Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, August 8, 1914, Page 8

Two Ships to Join the International Fleet at Shanghai — 'Will Clean the Sea and Riv- ers of Chinese/Pirates. Cases of Atrocities Per- petrated by These Cut- throats—Fighting the Pirates a Hopeless Task Until the/Other Nations Took/a Hand. €., August 7, 1914. wWo “pirate de- stroyers” have just been added to the United - States Navy, The one end ;and “aim of their existence will be to Baweep trom the hordes of tresbgat- 1nk 4 o ey ime two-c emt ury-ago demise of “Blac beard” Teach and the 'swinging of Capt. ‘William Kidd gibbet ‘high in chains off Execution dock at a time beyond the memory of living man, to the contrary. Now, there is no gainsaying that when Justice pulled the blindfald frofm one eve long enough to catch the buccaneers ‘England, Rackam, Lowther, Kidd, Black- beard and another score of the Jolly Roger brotherhood red-handed, sending them to look their last through hempen collars _while they danced on air, the Lady of Scales and Bandage did a pretty thorough job. Yet, after all of these and many of the tesser lawiess Tights wero swept' from the seas, there remained that which zal- lows tree nor king's sloop-of-war could lay—the spirit of piracy. . Pory The “plrate destroyers”’ will not go .to the now peaceful Spanish main, or sail the stretches where once the plate ships| (COREANS ON BoAR D of the King of Spain struck colors to Taiing. brontsiaes from tow. vack wop| 1HE USS.COLORADO sail schooners, for the spirit of now dwells along the shore of the bling China ses, and rides the reach the Sulu and South Pacific waters, upon the prows of great pirate junks or can- non-bristling Malay prahus And so. the station of the, two “pirate destroyers” - of the United States Navy piracy who will now e no longer safe in_the | shallow streams which until this time | have sheltered them. The gunboats are 1€0 feet over all, with a beam of 24 feet 6 inches and a displace- | Y 5 y Wherever her com. | will be at Shanghal, within easy striking | [N¢At of 190 tons. : Y StriKIng | mander can find two feet and a half of o ob ke, iat . Yangate - xiver. water there can either of the little craft along whose banks are thousands of set- tlements where American concessionaries agents of great commercial enterprises and missionaries spend perilous lives. be taken at a speed of thirteen and a half knot. Hull and deckhouse sheathed with spe- cial armor. plate—which incidentally costs 2 $1.25 a pound and will turn modern high- - powered rifle ball and small cannon shot Although the United ‘States maintains|at close range—the armament of each & score of vessels on the China station— | of the boats consists of a main battery most of them spoils. of the war with|MOunting two six-pounder rifles and six y. ine ri om which Spain—it so happened that there were | LU RS OSSR o e irea. no light-draft gunboats among them, and | These are remforced by two the volume of Water necessary to fioat [ fleld guns for the use of landing parties. them was S0 great as to make any pur- | In addition to this. the deckFouse walls sult up rivers and canals little less than | are plerced with loopholes for riflemen. a farce. ch gunboat is officered by two com- 8o it was that the United States finally [ missioned officers. two chief petty offi- grew tired of having the light-draft pirate | cers and forty-three men. craft show clean heels and get away in| Within a short time the Palos and safety, which exhibition on the par vellow' outlaws soon became a joke & which Uncle Sam could not and would not laugh. Therefore was the constru n of the “pirate desiroyers” author- ized. A long time ago the Unlted State of | Monocacy will be in full commission, the first commanded by Lieut. Frank Rorsch- ach and the second by Lieut. Carter, who was second in command of assembling them. ‘or time out of mind piracy has been a et e TS e ] Bt favored calling in the China sea. a side-wheel, iron sheathed. st has the downfall of the ancient Chine sall vessel—the Monocacy; ‘and also a| 3YNEStY under which it thrived .appa screw tug of iron—the Palos. And be. | Fently been any deterrent to thesé law- cause of the honorable history of both of | 1655 Predatory crews, who are a tribe | these vessels, which long ago went to the | 8Part from the cooile dwellers of the junk heap, the two river gunboats have|1and side of the late celestial empire, and been named for them. they carry on their slit-gullet, looting | Taking pattern after the type of sun.