FEATURE-Life and times of an Opium War captain.
738 words
30 June 1997
Reuters News
LBA
English
(c) 1997 Reuters Limited

(Reuters correspondent David Brunnstrom's great-great grandfather was captain of one of the British ships that was involved in the 19th century Opium War with China which led to the birth of modern-day Hong Kong. Brunnstrom, now based in Japan, looks at the life, times and possessions of his ancestor)

TOKYO, June 30 (Reuter) – When my great-great-grandfather Captain John Samuel Willes-Johnson sailed his 16-gun sloop HMS Wolverine into Hong Kong in July 1842 to take part in the closing stages of the First Opium War, it had just been seized for the then-expanding British Empire.

Watercolours Johnson painted in Hong Kong show where skyscrapers now thrust up from hills surrounding the harbour. There were at that time near-virgin slopes, a scattering of tiny dwellings, an isolated pagoda.

Only the black outlines of ships of the Royal Navy provide any hint of what was to come.

For me, growing up in Britain, Johnson was a benign figure, gazing down with a spirited but kindly eye from a wall of my aunt's house, dressed in the gold-buttoned blue-and-white dress uniform of his day.

He was already nearly 50 by the time he made the six-month voyage to Hong Kong, but his naval portrait shows a much younger man.

The curling hair brushed forward, and proud yet sympathetic smile suggest more the romanticism and enlightenment of the early 19th century than the iron discipline that made the Royal Navy the most feared and detested service of its day, both to its enemies and the men who served with it.

PRESS GANGINGS, FLOGGINGS, NARCOTICS

There is no hint in the face of the press gangings and floggings that were so much a part of seafaring in his day, nor of the trade in narcotics he went to war to protect.

But a glance at the log of Her Majesty's Ship Wolverine, which still sits, salt-stained and mouldering, on a shelf in the vast basement archives of the Public Records Office in London, shows the navy's fearsome reputation was justly earned.

Among hundreds of pages tediously detailing day-to-day victualling and navigation, are records of barbarous punishments.

“Punished John Sutch, boy second class, with 24 lashes for insolence and neglect of duty…William Petree with 12 lashes for being repeatedly dirty and William Grey with 24 lashes for uncleanliness.” One seaman accused of “drunkenness and riotous conduct” received no less than 48 lashes.

Such draconian punishments were recorded, without ceremony, in Johnson's hand, the script of a man who painted landscapes in his spare time, exhibited at the Royal Academy, and studied in Hong Kong under the celebrated colonial painter George Chinnery.

Among the treasures Johnson brought back from China was an exquisite wooden cabinet, meticulously decorated in gold leaf and inlaid with mother of pearl. It was looted, according to the family tale, from a Chinese palace.

MUTUAL ANIMOSITY AND SUSPICION

Its contents include carefully preserved letters, which indicate Johnson served for a time as the senior British officer at Amoy, now Xiamen, one of the Chinese ports Britain gained access to as a result of the war.

Letters from Chinese merchants show he made some effort to learn Chinese characters and suggest a cordial relationship.

But in one musty drawer is a letter which made the long voyage home that attests to the mutual animosity and suspicion between the Chinese and the British.

Johnson describes a walk alone through the city of Canton, now Guangzhou, where his ship was then anchored, and being pickpocketed in the street. His calls for assistance went unanswered and he comments:

“I think I can safely say that if an Englishman were to fall into trouble in this place, even be threatened by murder, no Chinese would lift a finger on his behalf.”

Johnson never made it to admiral — in those days an almost automatic progression after the combination of slog and good fortune it took to achieve the rank of captain. Hong Kong proved to be his last great voyage. He died in 1863, having married three times, as a sitting member of parliament.

A pub in his village still bears the name “The Jolly Tar”, supposedly in his memory — “tar” being old-English slang for a sailor.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

Document lba0000020011002dt6u0354i

Your ancestor's remark that “if selected as an entrepôt of trade it [Hongkong] has signally failed” was, if true, soon overtaken by further developments.

On the other hand, the statement that the city was “a sort of Chinese Alsatia, where congregated the pirate hordes of the Canton River, the smugglers, vagabonds and outcasts of all descriptions from the main land” is not entirely off the mark, even today.

