All the Tea in China

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“In our trade we be all felons, more or less” (R. Kipling).

The men from whom I have stolen most freely (in this book, I mean) are dead: Basil Lubbock who wrote The China Clippers and Robert Surtees who created the immortal John Jorrocks, M.F.H. I hope that when my time comes I shall be able to look them in the face. My thanks are due to Commander Hanson, R.N.(Retd) of Jersey and formerly of the China Station, who first pointed my bows in this direction. No one could write about the Treaty Coast without the aid of Maurice Colliss’s classic Foreign Mud, Commander Kemp’s Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea was published just in time to kedge me off some dangerous lee-shores. As to the rest I can only say, like the little girl who spat at Nursey, “I’m afraid that was my own invention.”

My thanks are due to my former wife Margaret, whose patience would shame Griselda and whose loyalty certainly shames me.

Last, I must thank all my new friends in County Cavan, whose unquestioning kindness to their new neighbour has carried me through a long, dark winter: the fact that I cannot list their names here is a measure of their number.