|trade today totally unawed by the fact| boat exampled in the British Widgeon, | that the hands of ail their countrymen | these two little craft wer the Mare Island navy v mgainst them. B + were too small to stand the rip * the Pacific, where typhoons and ra o * Canes are froquent. Fhnoons and RUrtl-| Piracy in Chinese waters today takes| olnocked down™ and shipped 'in a big ("0 eneral forms. The first is that| ocean Hr;j;dlnbshln!hn!. Where they were | Practiced by the crews of grea gh- | reassam! y Naval Constructor o: d W o 1 der. sasisted by Lisut Andren o omqbor | PovPed War junks which usually in est | U BN, A few weeks gy tres sk | the waters near Amoy and Swatow: and launched and, given their (Hal trins. which formerly, it not todas, had their - rendezvous in the Fie-tse-lonz Islands o near the Tonkin gulf, aithouzh they fre. Although the “misquitoes” of the China | auently . have .appeared much farther station were too small to undertake the | 90Wn the coast transpacific trip, they will ne ente ¢ | “These great junke. carrying hundreds| less efficlent againat the pirate men, who | Stant: mecers to cocg ey abol | Gepend Targely ipon. Aemiine en: Who | stant menace to small narmed trading ships and steamers, as well as to smalier inks owned by the great &Tips In overpowering their victim. commercial | ana | companies ot rate’s methods of attack are today quite China as brutal and primal vears ago. Four months have passed since | dec o> that if plrates manage to get the PBritish steamer Taion was attacked | aboard one part of the ship they will and burned by pirates north of Monaco, | be segregated. with the loss of the ship and 188 Bi ish * seamen. * * Canton river, and steamers. which ply | Steamer entered the Bocca Tigris, a con- | these waters are constantly upon the |federate of the pirates smuggled him- alert for danger from this source. self hoard, and hen the steamer room aboard Chinese coastwise craft | near KI d the machinery equipped with a brace of heavy cali- | With her ies out. the Taion rocked bered revolvers. a modern repeating | helplessly on the sweil, while from the rifle and plenty of ammunition within | shadowed two great junks, pro- easy reach of passengers. so that in the | pelled by sweeps in the hands of | event of a piratical attack passengers | brawny arsmer, ot out to | may protect themselves hang one upon her starboard, the other Precautions, too, are taken against|upon her port, while scores of half-| pirates boarding the Steamers in the | naked ruffians boarded guise of harmless native passengers for | Warmed in time A PIRATE JUNK ON THE YANG- ISE-KTIARG RIVER LD MONOCACY Towing LANDINGPARTY AGAINST COREAN FORTS —— And_the Junk pi-| up coast.” This is usually accom- plished by inclosing each deck of the as they were fifty |Steamer in wire mnettings, preventing | communication between any two of the Representative C. H. Sloan of Ne- braska is from the 1and of big farms— Both in Same Boat. Senator Albert B. farms whose corn- flelds run along a railroad sometimes fox ten miles, while in its wheatfields several G erman principalities could What Is the Brand? | Repre sentative | H. T. Helgesen of North Dakota is of Norwegian descent. | be lost. So Sloan is In his district is| usedl to taking a the_famous Devil's | big view of things, 1ak® which in re- as well as viewing | t vears has re-| thinge from the | ceded o standpoint of a homesteader. During this warm weather the secu e v ing of a good attendance in the House the town of has been a difficult Job, and the fra- name, once o: quent three rings for a call to. the bank ow House s common over in the ofiices. miles inland. One day recently Sloan went oy (s In the-course of time the water will be entirely sone and the lake but a “tale that is told.” It was called Devil's lake on account.of the In- dian legend connected with it. The story runs that once, in times far before the coming of the white man. two tribes lived On opposite sides of the water. There were frequent fights, and at last one day both took to théir war| canoes and set out simultaneously for raid upon the foe. Tn the middle of the lake they m deadly embrace.