CHINESE PIRATES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18759, 12 January 1923, Page 9

CHINESE PIRATES

DANGEROUS AND DARING. A SERIOUS MENACE. Admitting that you have devils and desperadoes in our otherwise peaceful and lawabiding United States, I am setting out to prove that there is no more complicated Human fiend than the Chinese river pirate (writes Mervyn C. Fry in the New i'orlc Herald). Ho is the real atrocity, and some day writers of fiction who arc not shocked by unimaginable brutality and awfulnoss that transcends tho brute will give him his true place in their stories of the Far East. I’ve made

a study of the Chinese pirate in my journeyings between Hongkong and Singapore and aJong the windings of Chinese rivers, but I don’t protend to thoroughness. What 1 write may some day serve as footnotes in tho way of confirmation of the big yarn. Tho pirate, as you know, in the West is just a bugaboo, suitable to lend colour to fanciful fiction, but in tliis far-off Cathay ho persists as a serious peril in tho peaceful mariner’s routine and is given more attention in tho way of precautionary measures than any other of tho dangers lurking in tho Far Eastern waters. ATTACK ON PIRATES’ STRONGHOLD. In this present month of August a nest of pirates on Hiroshima Island, not far from Kwantung, in Manchuria, was attacked by a party of revenue officers in their stronghold, a cache in a cove of rocks on the island, but the attempt proved vain. Although tho officers attacked the pirates with a naval gun it made no impression on tho pirates’ fort, and tho pirates, with well-directed rifle fire, drove off the officers, many of whom wore nursing wounds. In July I made tho river trip between Canton and Hong Kong. The steamer I boarded at Canton is under tho charge of British officers, and it is especially equipped

to ward oS sudden attacks by the pirates. First and third-class passengers are carried, the third numbering several hundred Chinese, mostly coolies. The third is kept entirely separated from the first by means of iron bars, grating, and other such paraphernalia, so that it is impossible for the Chinese to gain access to the first-class section, deck, officers’ quarters, navigation portion, etc. Several tall Sikh policemen with rifle and fixed bayonets, are always on guard at tho steel doors that serve to admit tho crew, cooks, stokers, etc. HOW SHIPS ABB PROTECTED. To the first class dock above there is just one entrance, as on this deck is the navigation bridge. A Sikh also stands guard here, and I noticed that he stopped and questioned one of the ship’s Oriental stewards who was headed up to tho bridge. Several more Sikhs patrol tho deck. They are fine-looking fellows, all of them, wearing uniforms, turbans, and war service ribbons. They take their orders from a tall Sikh officer, whose belt holds an ominous looking pistol. The ship is of steel, enclosed as much as possible, and designed to make a perfectly safe and comfortable journey. On the deck the navigation bridge and officers* quarters are steel-plated and fitted with sliding steel-barred doors—"just in case’’—together with slots in steel plates, with a machinegun mounted in place. About tho best of all the equipment is the battery of steam jets which can be used to direct live steam

on those looking for "trouble." The trick in the past that has led to all these precautions has been this: A goodly number of pirates would take tickets as passengers among the hundreds of Chinese in tho third class, and at a prearranged time and location they would settle the officers, overpower the crew, and, with the aid of their confederates who clambered aboard from alongside, they would seize the ship. JUNKS AN EASY PREY. The way this British river steamer is equipped would seem to make it pretty willing to take on a whole fleet of pirates. At any rate, the pirates seem pretty well bluffed out of the idea of trying their game on such. But the Chinese ships are not so well prepared for emergencies, so they catch it now again. The ancient Chinese junks, too, are often the easiest kind of prey for the pirates. There was a time when their navigators relied upon their "eyes”—two port-holes on each side of the bow—to "see" and scare away the devils of the deep, but more certain means of repelling pirate attacks now are resorted to. Moat of the junks have a sort of Spanish galleon stern, on which is mounted a brass cannon loaded with nails, hits of wire, spikes, etc., ready to .give a pleasant reception to the "hold-up men" of the East. Piracy is carried on mostly round about the southern coast, and is blamed on the

