“The noble lord then read a letter from a captain of a vessel at the Cape of Good Hope, complaining ‘that the officers of ships of war were so pillaged by those of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, that he wished to know how they could be relieved; whether they could be allowed the liberty to send their prizes home, and how far the jurisdiction of the Vice-Admiralty Court extended; for that the charges of Court were so exorbitant, it required the whole amount of the value of a good prize to satisfy them. In the case of one vessel that was sold for 11,000 rupees, the charges amounted to more than 10,000. This was the case at Penang, Malacca, and other places, as well as at the Cape.’
“The noble lord said he had produced the copy of the bill to show the length of it. He then showed the original; and to show the equity and moderation of the Vice-Admiralty Court, he read one article where, on the taxation of a bill, the Court, for deducting fifty crowns, charged thirty-five crowns for the trouble in doing it. A vessel was valued at 8,608 crowns, the Marshal received one per cent, for delivering her, and in the end the net proceeds amounted to no more than 1,900 crowns out of 8,608—all the rest had been embezzled and swallowed up in the Prize Court. He was sorry, he said, to trepass on the time of the House, on a day when another matter of importance was to come before them. He pledged himself, however, that no subject could be introduced more highly deserving their serious attention and consideration.”
The public have not yet heard all that is going to be done in the case of the prize money earned by the Navy during the late war. For the sake of my old comrades and their successors I hope that those who have gone through and survived the wear and tear and exhaustion of those terrible four and a half years will not be fleeced of their just due as were their great-grandfathers.
But to return to Hong Kong. It was obviously difficult for very insufficiently paid young men to resist living like others of their own age, regardless of the fact that those others were much better off. I remember the instance of two brothers, one a sub-lieutenant in a gunboat and the other a subaltern in the Royal Engineers. There was only a year’s difference in age between them. The sub-lieutenant in the Navy received £90 a year, subject to the illegal tax already mentioned; the subaltern R.E., what with colonial pay and allowances and an extra £1 a day from the Colony as Surveyor of Roads, made up just £900 a year. Further comment is unnecessary. The system of credit already alluded to needs mention, for at that time both in the Crown Colonies and also in the Treaty Ports of China no money other than copper was in general circulation, and this was not on account of any lack of silver but owing to a Chinese peculiarity. The Chinaman is, I believe, considered by all those doing business with him to be the most honest and trustworthy trader in the world; dealing on a large scale with a Chinaman it was always said that no signature would be necessary, the Chinaman’s word being as good as his bond. On the other hand, the lower class Chinaman could never resist helping himself to a tiny slice off any silver dollar that came into his hands. The result was that after a short time the dollars in circulation lost so seriously in value that they could not be accepted at their face value, and earned for themselves the sobriquet of “chop dollars.” Hence dollars, except at the end of the month, were never seen, and the only cash ever carried were the few coppers necessary to pay for the chair which did the work of the then hansom in London. The “chit” system was universal; whether it was dinner at the club, a cocktail at the bar, or a hair-cut at the very smart hairdresser’s shop on the Bund. All that was necessary was to sign for the amount. It was hardly to be wondered at if we boys were on the verge of bankruptcy every month.
Sometimes, alas! it was worse than bankruptcy. I am rather ashamed, even now, when I remember that I helped a brother officer, who turned out to be a real rogue, to escape. He was a paymaster on one of the small craft on the Station. He had been put under close arrest by Admiralty order as an irregularity had been discovered in his accounts when submitted home. Three or four of us young idiots firmly believed in his version, namely that not a halfpenny was really missing or had ever got into his pocket. He admitted having been careless and said it would be impossible for him to prove his innocence at the Court-martial (this part of the story was remarkably true!), and consequently he would be sure to be sentenced to imprisonment. He was very popular with his brother officers, and also (alas, for his sake!) with a great many of the light-hearted division ashore. The upshot of it was that we, at the risk of our own necks (for had anything leaked out we must have been tried by Court-martial and dismissed the Service at the least) assisted him to escape. We procured a boat in the dead of night, manning it ourselves, squared the sentry over the cabin door to look the other way when the prisoner went on deck; he then succeeded in creeping over the bows while the officer of the watch was aft, and got into the boat from which he was pulled on board a steamer bound for San Francisco. And that was the last we heard of him. The only two incidents connected with this story that give me any pleasure on looking back, are that I, who was rather behind the scenes, knew that the trouble originated as the Frenchmen say all trouble originates. It was a case of cherchez la femme, and that knowledge pleases my sense of philosophy; while my sense of humour is tickled by the fact that the sentry’s bribe for looking the other way was a bottle of rum!