FEATURE-Life and times of an Opium War captain.
738 words
30 June 1997
Reuters News
LBA
English
(c) 1997 Reuters Limited

(Reuters correspondent David Brunnstrom's great-great grandfather was captain of one of the British ships that was involved in the 19th century Opium War with China which led to the birth of modern-day Hong Kong. Brunnstrom, now based in Japan, looks at the life, times and possessions of his ancestor)

TOKYO, June 30 (Reuter) – When my great-great-grandfather Captain John Samuel Willes-Johnson sailed his 16-gun sloop HMS Wolverine into Hong Kong in July 1842 to take part in the closing stages of the First Opium War, it had just been seized for the then-expanding British Empire.

Watercolours Johnson painted in Hong Kong show where skyscrapers now thrust up from hills surrounding the harbour. There were at that time near-virgin slopes, a scattering of tiny dwellings, an isolated pagoda.

Only the black outlines of ships of the Royal Navy provide any hint of what was to come.

For me, growing up in Britain, Johnson was a benign figure, gazing down with a spirited but kindly eye from a wall of my aunt's house, dressed in the gold-buttoned blue-and-white dress uniform of his day.

He was already nearly 50 by the time he made the six-month voyage to Hong Kong, but his naval portrait shows a much younger man.

The curling hair brushed forward, and proud yet sympathetic smile suggest more the romanticism and enlightenment of the early 19th century than the iron discipline that made the Royal Navy the most feared and detested service of its day, both to its enemies and the men who served with it.

PRESS GANGINGS, FLOGGINGS, NARCOTICS

There is no hint in the face of the press gangings and floggings that were so much a part of seafaring in his day, nor of the trade in narcotics he went to war to protect.

But a glance at the log of Her Majesty's Ship Wolverine, which still sits, salt-stained and mouldering, on a shelf in the vast basement archives of the Public Records Office in London, shows the navy's fearsome reputation was justly earned.

Among hundreds of pages tediously detailing day-to-day victualling and navigation, are records of barbarous punishments.

“Punished John Sutch, boy second class, with 24 lashes for insolence and neglect of duty…William Petree with 12 lashes for being repeatedly dirty and William Grey with 24 lashes for uncleanliness.” One seaman accused of “drunkenness and riotous conduct” received no less than 48 lashes.

Such draconian punishments were recorded, without ceremony, in Johnson's hand, the script of a man who painted landscapes in his spare time, exhibited at the Royal Academy, and studied in Hong Kong under the celebrated colonial painter George Chinnery.

Among the treasures Johnson brought back from China was an exquisite wooden cabinet, meticulously decorated in gold leaf and inlaid with mother of pearl. It was looted, according to the family tale, from a Chinese palace.

MUTUAL ANIMOSITY AND SUSPICION

Its contents include carefully preserved letters, which indicate Johnson served for a time as the senior British officer at Amoy, now Xiamen, one of the Chinese ports Britain gained access to as a result of the war.

Letters from Chinese merchants show he made some effort to learn Chinese characters and suggest a cordial relationship.

But in one musty drawer is a letter which made the long voyage home that attests to the mutual animosity and suspicion between the Chinese and the British.

Johnson describes a walk alone through the city of Canton, now Guangzhou, where his ship was then anchored, and being pickpocketed in the street. His calls for assistance went unanswered and he comments:

“I think I can safely say that if an Englishman were to fall into trouble in this place, even be threatened by murder, no Chinese would lift a finger on his behalf.”

Johnson never made it to admiral — in those days an almost automatic progression after the combination of slog and good fortune it took to achieve the rank of captain. Hong Kong proved to be his last great voyage. He died in 1863, having married three times, as a sitting member of parliament.

A pub in his village still bears the name “The Jolly Tar”, supposedly in his memory — “tar” being old-English slang for a sailor.

(c) Reuters Limited 1997

Document lba0000020011002dt6u0354i

Your ancestor's remark that “if selected as an entrepôt of trade it [Hongkong] has signally failed” was, if true, soon overtaken by further developments.

On the other hand, the statement that the city was “a sort of Chinese Alsatia, where congregated the pirate hordes of the Canton River, the smugglers, vagabonds and outcasts of all descriptions from the main land” is not entirely off the mark, even today.