“Bugger! That means we must reciprocate the next time a Yankee comes in… Not that they do very often. What’s the chance of one of their big battleships paying us a visit in Honkers, Jellicoe?”
“Very high, sir, if the Boxers meet our expectations. They will be forced to send some troops from the Philippines, like it or not, when their missionaries start going down. Might be a naval expeditionary force. Almost certain that some will pay a courtesy call, at least. They might want the services of our dockyard if the Chinese send their destroyers to sea. Always a chance that their four boats will get off a salvo of torpedoes, sir.”
“Really? Do you truly think so, Jellicoe?”
Captain Jellicoe took a deep breath and launched into what was clearly a repetition of arguments previously made.
“Yes, sir. The Chinese have four modern German destroyers, recently delivered. Five inch guns and, as far as we know, four torpedo carriages capable of firing over either beam. We do not yet know their size, but they will be at least fifteen inch tubes, possibly even eighteen; they will carry a heavy explosive charge. The German passage crews have not yet returned to Kiel, but they may be in Tsingtao as replacements for the squadron there, or they may be en route to Europe; they might still be aboard the destroyers, to ‘assist’ their hands. We are forced to assume that the Chinese crews have been well trained. We know that many of the petty and warrant officers joined their ships in Hamburg and will have gained experience on the voyage out. If the officers are men of initiative – and they may well be – they could be a danger to the fleets off the Taku Forts.”
“What do you say, Eskdale?”
Magnus knew nothing of the destroyers, could make no meaningful comment on the ships.
“We know that torpedoes can be a menace, sir. We know as well that some Chinese officers are redoubtable fighting men. Others are political appointments and will avoid battle, if necessary by running away. The Chinese navy has been crippled by the actions of the Qing – the court has stolen funds which should have been used on ships and men. The late Japanese victory in their war suggests that the Chinese fleet as a whole is unreliable in battle – but a new, elite squadron could be highly efficient. Guesswork, sir, but I feel we might be most unwise to view the Chinese destroyers with contempt.”
Those views were not especially welcome to Admiral Seymour, Magnus saw. They were, however, as honest an expression as he could offer.
“You know about torpedoes, Eskdale. The only man in the Navy who has ever fired one in action. And you scored a hit. No other officer has done that, so it’s difficult to call you wrong… Pity! If we have to fight our way onshore and take the Taku Forts again, then the destroyers will have to be dealt with. Plan for that, Jellicoe. But that don’t get us any further with the Yanks, does it?”
They agreed it did not. They also decided that it was impossible to plan for a theoretical eventuality. If the Americans came, well and good, the Navy would make them welcome. If they did not come, even better.
“Go to the coaling wharf, Eskdale. Full bunkers. Jellicoe, lose the figures. If we end up with two hundred extra tons in ten thousand, who will notice after a month or two?”
It was the old navy way of doing things, anathema to modernists such as Jellicoe, but possible half the world distant from the Admiralty. Much could happen in Hong Kong that London would not approve of but would never know about. The Admiralty had oversight of the ledgers in Hong Kong but inspected them many months after the events they recorded; it was possible to manipulate the figures for many reasons, good and bad. Many a commission and warrant officer left the stores in Hong Kong a rich man, a fact that was known by repute to the whole Navy, but which was rarely proved at a court martial.
“One day, sir, when this wireless telegraphy they talk about becomes real, the Admiralty will receive our reports on the day they are written. That will be a different world, sir.”
“It will indeed, Jellicoe. All the more reason to make the best of present circumstance. Make hay while the sun shines, eh?”
They laughed, cheerily.
Obelisk cast off for the south, all aboard knowing that it was a pointless exercise but that the regulations for Hong Kong stated that the coast must be visited regularly, and the Navy must be seen. If there was to be any action, it must be to the north and the patrols were certain to be barren.
