to the headquarters in the marsh. • If it were afloat the guffboat patrol which is maintained by the British Navy would probably be able to exterminate it, but it is in Chinese territory, and as such is immune from any molestation.

The signals are made in an elaborate code, but one can well understand how galling it is for the crews of the gunboats to have to watch news of their movements being openly signalled. The watch on this bluff is relieved regularly and quite openly, without any interference by the Chinese authorities.

One of the principal duties of the watchmen is to signal the movements of the professional gamblers who travel up and down the river with fighting crickets and win large sums, arranging matches in the villages at which the steamers call, and also on board. The Chinaman is ever a gambler, and backs his fancied insects freely. It. is almost invariably the professional who wins in the Jong run, however, and he is a favourite prey of the modern Chinese pirate. All idea of piratical junks has long been abandoned, for the patient Oriental finds it much more profitable to ship as a passenger, and he is often willing to make half-a-dozen trips before the opportunity arises for him to give the signal to his band, who will immediately seize the ship. Their plans are so carefully laid that resistance is invariably useless. It. is only in the very rare event of resistance being offered that the Chinese pirate kills or offers any violence to his victims.

As a rule the ship is taken to a quiet reach of the river, or into a bay, and there stripped most methodically of everything of value that she carries or that her passengers have on their persons. Nothing is missed, and the work is done with remarkable celerity. All this time the pirates have been keeping a proper watch .on deck and in the wireless room, and every routine message that comes in is answered in the proper manner. It may be a matter of pride to Great Britain that the recruits who are most eagerly sought for by the pirate bands are those who have obtained British Board of Trade certificates at Hong Kong. The work of stripping done, the pirates make for the shore in the ship’s boats or else seize a junk in which they can remove their plunder. Then the engines are completely and scientifically wrecked, the wireless is put out of action, and the ship and her passengers are left to be found by a passing steamer or by one of the patrolling gunboats. This system has been the rule for many years past, and the only flagrant example of unnecessary bloodshed is in the case of a woman pirate who flourished for a few years after the war, and who had a number of murders to her discredit before she was finally shot herself.

All the violence, of the pirates was reserved for anybody who betrayed them or who interfered with their doings in any way whatsoever. There was a case some twenty years ago where a reward was offered for the bodies of a number of pirates who had been killed in action with a British gunboat. A woman who lived with her family in a sampan on the West River discovered one of the bodies foul of flier mooring rope one morning. She went to the local mandarin to claim the reward', but he appears to have immediately informed the pirate with whom he was in league. The poor woman got no reward, but some days later she was attacked by the remnants of the band, was murdered with her three children, the bodies being left to drift downstream in the blazing sampan as a warning. to others not to interfere with the pirates’ business. From the case of the Sunning,, however, it appears that these methods are now changed, and that the ancient brotherhood of pirates will soon be aS uncontrolled as the bandits ashore. Having looted the ship thoroughly, the outlaws carried away a number of the passengers as hostages, and before they left, set her alight in a dozen places. They themselves got away in her boats, leaving scores of helpless wretches to be burnt to death or drowned. Fortunately, a British gunboat arrived in the nick of time, put out the fire, and was successful in capturing a number of the pirates. This practice of leaving their victims in a burning ship without any means of escape is a heritage of the worst of the Spanish pirates at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the most bloodthirsty sea rovers who ever sailed, most of whom had learned their cruelty in the wars of liberation in South America.