GUNBOAT AS AVENGER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 7

GUNBOAT AS AVENGER.

( ' ; 9 1 COMMANDER’S SUMMARY i JUSTICE. j How the commander of a British gun. ] boat in Chinese waters, in the absence 1 of a higher authority, adroitly assumed ; the responsibility of enforcing punitive- i measures against the community of a j township whose coolie inhabitants had killed •an American citizen, is recounted j < in a letter, written at Hankow, from i a fellow-officer. c have just had an interesting af- ' fair on Upper River,” he writes. ‘‘The trouble is that the junks are. rapidly losing all their trade owing to the large , increase in Upper River steamers, some . of the smaller of which are now able to - run all the year round. Shippers natur- j ally prefer to send their goods bv steamer, as it is safer and cheaper, bee- ( cause, if sent by junk, they arc sub- i jected to illegal taxes at various j ‘squeeze’ stations all-down the river ; , the steamers do not stop for these. There is a large amount of wood oil \ exported, and the junks look on this - as their legitimate- cargo, and object to steamers carrying it; but last year, ' by dint of the- steamers paving 2 per 1 cent, of the freights- to the junk guild, ' they were allowed to carry it from 15th 1 June to 15th October, the junks doing it in the winter. (It is not safe for junks . to move during this period of very high water.) This year no- actual agreement : was reached, but the local authorities : assured an American agent for a Brit- ' ish firm that it ivould be all right, so 1 he proceeded to try to load oil in a ; steamer. One of our gunboats was there at the time. As soon as loading .was commenced a riot began, and attempts were made to> break up" tjie ; lighters. The agent, who was -at the time on board the steamer, went ashore and tried to stop the riot, but the rioters hit him over the head and he fell into the water. He was carried aboard the gunboat, where he died. The gunboat landed an, armed party, and fired a blank, at which the coolies fled. “The captain-then had to deal with the situation, there being no consuls there nor any American, gunboat present. He proceeded to interview the local general, who said that he was sorry to hear about it, but did not display much interest. The captain then said: ‘lf you do not at once have the ringleaders arrested and shot, and if you do not,, with, the other principal men of the town, follow the dead man’s coffin to the grave on foot, I will bombard the town with 6in guns.’ This shook them. They did walk three miles after the coffin, an unheard of thing for a Chinese ‘swell’, to do. as they lose, a lot of ‘face’ if they walk anywhere. By noon next day, however, no one had been shot, so the captain delivered another ultimatum, expiring at 6 o’clock, that evening. At a. quarter to 6 o’clock two men were brought alongside, and they were duly shot. If the Chinese had ‘called the captain’s bluff,’ I do not know what he could have done; he would have had to bombard something, and we. are- nominally at peace with China. As it is, protests are flowing in, but I hone our Minister has sufficient sense to stick up for him. This incident shows the necessity for gunboats. If one had not been on the spot, there would never have been any satisfaction obtainable.”