Magnus stood on the bridge, watching as Knowles took the ship out of the frenetically busy harbour waters. He stopped counting after the twelfth sampan crossed their bows at fifty feet distant, its crew stoically ignoring the steamship or occasionally shouting insults on the grounds that they were there first. He had been told that some of the Chinese sailors believed that their boats trailed strings of water-demons and that they could be passed across to any vessel that came close enough for its bows to cut the invisible string. It sounded like just another of the patronising sahib stories about the primitive Chinks, but it was not entirely impossible, he supposed. He decided that he would rather they had a reason for their actions other than a near-suicidal fatalism. He was brought out of his musing by a raucous squawk in his ear.
“All coppers are bastards! All coppers are bastards! All…”
“Get that bloody parrot off the bridge!”
“Sorry, sir, but Poll’s used to sea air, sir. I thought he would enjoy sailing again. I think the sailors have been teaching him new words again, sir.”
“Mr Coulthorne, you may have been stupid enough to rescue the bloody bird, but that does not mean I have to put up with it. It is banned from the bridge.”
“Yes, sir. I shall take it below, sir. Better still, sir, to the after bridge – poor thing will get its fresh air there, sir, and be out of your way.”
“Just keep it away from me, Mr Coulthorne.”
Coulthorne signalled to the bridge messenger to remove the bird.
“Take the food with it, Collins.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Don’t sound so long-suffering, man! It was only one finger, and nothing severe.”
“Six stitches, sir, down the length of the finger. Lucky it didn’t chop it right off, sir.”
Magnus intervened – the rating had legitimate grounds for complaint, but he should not argue with an officer on duty.
“That’s enough, Collins. Take the thing away. Do not accidentally stumble and drop it overboard, Collins.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Magnus watched the man take the perch away, held at arm’s length.
“I suggest you feed the bird in future, Mr Coulthorne. Personally.”
“Sir.”
The Yeoman of the Signals, necessarily stood in hearing distance, grinned and would repeat the whole story, Magnus knew. A nuisance, he did not want one of his officers to be held up to ridicule.
“A pain in the fundament, that damned gunrunner and everything that went with it, Mr Knowles.”
“I agree, sir. Better off if it had not come our way at all, sir. I know that the men are asking why the crew of a smuggler can have a cold room and good food while the Navy still eats canned dog. As for the Yank battleship and her damned steaks, sir…”
“I’m sure they don’t eat steak every day, Mr Knowles.”
“Our men do not eat it ever, sir.”
“Shanghai before too long, Mr Knowles. The men can eat ashore there and stuff themselves for tuppence.”
“So they can, sir, but it’s not the point.”
“I know, but there is nothing to be done, Mr Knowles.”
They patrolled and sweated in the southern heat and made a show of stopping some of the many junks they saw. The steamers, all owned by large and important hongs, were left unmolested.
“Full of opium, sir. No telling what else they may have aboard. Into white slaving some of them, for sure.”
Magnus could not disagree, and so said nothing.
The junks revealed nothing except to confirm by their innocence that Obelisk was in the wrong place.
&nb
sp; “There will be guns going ashore along the coast to the north, sir.”
The Gunnery Lieutenant, Mr Pattishall, seemed resentful almost, as if he was being denied the glory of making any discovery. His party had not fired its rifles during the taking of the gunrunner, having had the nerve-wracking but fruitless task of searching the belowdecks for any hiding and probably armed men. Now, he was well away from any action that might be taking place in the more important areas.
“The sloops and old third-class cruisers have the inshore patrol to the north, Guns. Close in to the mud, where we can’t go. Better we keep an eye out for pirates down here, and watch what the Frogs are doing. The word is that they have sent out some first-class armoured cruisers to their ports in Indo-China, and the Admiralty does not know why.”
“The buzz is that the Frogs are embarrassed by some of their ships, sir. They have produced a series of prototypes, none of which have shown well in European waters, so they have hidden them away off Tahiti and in Cochin China, sir. So I was told at Whale Island, two years ago, sir.”
Magnus was not privy to that rumour, asked for more.
