Thanks to the fact that nowadays more and more books are digitized we are able to read books that are some times for decades no longer available for the public for several reasons. That’s quite a pity while these books contains useful information while the archives are destroyed, incomplete or nor accessible. She arrived 1 November [1857] at Hong Kong and she described what she saw in the port.
P. 339: “Between Kowloom and Hong-Kong, where the shipping commenced nearest the East Point, lay moored one of our old line-of-battle ships, tier rising above tier, and all her stern glittering with large glass windows and projecting verandahs. This was the Princess Charlotte, one of the hospital ships, with a massive heavy roof, in reality a floating house.(1)
p. 240: Close by was a graceful and powerful frigate, a vessel of about 2,700 tons, the largest class of ship employed in these seas. Behind her came the black hull of a corvette, having a streak of red where the frigate had her white painted ports. Black as the corvette, but without the streak, lay a long rakish clipper-looking American frigate, built as if for speed, and not for war. In strange contrast, an old French 50-gun sailing ship lay close by, her stern rising straight from the water, her bows like the sides a of tub, massive, strong, and immoveable. Anchored near, and also flying the French ensign, was a gigantic screw steamer, filled with soldiers, her open ports crowded with heads, and little boxes of Chinese boats moving round her, passing up their articles for barter on bamboo poles.
A heavy dull man-of-war sailing ship came next, with a white flag marked with black, as if a bottle of ink had been upset over it, as some one said. Marryat’s code of signals (2) tells me this is the Prussian ensign. Nearer the shore were two more straw-coloured floating houses, similar to the Princess Charlotte; and still further in was a line of gun-boats, with great white numbers painted on their sides, and all
p. 241: shewing our blue ensign. This was the man-of-war’s anchorage.
Far out in the harbour the hull of a fine old teak India merchant frigate, built before the memory of man, shews the place allotted to the Peninsular and Oriental Company, and there are anchored many steamers flying the well-known flag, which, from its resemblance to the outside of a letter, has been termed the “envelope flag” by the soldiers, who knew that the mails were carried in vessels bearing the Company’s ensign. From this to the town, and towards Green Island, were hundreds of ships of every class, many of them so marked as to shew they were in Government employ - some infantry, some commissariat, some hospital, and all numbered. Close to the West Point, quaint specimens of naval architecture swung to four-fluked anchors by hempen cables. These were junks of the largest class, their big hulls dwarfing barques of nearly four or five hundred tons, and their masts, each of a single spar, rising above the cross-trees of the European vessels. They were decorated with bright streamers, which, with the gaudy paint, their queer construction, square at the bow as at the
p. 242: stern, with a giant eye on each side, and enormous rolls of matting hanging to the yards, combined to attract attention. The shore along the Chinese portion of the town for miles was lined with junks, each having on its deck a battery of heavy guns. Our first view of these armaments conveyed a correct impression of the people. Many of the frowning cannon, mere harmless pieces of painted wood, mingled with others evidently intended for actual service, suggested the idea of these Chinese traits, violence and deceit. From where they ended the line was continued towards the man-of-war anchorage with a variety of steamers and small vessels. Opposite Dent’s lay the Lymoom, the new opium clipper introduced by science, her masts and funnels lying back like the ears of a greyhound, looking a picture of grace and speed. Nearer the junks my old friends the American river-boats have a representative, the hurricane deck, the great see-saw, and the house for the man at the wheel, being all reproduced in these Asiatic waters.”
Sources
J.J. Colledge/Ben Warlow. Ships of the Royal Navy. London, 2006.
Mrs. Elizabeth Muter. Travels and adventures of an officer’s wife in India, China and New Zealand. London, 1864, Vol I.
Notes
1. The 104-gun 1st rate Princess Charlotte launched at Portsmouth dockyard 14 September 1825 with a builders measurement of 2.443 tons and as dimensions 198’5”x 54;. She served since 1858 as a receiving ship according to Colledge and was sold at Hong Kong in 1875.
2.1. Captain Marryat/G.B. Richardson. The Universal code of signals for the Mercantile marine of all nations. London, 1858.
