IN 1902 the Chinese Naval authorities — who had lost the naval bases they had created at Port Arthur and Wei-hai-wei, which were now in the hands of foreign powers — requested us to make a survey of Lungmoon Harbour, which was about ten miles east of Chefoo, and I was sent to make it with a cruiser officer, named Rutherford, to assist me. We had the use of an old wooden training vessel which served as a base for operations. The Chinese admiral gave instructions that some thirty students were to accompany me, and that each of them was to produce a similar survey to mine; with the result that while Rutherford and I worked outside with two Chinese officers, the others stopped behind and cribbed my work from the three working boards.

When the work had been completed, the vessel I had as a base was moved out of the inlet where she had been moored in mid-channel, to four anchors ashore, as there was not enough room for her to swing at her lower anchors. On leaving the inlet the vessel was anchored to the N.W. of the island of Lungmoon, which was long in shape and high and rocky, and completely sheltered the inlet on its northern side, where the water was deep close in, so our vessel was anchored fairly near to the shore.

Two other Chinese cruisers lay nearby, and as work was over and the day was calm, exchange calls were made between the ships preparatory to steaming to Chefoo the following morning. During the night a very strong gale came on, it being autumn, when these gales occur.

Our vessel lay near the rocky shore dead to the leeward of us, and as it stood high above the water with heavy rigging and engine power low, and could only steam at six knots an hour [sic], I suggested to her Chinese captain that, as the water was deep and the bottom mud, he could go ahead with his engines as soon as the anchor cable had been hove short. We were then anchored in fifteen fathoms.

Having no responsibility I stood on the poop. Some time after I had felt the engines move I heard a snap.

On going on the bridge I learned that the cable had parted, and when I asked how much cable was out at the time, I was told 45 fathoms, and apparently that was considered to be short. I told the captain that in that case I could not have expected anything else to happen.

After anchoring in Chefoo, and the gale having moderated, a cutter was sent out with the 2nd Lieutenant and bos'n in charge, to sweep for the lost anchor. He produced the chart, and as he was not sure of the exact spot I marked it for him, as I had taken cross bearings on the poop when the cable parted from position.

After three days we steamed to Lungmoon and the officer reported that he had not found the anchor.

I asked him where he had swept and why he had done so, as it was a long way from the spot indicated. He replied that the bos'n had said that that was where the anchor lay. This goes to show how, on a Chinese man-of-war, the bosn's opinion is taken by the crew to be better than that of an officer.

I then marked the spot indicated with a small buoy, and in a short while the anchor was located and recovered to the delight of the captain, who would have had to pay for a new anchor and cable if they had not been recovered. Though the inlet would have made a good naval base, once the mud had been removed by dredgers, the Chinese were wise enough not to run the risk of spending a lot of money on such a base and then losing it.


A few days after my return to Shanghai, a deputation of the Irish Eight called on me and asked me to take the oar of a member of the crew who had fallen ill.

I told them that I was not Irish, and though I was in splendid condition after the hard work at Lungmoon, it would be better for them to take someone else who was a member of the Club, as I had resigned over a year ago. Moreover, as the race was to come off in two days' time, I would not have time to get into the swing of the rest of the crew and pull my weight.

The next day the deputation returned and said that they could not find anyone, so there was nothing for it but to row in the race. I could not, of course, pull my weight, but we did very well in spite of it and, if I remember rightly, were second out of four boats.

There was a long article in the papers patting me on the back, but the man whose place I had taken was not so pleased, for it was he who had objected a year before to my rowing in the Irish Eight at all!

One day, Tyler, my chief, handed me a dispatch to read. He was not only my chief but a great friend as well, and we were about the same age. He was a man of remarkable ability, with one of the kindest natures I have ever come across, and I still have a great admiration and affection for him. The dispatch was from the Inspector-General, and contained the information that a certain foreign authority had approached the Chinese Government with an undertaking to mark the channel across the Tongting Lake by means of 13 screw-pile lighted beacons, which were very expensive. I think that I ought to explain here that the large and important Chinese city of Changsha — a treaty port — is situated some forty miles up the Siang River, which flows through the Tongting Lake and joins the Yangtze River near Yochow some distance above Hankow.