“Undergunned, sir, and with too much weight to make the speed they had hoped for. And ugly as sin, sir – typically six funnels in two groups of three. The word was that the builders made a lot of money on them, sir, and French politicians saw inflated bank accounts for their part. Like it was in Britain in Pitt’s day, so they say.”
Magnus knew just enough history to understand the reference.
“Politicians – keep clear of them, that’s all an officer can do, Guns. Especially when they get in the sort of mess they have in France. This damned Dreyfus business, as an example. Don’t know whether the man is right or wrong, a victim or a villain, but I do know the whole of France is looking black for the way they’ve behaved over the affair.”
“Don’t know the ins and outs of the business, sir, but it stinks. If he was guilty as hell, he still got a bad trial, sir. If he was not a traitor, then his only crime was to be a Jew. Either way, the French come out of it badly.”
“So say I, Guns. No way to treat any man, still less an officer.”
“True, sir, but French officers are hardly gentlemen – few of them left in France.”
“Yet they are to be our allies, it would seem, Guns, so the less we say, the better.”
Conversation turned to a junk they could see inshore and whether it made sense to stop her.
“Put your glasses on her, Guns. Anything out of the ordinary? Too many men, anything like that?”
Mr Pattishall stared through his binoculars and decided he could see nothing at all.
“Two men at the stern, sir. A woman and three children amidships. What looks like a pigpen forward. One of the Hakka houseboats more than a trading junk, sir. Probably going north to Aberdeen harbour, sir, in Hong Kong, to the floating city there.”
“Let her be, then. Those people are harmless to us. That ain’t to say they don’t smuggle and indulge in every other sort of crime, but they won’t run guns into the Boxers, that’s for sure.”
They agreed and watched the junk make its leisurely way northwards.
“What do they smuggle, generally, sir?”
“Anything they can lay their hands on, Guns. Rubber from the French plantations is a major, so Captain Hawkins said. Gemstones up from Burma as well. Stolen from the producers and run down to the coast and then to the workshops in Hong Kong and out to London, more or less legitimately. Good stones, so I am told.”
The lieutenants were too poor on their pay to know anything of jewels or of their quality. They accepted that the son-in-law to a great hong would be interested in such.
“Put a target out tomorrow, Guns. Try for some distant practice with the big guns. Some time since you have had the opportunity. Is it not?”
“Too long, sir. Do the men good to put a few rounds through the barrels.”
“The three pounders did their job with the gunrunner, I thought, Guns.”
“Point blank, sir. They should have done.”
“You may be right, if it comes to setting a force ashore, could we send a three pounder with our party?”
“No, sir, not sensibly. Too small for work on land. Shrapnel would have only a small burst, hardly worth the effort. Better far to take a four point seven with us. Possible, sir, I hear word that they have taken them ashore in South Africa and they have a far more effective shell.”
“Forty-five pounds, is it not?”
“Yes, sir. Far greater range, of course. Word is that Captain Scott has designed a carriage for them, sir. Mobile and robust, is the word, sir. I have not seen a drawing and don’t know anything of them, sir.”
“Pity. Keep your ears flapping – might be useful before too long.”
Obelisk saw none of the new French cruisers before turning her bows north again. Magnus was disappointed – if the French were to be allies, which seemed probable, then it would be instructive to observe them at sea. A seaman could tell much about a foreign navy by observing any one of their ships on the high seas. If one ship was dirty, slack, incompetent, then it was fair to assume that the rest of the fleet was more or less the same. The Russians had shown themselves mutinous and hopelessly unprofessional in Shanghai – they would be the same elsewhere, almost of a certainty.
It occurred to Magnus that France and Russia were in some sort of alliance, an entente of a kind. If Britain joined hands with France, then she would be lumbered with the Russians too. The politicians would look no further than the millions of men the Russians could field, would never consider their hopeless inadequacy when actually called to fight.
“No more than a bloody albatross, Mr Knowles!”
“Oh? Where, sir? I didn’t know they were to be found in these waters.”
