It was a fine morning, and the ship’s Master, young Thomas Kennedy, had taken a boat to row over to another Lorcha, the Dart, where he was having breakfast with her Master. As they sat there, finishing up a cup of well brewed Tieguanyin, a tea known as “The Iron Goddess,” Kennedy noticed a couple of Mandarin boats rowing in towards his ship, the oars manned by rows of uniformed men.
“Now what are they up to?” he said aloud.
“Have you got passengers aboard?” asked the other Master. “They may be here to ferry them over to Hong Kong.”
“I’ve no passengers who expressed any such interest,” said Kennedy…. He stopped, staring, and watching as many of the oarsmen boarded his ship. Then his blood ran cold.
“By God in his heaven,” he exclaimed. “They’re hauling down the ensign! I’ve got to get over there!”
By the time he arrived, sweating with the exertion of his haste, he saw the situation was far more serious than it first seemed. Twelve members of his crew, all Chinese sailors, had been apprehended, their hands bound, and they were being led off his ship into the Chinese longboats. He was quick to come along side, his anger apparent in his tone.
“What in bloody hell are you doing? What’s the meaning of this?”
Much of what he got back was in Mandarin, and he could not understand it. So his only recourse was to get himself to the British Consul and lodge a formal complaint with Sir Harry Parkes. Attempting to intervene by contacting the Imperial High Commissioner, Yeh Mingchen, Parkes would learn that the crew had been seized on suspicion of piracy.
“Is that so?” said Parkes, his feathers ruffled. (Adept at Mandarin, he was speaking in Chinese, though I paraphrase his remarks here for the English speaker’s ear.) “Well, you’ve come aboard a British flagged ship, and without getting leave to do so from the ship’s Master. You seized that ship’s lawful crew, and I want them returned, publicly. Then I will cooperate fully with you to investigate any crimes they may be accused of.”
His initial effort saw the release of nine men, but he refused to receive them, demanding the entire crew should be released before any charges were brought. If grounds were found for piracy, then he would turn them over to Chinese authorities himself.
“Send this to your High Commissioner,” he said to the messenger. “Tell him he has 48 hours to comply with this request, or I will escalate this matter for action by our Naval Board. I don’t know what these men may have done, and I’m fully prepared to get to the bottom of this, but by God, I’ll teach you to respect the British flag when you see one.” He folded his arms, adamant. “Do you hear me? Forty-eight hours!”
A day later a message was sent indicating that no British flag had been seen, and that the Lorcha was therefore not even a British registered ship!
“That’s an outrage,” said Master Kennedy. “I might be slack with me papers, but there’s no question that the ensign was flying clear and high on the mainmast that morning. I saw the ruddy buggers haul it down myself! I thought we taught them a lesson back in ‘42.”
“They’re crafty,” said Parkes. “We had Canton open as a single port for trade, and gained four others with the Treaty of Nanking, but we still can’t set foot off the docks and quays and even enter the goddamned city here. It’s as if they see us as a contamination. The Emperor sits up there in Peking, in his bloody palaces, and thinks he runs the whole bloody world! I’ll take this right on up to Sir John Bowring, Superintendent of Trade.”
He did exactly that, but found the High Commissioner Yeh to be very evasive, delaying at every turn, refusing to consult Peking on the matter. He would finally simply drop off the remaining crew at night near the warehouses at the harbor, but Parkes and Bowring would not stand for that. They demanded that the crew be publicly reinstated, and a formal apology made. The High Commissioner was stubbornly silent, and the matter was then referred to Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, the Commander of all British squadrons in the Far East.
A dozen crewmen and a flag…. That was how it started, and it would end four years later, in a way that neither side could foresee, with bloodshed, war, fire and destruction. Before it ended, France, Russia and the United States would be drawn into the spinning gyre of the conflict, and the Russians would end up gaining their prized deep water port on the Pacific, Vladivostok.
The British would secure trade rights, open more Chinese ports, legalize the commerce of their opium, and demand and receive indemnity payments in silver. Yet these were the least important things they would acquire in that little spat. Though it was not anticipated or looked for, the 8th Earl of Elgin would find a treasure in the heart of Peking far greater than any he could imagine.
Chapter 33
The war, like all wars, started with a small dispute, its nascent fire being fanned by the pride of the men leading either side. Admiral Seymour would seize a few barrier forts on the rivers that flowed near Canton, and Marines would be landed to protect the Western controlled factories near the harbor. The Chinese High Commissioner would harass them day and night, attempt to poison Sir John Bowring and his family where they lived at Hong Kong, all while slowly assembling a small army to oppose the upstart Europeans, collecting war junks to challenge them on the rivers.
The Chinese, however, were not as adept at the art of war as their European opponents. The matter would escalate, until Canton itself was shelled and occupied, an amazing feat considering that this city of nearly a million people had been “taken” by a force of no more than 6000 troops from various nations, including Britain, Russia, France and the United States. High Commissioner Yeh himself would eventually be captured and sent off to a British prison in India, where he died of starvation, adamant to the last, as he refused to take any food from his captors.
The “incident” led to more demands upon the Chinese to open additional ports and loosen trade restrictions, and to force these concessions, an expedition would be mounted to the port of Tianjin in the north, the gateway port to the Emperor’s Capitol at Peking.
It must be said that of all the things the Emperor was contending with in those years, this little annoyance by the “barbarians” that had been infesting his coastline in recent years was not high on the list. There had been an internal rebellion underway for some time, and literally millions had died in that civil conflict. So the Xianfeng Emperor (Yizhu), and his Imperial Court, would make concessions, to the “foreign devils,” agreeing to a new treaty, thinking to dispense with the matter. But they would be very slow to sign and formalize any such arrangements, further trying the patience of the British and their allies.
It would be years after the initial “Arrow ” incident before the situation would escalate to a more serious conflict. In that time, Parkes, Bowring and Seymour would collect allies, ships, and men in Hong Kong, awaiting the arrival of Lord Elgin, who had been named High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China and the Far East. The French had sent one Baron Gros to represent their interests. Though they outwardly agreed to negotiate, the Chinese would secretly summon one of their Mongolian Generals, Sengge Rinchen, to deal with the Europeans.
The British had taken the forts protecting the river once before, and rather easily, so on the 25th of June, 1859, they had every reason to think they would do the same thing. But things had changed. In the long year since the last time there had been trouble here, the Chinese had placed large heavy metal spikes in the riverbed, but claimed that they had been put there to prevent pirates from entering. The local authorities promised to remove them to allow a small British flotilla to pass, but instead, they began to strengthen the barriers, adding in boulders and smaller rocks. It was soon found that many other impediments had been built. First, piles were driven into the riverbed astride the main channel. Then iron chains studded with floating timber were stretched across the entire width of the river, and lastly, heavy rafts, many feet thick, were floated into blocking positions where the waterway narrowed.