There is a rise and fall of 35 feet in the Lake, and at low river it is dry except for the channels running through it made by the Siang and Yuen Rivers. (I will have more to say about the Yuen River later on.) It was desirable to mark the channel across the Lake, as for long periods, when the lake had become shallow by falling water, the channel was undefined and trading steamers suffered delays by grounding.

Having read the despatch, I told my chief that the trade up the Siang did not warrant so large an expenditure for night navigation, and asked his permission to work out a system of the marking of the channel by buoys for day navigation. He gave his consent quite willingly. My chief trouble lay in the fact that a large quantity of raftered timber came down the Siang, and that these rafts, being unmanageable, would foul the buoys and drag them out of position. I designed a bottle-shaped steel buoy, 30 feet in length, with a 10-foot neck 12 inches round, which was 4 feet wide at the shoulder below the neck; from the shoulder it tapered to a point where it was fitted with an eye to which the mooring cable was secured. The buoys were to be ballasted with sufficient concrete to allow them to lie over at an angle of about 45 degrees. The long necks of the buoys were made more conspicuous by lying over at an angle, and when struck by a raft a buoy submerged, allowing the raft to pass over, there being no projection for it to foul. As the buoy's mooring cable was attached to a two-ton concrete sinker, they were rarely disturbed by rafts.

Having obtained an estimate for the cost of construction, it was found that the 13 buoys with their moorings would cost less than one of the suggested screw-pile beacons. I was therefore instructed to proceed with the work, which was most interesting.




After the buoys had been made and shipped to Hankow, a very large lighter had to be hired for their transport to Chenlin, the treaty port of Yochow at the entrance to the Tongting Lake, where the Customs House was situated. Mr. Wakefield was the Commissioner and Mr. Gwynne his Harbour Master. The buoys arrived alongside the stone Bund (or sea wall) when the water was at its highest level, so that we had no difficulty in landing them by means of the shearlegs I had rigged. When landed they were up-ended and secured to tripods which I had erected, their manholes were removed and an adequate quantity of ballast put into them. By this time I had been joined by the River Inspector in charge of the Lower Yangtze, Captain Hillman, R.N., who, with his steam-launch, assisted me in laying the buoys. In the few days it had taken me to ballast them the water had fallen some 20 feet and the base of the Bund wall was a long way from the river, so I had been lucky in getting the buoys landed at the right moment.

On returning to Chenlin after the last buoy had been laid, I was informed by Wakefield that he had just received a long telegram for me from the Inspect or- General, Sir Robert Hart. As it was in code and lengthy, it took me some time to decode.

The instructions contained in the telegram were somewhat startling. They were to the effect that the Chinese official at Changsha had called upon me on behalf of the Chinese Government, to ask me to survey, and estimate what it would cost, to deepen, from a N.W. direction, the Yochee channel used for steam navigation throughout the year between the Yangtze River and the city of Chang-tê, which was situated on the Yuen River some 20 or 30 miles above the upper basin of the Tongting Lake.

Chang-tê is built on low-lying ground, which occasionally gets flooded at high river, owing to the great quantities of water coming down the Siang River into the Tongting Lake and the Yangtze River, which bank up the waters of the Yuen. The city is surrounded by a massive wall some 10 feet or more thick, and 15 to 20 feet in height. The gateways are built of stone, with a wide groove cut in the frame; down the outside gates heavy boards are stipped and caulked to keep the river water out of the city during times of flood. The dimensions of the boards are as follows: 10 feet long; 15 inches wide; 6 inches or more thick.

The height of a flood is recorded as so many boards high, depending on the number of boards it required to save the city from being flooded. How would you feel if the city you lived in was being kept from flooding by means of some 10 to 15 feet of boarding only, while the river waters lapped the uppermost boards hungrily?