- The batle and bloody, #nd in a few moments lust canoe had sunk beneath the waves. And now, on @ Stormy nis nghtning i fushing across th ters, It shows the stream flled candes, and painted men with tomah in their hands float in ghosdy a the chamber to find but few men there. | All around were rows on rows of empty seats, with only a few oases of mem- bers in & desert of desks. It remind- ed Sloan of his big quarter sections out in the bounding prairies. So he rose to his feet. “Mr. Chairman” he sald, “I have looked around on the vast unoccupied area in this House, and, not desring “to raise a question of no quorum, wish to submit a parliamentary inquiry.” “The gentleman will state it," sponded -the chalr. “I wigh to ask, Mr. Chalrman," con- tinued Sloan, “If it would be properyto make a filing for a homestead on the re- whs in | these river June10.1871 ___=—— crew met the vellow boarders in a hand- to-hand confiict. The passengers, pro- tected by the wire nettings, gained the boat deck in safety, where, launching the lifeboats, they made their escape from the ship under cover of the dark- ness and confusion. But the crew, outnumbered three to were beaten one, back, and those Who escaped the pirate knives leaped into the sea to drown. Left victors, the pirates looted the | steamer and then applied the torch, but the flames of the burning Taion attract ed the attention of other Steamers, and they. speeding full ahead for the doomed | vesscl, managed to pick up all the pi gengers and Capt. Wetherell Taion, with all of his Europea i The second form of freebooting in | Chinese waters takes the form of river piracies. ' The pirates themselves are, | unlike their deep-water outlaw brethren, more of the jackal type, slinking coward- Iy, but still murderous and deadly when- ever they fall in with unarmed parties. They infest the shallow rivers, ks nd canals which cut in from the China oast s i * The big junks, in use by the deep-sea| freebooters, are of no earthly good in shallow waters, and so the river robber make of light-draft craft known lc cally as “fast crahs” and “scrambling dragons.” The West is a favored ground for these water freebooters. althoush the Yangtse-Kiang river is also with them. In their little craft they navigate with- out trouble over the shallows and rapids inland as far as Chungking, which is more than 1.000 miles from the coas and instead of presing upon the mel chant ships and steamers of the deep, they loot villages, murder travelers, mas- acre white concessionaries. and ca untold trouble to the sionaries, of whom there are many hundreds in this part of inland Chinz. And it is aza pirates particularly that jes of the little Palos and M will be directed go. it became he that the| apparent either we ope with the perpetrators of pirate outrages. But this was learned | only after the barges owned by th Standard Ol Company to carry case ofl | inland had be atedly attacked and | sacked; several aded with to- bacco helonging to a British eompany | controlled entirely by American capital | had been looted, and American_citiz |and missionaries without number been murdered. not Asset. matic meal S W designated, for the thing that Repre- Aritigthara ot KIS ¥ originally came above all else it is a demagogic fraud in politics— from Pennsylvania but the; those pius. :(v\ml 'a some year of-the-people tvpe | 1f Cummins has a fad it is booke. and S I cal works. is pri s He tells a story| ks. His pride I ancient though he s equally proud of the ne farms of which his state boasts There is a story told on Senator Cum- mins to the effect that last summer he of two voters whol ¢ ere discussing a candidate for Con- Srous and his wife went to a fashionable roof Y b g L ; the Capitol, the cool breeze and music that'as a representative.” growled the|yeemeq. delighttul; so the senator be- Arst man. He is one of those 10ng-|¢nougnt himself of something to eat. haired ranters who has never dome a|muking up the card, he tried to read it poun Sha Is o ufes Senis ahysic on his desk, but wes unsuccessful The friend nodded He appealed to Mrs. Cimmins, but that “Yep™ he agreed, I guess that's all | lady had also forgotten hers. he hand- true. But ‘you must admit that when he (—d’ xm-x .».