A private revenge

Author's Note

The British occupation of Macao and Admiral Drury's extraordinary demonstration before Canton are a sideshow of the Napoleonic War largely ignored by standard histories. Drury, the first of several British naval officers to appear in the Pearl River during the nineteenth century, was unique for his sympathetic attitude to the Chinese. I have largely used his own words to express his sentiments. The Chinese regarded his 'humane treatment' as a victory of their own. Pellew too, though a shameless nepotist, was no imperialist, and Drinkwater's view of British policy in India was also expressed by Sir Edward. Both Pellew and Drury were harassed by Company and Country mercantile interests who considered the convoy arrangements of the former inadequate, and said so publicly. To some extent their criticisms of the Navy's preference for seeking prizes were justified.

Few, if any, merchant ships got out of the Pearl River during the 1808 season, but Drury did send a frigate up to Whampoa to secure a quantity of specie owed by the Chinese merchants. Rumours of a French overland expedition via Persia were current at the time (and considered by Napoleon), while the depredations of French corsairs continued in the Indian Ocean. I am chiefly indebted to Captain Eastwick's memoirs for a contemporary picture of the Canton trading scene and in particular the Country ships.

Piracy in the South China Sea continues to be a problem in the present century. Raffles's acquisition of the island of Tumasek broke much of the power of the pirates when he founded Singapore in 1819, but at that time, as his own Malay tutor, Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, wrote: 'no mortal dared to pass through the Straits ... Jinns and satans even were afraid, for that was the place the pirates made use of ... There also they put to death their captives ... All along the beach there were hundreds of human skulls, some of them old, some fresh ... in various stages of decay.' Shortly after the end of the Napoleonic War the British Admiralty sent Captain Henry Keppel to extirpate these nests of pirates. Doubtless they were influenced by Drinkwater's report on the subject. Nor were naval vessels immune from what Raffles called 'an evil of ancient date', for in 1807 the Dutch warship De Vrede was captured and her officers and crew treated with characteristic barbarism.

Although unseasonal, typhoons are not unknown as late in the year as November. Finally, the origin of the enmity between Drinkwater and Morris may be found detailed in An Eye of the Fleet and A Brig of War; the presence of the Russian prisoners in In Distant Waters.