Yet the Chinese go about their daily work, taking it all as a matter of course! They are the most fatalistic people, and superstitious as well. When going through a street in the city once, I came across a man selling dried snakes and other repulsive-looking reptiles, and when I asked what he was being done with them, was told that the Chinese took them medicinally. I don't know if you have ever heard that when a tiger has been killed, very high prices are offered for its heart, because it is said that those who eat a piece of tiger's heart become very brave?

Writing the account of the way in which the inhabitants of Chang-tê protect their city from being flooded, reminds me of an occasion when a great stir was created by long articles appearing in the Shanghai newspapers pointing out the possibility of serious floods that might endanger Shanghai, based on a report in an official document that had got into their hands.

I was called upon to give an explanation, which was in reality quite simple.

The person who had written the report had made a trip up the Grand Canal, which opens on to the Yangtze near Chin Kiang. After travelling for some considerable distance to the northward, he had come to a place where the Canal was well above the houses of a town just passed. This naturally made him wonder what would happen if the water in the Canal topped its banks; and assuming that the water at this point was level with that in the Yangtze, matters seemed rather serious to him.

I had visited the Grand Canal and had seen the town referred to above, which lay well below the level of the water in the Canal, but I realised that it was an artificial waterway and that I had been travelling up a slope, also that at this point the Canal was very much higher than the Yangtze. The Chinese, moreover, had provided an outlet for the water in the event of the Canal topping its banks, which would enable the flood waters to run into a gully, below the town, leading to a stream that flowed into the Yangtze.

That such a report should ever have appeared in print was an extraordinary slip on someone's part, and only goes to show that water levels are liable to be misleading if their relative value is unknown to the observer.

Instructions must always be obeyed, so I asked Wakefield if he would lend me his Harbour Master, Gwynne, who spoke Chinese fluently. Three red-boats were then engaged. These are comparatively small boats with a crew of two men each, who lived at the after-end of the boat, and the hold was sufficiently roomy to accommodate one person with his bed and baggage. Gwynne and I had a boat each, the third was occupied by our cook and was used for our meals.

After cruising about for two weeks, I returned, and when nearing the Siang River some 20 miles above Yochow, I handed my telegram of instructions to Gwynne to read for the first time. Having gone through them, he remarked that had he received such instructions he would have been far more concerned than I appeared to be. To which I replied, "This is the 24th December. If you go down the river now you will be able to spend Christmas Day with your wife, whereas I must write my report and take it to Changsha and hand it over to Mr. Oliver Ready, the Commissioner, for transmission to the Chinese official representing the Government. But I would like you to help me by making copies of my report, which I have not yet written, and by taking one copy to Wakefield." I went on to explain that I could not have commenced my report before, as I had only just solved the problem of water levels, roughly estimated from the high-water- mark on the rocks of a rocky island in the upper basin of the Tongting Lake, into which the Yuen River flowed.

I had also estimated the depth of the water in the outlets to this upper basin, and how these depths compared with the water level at Chenlin. This may sound a bit complicated to some of my readers, but it was a sufficient basis for my report, in which I explained that it might have taken three surveying parties three years to provide the necessary data to compute the estimate I had been called upon to provide in the telegram.

Having completed my report, I hired a rowing boat to take me to Changsha, and made a contract with the boatmen that the shorter the time taken over the journey the more money I would pay them. Those men struggled at their oars night and day. The Chinese boatmen were hard-working and very tough constitutionally, and were at times subjected to very hard treatment by Chinese officials.

Here is a story to illustrate the point.

I was proceeding from the Siang River to Chang-tê in a Chinese houseboat. We arrived at a shallow where there was a large cluster of boats awaiting their turn to pass through the channel. There was a boat stuck fast in the narrow channel across the bar, the crew of which were standing in the bitterly cold water — for it was mid-winter — doing their best to push their junk across. The Chinese official stationed at the bar to see that junks abided by the rules for negotiating it, lambasted the men in the water with a long bamboo.

This made me furious. The rule at such places is that up-going and down-going craft take alternate days, and rafts are afforded some special treatment, the particulars of which I forget.