IN STORMY WATERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19832, 30 December 1927, Page 10

IN STORMY WATERS.

TWO STRENUOUS YEARS. ADMIRAL'S EXACTING SERVICE. [from our own correspondent. ] SHANGHAI. Nov. 3. Admiral Cameron, the British senior naval officer on the \angtse River, whose flagship is the gunboat Bee, relinquished his command last week and returned home. Admiral - Cameron relieved Admiral MacLachlan in September, 1925, and has thus completed two years of what has probably been the most exacting service Carried out by any naval officer since the Great War. His tenure of office has consisted of one long series of "incidents," some of them of the typically small nature wmmon to all Britishers engaged in the task of keeping the "flag of Old England" flying in the remote corners of the world. On the other hand, some of the "incidents!' have been all-impor-tant and fraught with grave possibilities. Under the command of Admiral Cameron the "Wauhsien Expedition" took place, when a party of less than seventy British officers and men drawn from the various gunboats stationed on the Yangtse River rescued the crew of two British merchantmen that had been, captured by General Yang Sen, the military Governor of the town of Wanshien, on the upper Yangtse River. The two merchant vessels were anchored less than a mile from a Chinese fort and there were some 350 soldiers of General Yang on each vessel; nevertheless, the rescue was effected by a splendid display of seamanship and an exhibition of gallantry traditional of the British Navy. Again at Hankow, probably 'no commander had a more difficult problem to overcome in obeying orders Uian Admiral Cameron had during the stirring events of last January. The wonderful sell'-re-straint exercised by the bluejackets under his command, in face of the indignities and insults heaped upon them by an infuriated Chinese mob, apart from the actual wounds received from barrages of stones, evoked the. admiration of the world.