unruly Cantonese. Not so long ago a fairsized steamer struck a small island about three hours off Hongkong. Tho crew left by the boats, and in less than an hour—as if by telepathy—Chinese junks sailed up from ail directions and just stripped that ship. In one river scrap the pirates were beaten off in their attempt to board a steamer, ond they made off in one of their launches for shallower water on one of the reaches where the old Chinese warships that had gone in pursuit couldn’t follow. But one warship lowered a launch having a 4in gun aboard This sailed in to give the pirate some twentieth century methods. The first (and last) shot from the cannon just about knocked the bottom out of the pirate launch, and it sank almost immediately, taking most of the surprised “sea devils” with it. A CAPTURED PIRATE VESSEL. ■While in Hongkong shortly following this official success I had the opportunity to go over o captured pirate vessel. It was a big Chinese junk, with mysterious decks and deadly black passages in the hold impassable to the white man. Guarded by a few British marines, the junk preserved its sinisteir effect. What must it have been when rows of yellow faces peered over the sides, watching in a deserted reach of the river, with narrow, bright eyes the efforts of their prey, a commercial junk, to escape? Every such pirate junk tries to give the impression that it is a peaceful trader, but once over the side its true character is

quickly seen, and it is realised how the pirates have arranged everything so that they can work nefariously as well in the black night as in the day. The quarters for the men below are like a labyrinth of passages, all leading nowhere. The very room of the captain is not much of a room, nothing but a bunk and a door, but it eerves. This pirate ship was a sizeable craft of more than a hundred tons, and must have been built in. a reputable Cliinese shipyard. She had been built for trips along the coast, one of the most dangerous in the world, where conditions of wind and weather are often severe, and I was assured by the British officer, on experienced engineer, that on expert knowledge of ships had entered into her construction. PUZZLE TO BRITISH SAILORMETST. All the same, the junk was a true Chinese creation, and in charge of an American or British sailor she would prove unmanageable But in some unaccountable way the pirate vessel responded to her Chinese captain’s personality and mysteriously obeyed hia every order. The Britisher had seen her perform in the engagement when she was a seagoing craft of quite remarkbele ability and speed He hod seen her running before the wind that was like a cyclone in intensity down the China coast with a scrap of sail on her with, a success in keeping afloat that he called truly diabolical. She would be tossed about like a chip or swallowed whole in the trough of the sea as if oho had suddenly gone down. Every time this happened the Britisher thought the pirate junk had gone forever, but ehe always emerged after long intervals as good as c\er. It sXed impossible that such a tub could be kept running, but there she was, after being captured and towed into Hongkong harbom, as seaworthy as she had always been. The junk was completely boarded over and provided with a centre board, but it was her steering apparatus that afforded to Western navigators their greatest cause of wonder It had come down without modern accessories from the days of Confucius, and how it served the pirate captain in dirty weather confounded their intelligence. Ihe British officer said he would never have believed that such a contrivance could have been manoeuvred safely among tho reefs outside Hongkong if ho had not seen it done. BOLD NAVIGATORS. I have been told that it is by means of their boldness in navigating among the reefs of the coast and their ability to go where even a smartly handled yacht would hesitate to follow, that the pirates owe their continued existence. When hard pressed at tho mouth of the river, for which tho pirates always run, they hesitate at no danger to

enter the zono of their protection. The British Bailors I have talked with tell mo that their best covert is about fivo miles up the coast, where lies the rao3t intricate, extraordinary, asd terrible nest of rccfe that are known in geology. Surveys in that region have rwver been accurately taken, for it is alicgod that no white man in tho calmest and° clearest of weather can take a craft among these reefs and come out with a whole bottom, but what a white man cannot do or is afraid to try to do, the yellow man never hesitates to attempt under stress.