“No, I was thinking of the Russians, Mr Knowles.”
“Oh, I didn’t know they had albatrosses in Russia, sir. I thought they were sea birds.”
“I had the Ancient Mariner in mind, Mr Knowles.”
“Ah, that explains it, sir. Poetry, ain’t it? Very poetic, albatrosses, sir. I expect they rhyme, or something.”
“You may well be right, Mr Knowles. Course and speed for Hong Kong, to make the harbour in daylight, Mr Knowles.”
The Navigating Officer provided the information in the form of alternatives.
“Fourteen knots for late afternoon, sir. Eight will bring us in during the following forenoon.
“Make Mr Lockhart happy. Revolutions for eight knots, Mr Knowles.”
“Coaling berth, Mr Knowles. Seems to be all we damned well do, take on coal, clean ship, make everything tidy and then start again. I shall be happier when these oil-fired engines come in as a standard.”
The Admiralty was giving careful consideration to the introduction of oil. It had many advantages but the single massive drawback that there was almost none to be found in Britain. The United Kingdom was an island set upon a bed of billions of tons of coal, but oil had to be shipped from thousands of miles away. In time of war, those oil carriers would be vulnerable. In peacetime, the oil would cost many millions in foreign currency.
“Will it ever come in, sir?”
“Faster ships with a greater range, Mr Knowles. It cannot be resisted, because if we do not, others will.”
“Bloody foreigners, sir. The world would be a far better place without them.”
“It would indeed, Mr Knowles. Somewhat emptier as well.”
Knowles thought that might be a joke and laughed heartily, just in case. It was one of the Navy’s rules – a captain’s jokes were always funny, except to admirals.
“Shanghai, Eskdale. Base Obelisk there and make yourself visible on the River. Keep it peaceful, let every Chink on its banks see the size of ship we are sending out. The word from Captain Hawkins is that the lands along the Yangtse are unaffected to any great extent by the new movements, and we want them to stay that way. A little luck and we shall contain the unrest to the north
of China, from Shantung north and west to the Russian borders. If they spill over into the Russian sphere of influence in Mongolia – well, that’s their problem, not ours!”
“What of the Japanese, sir, in Korea?”
“Don’t know nothing about them, don’t care very much, my lord!”
“So be it, sir.”
“Captain Hawkins wants to talk to you about the Russians in Shanghai, and about the Germans in Peking, I gather. You will cooperate with his wishes, as goes without saying, Eskdale. London is anxious that he should have a free hand and he particularly wants to avail himself of your services. From what I gather, you are earmarked to be one of his people for a few years. Make a success of that, if it happens, and you will get back to sea in five or ten years from now in a good command. The Admiralty is talking of organising destroyers into flotillas under a captain in a fast light cruiser, as soon as they launch the light cruisers, that is. Working the North Sea out of Harwich or Dover or one of the North Country harbours, or the Med out of Malta. Captain who made a job of that would find himself rear-admiral as a young man. Worth thinking about, Eskdale.”
It was, ludicrous though it might have sounded a twelvemonth before. A good wife and better behaviour had worked wonders, it would seem, that and the fortuitous piece of medal ribbon on his breast.
Magnus nodded thoughtfully.
“That would be a command worth having, sir. I would like to get into the German or French fleet with a flotilla, sir – it might be interesting to see what a score of torpedoes could do to their monstrous great masters of the sea.”
Admiral Seymour was horrified at the prospect.
“Do you really think so, Eskdale?”
“Yes, sir. A flotilla of destroyers to drive into their line and send them scattering and some of them slowed by hits, and half a dozen of these new submarine boats they talk of waiting inshore of them. With the ships in the right place at the right time, sir, that could break a fleet. Use our battleships as no more than decoys, sir, to bring the enemy fleet into their line of battle where we wanted them, and then torpedo them to extinction. With luck, sir, the battleships would never need to fire their guns.”
Chinese Whispers Page 22