In the summer of 1875 there was a rising of the natives in Perak, which, assuming serious proportions, eventually culminated into one of our many little wars. On board the Flagship we were all in a great state of excitement, feeling convinced that the Commander-in-Chief would at once proceed to the scene of action with every available ship and land a Naval Brigade, and that, consequently, war service and medals, and, what was more important still, promotion would be coming our way. As Acting Flag-Lieutenant I would not have changed places with any one in the world, and had rosy visions of being the youngest Commander in the Service. Alas! those rosy visions were never even to get to the fading stage. The Commander-in-Chief, instead of proceeding to the south, breathing fire and flame, as we all hoped he would, calmly went in the other direction, namely to Shanghai and Japan, and left the Senior Officer, Captain Alexander Buller, commanding the corvette Modeste, to deal with the situation and reap the rewards. We junior officers never forgave the “old man,” as we called him; but I dare say he was perfectly right,—for all any of us knew there might have been excellent reasons for keeping the central and northern part of our forces intact. Indeed, I strongly suspect that our Legation at Pekin had a considerable say in the matter from what I saw in North China later.
Whilst on the Admiral’s Staff I came in for a most interesting visit to Canton. The flag was shifted to the Vigilant, a small paddle-boat yacht that was part of the establishment of the Commander-in-Chief in China, and a very necessary part, as it enabled him to go up and inspect his gunboats, many of which were perpetually stationed up the various rivers, in the never-ceasing work of the Navy, namely the protection of British interests. I was naturally in attendance on my Chief when he paid his official calls on the mandarins whom it was necessary for him to visit, and interesting it was to be carried in palanquins through the narrow streets of Canton, and finally to penetrate into the courtyards of the various yamens where these mandarins lived and had their being. Unfortunately I was too young and ignorant then to appreciate things fully, and never took in the beauty of the artistic treasures I had this chance of seeing; in fact, the only outstanding impression that was left on my mind by Canton was one of amazement that anybody could keep alive in the city for long, in such an atmosphere of heat and stink!
The Vigilant remained one night up the river, and of course our cicerones, the English residents, insisted on taking us to visit the flower boats, which were curious enough in their way. To the Western mind, the painting of the women’s faces seemed rather overdone, and gilded lips, one thought at the time, were perhaps a shade too artificial. Nowadays, I suppose it would scarcely be noticed, since our own women have taken to raddling themselves with paint to quite an Oriental extent, and really the difference between the eternal blob of carmine that one sees on the lips of every woman in London and the gilded mouth of the Eastern women is almost negligible.
Shortly after the commencement of the Perak Campaign, the Audacious left for Shanghai en route for a summer in Japan. During my service on the China Station, which lasted about two years, the Audacious was several times at Shanghai, and a very pleasant place it was. The magnificence of the dollar grinder of that port overshadowed that of his counterpart in Hong Kong in every way, the Club was far better and the racing on a bigger scale. Huge sums would be given for racing ponies, meaning that big money could be won in stakes and selling lotteries, were the animal only good enough. I remember one pony that fetched as much as 2000 taels, the equivalent of about £700 English,—a long price for a pony of barely fourteen hands. The other sport indulged in by the people who were fortunate enough to have both the time and the money was the shooting up the Yangtse River, which used to be done in houseboats. These boats were most comfortable, with every sort of convenience, drew so little water that they could go almost anywhere, and the sport was excellent. Quite respectable bags used to be made of pheasants and wild duck, and, in addition, the snipe-shooting was extraordinarily good.
After Shanghai, we proceeded direct to Japan. Japan has been so minutely described and written up by so many distinguished men of letters, that any observations of mine would merely result in a poor attempt to paint the lily; but it is interesting to have seen, in 1875, some of the early period of the Europeanising of that country. In the real country districts, where a good walker with a jinriksha in attendance could travel considerable distances into the interior, it was still “Old Japan,” and what could be more attractive? In the towns everything was in the transition stage. For instance, the metropolitan policeman of Yeddo and Yokohama was being evolved, his uniform generally consisting in a copy of our police helmet and absolutely nothing else but his truncheon. But anyhow, whether old, or new Japan, it was a pleasant country in which to pass the summer.