\‘“1 ‘u,:l, : ing colored waiter certainly does look the part.” b b e Nk e And Representative great unoccupied public domain in this chamber T % the mists, the fleet melting away storm clouds. Anderson. concludes man took the card, looked at it in ariably « puzsled way, then Fave it back tewer beome. conthue. ot for "mon | QUL e said, with a shake of the head, War-. Deopis. < but you sge 1 ain't got mugh education Who look the part. | oh cdue either. emigrated | Thereupon, lacking the necessary of pursuing the pirates and Db them to justice, a sysiem of “vicarious punishment” gréw up in the Chinese prov- inces. By this system. upon the perpe- tration of an outrage, (he American con- |sul would file his complaint with the | Chinese government, and the government | upon learning the amount of dam: | tained by the depredation, or the | nity demandea for the loss of life a promptly levy the amount upon the vil- lage nearest to the scene of th& crime. N - * But this system, it was soon discovered, worked only liardship without lessening | tc any appreciable degree the number of | pirate atrocities; for seldom did the loot- | ers come from the village assessed and, upon one occasion a few vears ago, the Village was forced to sell daughters into slavery ity for u crime which none of his villagers lad_comipitted So, realizing at last that the viearious | system™ was worse thai Ineffective, each nutlon having commereial luterests in China_has sent to the Shanghal station light-draft river gunboats to hunt down and bring to Justice the bandis of the Fivers, and In thik way 1o star 1 racy wherever lts hydra head r several vears now Knsland. many und Jupan have maintained light-draft river boats. Now the United States has added her complement In the Palos and the Monocacy China hersel 1s about to come iato the been safe enough In a large river steamer | to Hankow and thence by a smaller boat to Ichang. * * * American flag. AN EXECUTION OF CAPTURLY PIrRATES [N SHANGHAL, 1910 fold, and add several vessels to the in- ternational fleet, for it has been recently announced that the twenty-five-mililon- tagl loan, negotiated By the new repub- lic with an American steel plant and ap- proved by the Chinese president. will be | devoted to the construction of small eruis- | ers and large gurboats to rout out the trates. P the last two years many cltizens of United States have lost their lives the pirates of-the China water- vs, and perhaps the case of Hicks, fiman and Sheldon is as typical as any These three men were American citi- zens and_teachers in the Government Col- Jege at Chengtu, toward which they were traveling from Shanghai up_ the Yang- tze river. ‘The start of their journey had at the entrance to the were forced to take to a and March pon their arrival at Wanshien, they made two fatal blunders. The first was | that they anchored in a lonely little bight away from the usual smelly nchorage of the town. The second | was that they did not dig their arms| out of their baggage. e river pirates fell upon them dur- ing the night. Hicks was murdered as he lay sleeping, Sheldon was maimed for life and Hoftman was dangerously wounded, aithough he later recovered. And the perpetgators of this outrage re- mained undetecté, althaugh the head men of Wanshien village were held re-| spensible PDuring the progress of the Russian- Japa var an American war corre- wpondent was set upon near Newchang. Manchuria, and killed, and it Is frequent- Ly necessary, as those members of the e who have been on China 1l you, for marines to be interior of China. up the to bring out missionaries ular serv will tation ent to Yang-tze river and prevent them from befng massacred Nor are the river pirates the only | cause which the United States has for eeping light-draft - vessels in Chinese waters. for another ‘“Tampico incident.” | Simitar almost in every detall save its Tiimnte outcome, was enacted near Hankow, China. July 27, 1912 TAT that time there were numerous rebel forts along the river. and one of these N e o To pariitie & o % Btandara Ofl steamer fiying the e oon s word of the e Hankow, the matter was e wenty-one funs, which Huerta A A o Sater refused, were accorded 10 the flag by the rebel troops July 30. ‘: The ola Monocacy and the Palos. for The two mew gunboats were chris- e ‘long and nonorable service in e iee. waters, against pirates both na wnd Korea and the taking af re Horean forts on the Salee. river, in (oh such later celebrities as the late alt_rea whic Winfleld Scott Schley and Ad- Pillsbury took part. Admiral Pillsbury besides taking a prominent part in the Aghting is also to e accredited with the remarkable achieve- ment of taking “wet-plate” photographs of the fighting, notwitbstanding that field iphy was In its infancy in 1871 Aark room the photographs and are among the most oras in the Navy De- nt library today. assault upon the Korean forts was occasioned by an attack made by them June 1, 1571; upon the United States gun- boats exploring the river ugon which they were situated. The forts were man- ned by freebooting soldlery, and xithough @ demand for reprisal was made to the at no action was taken erefore, after waiting ten s, Rear Admivtl John Rod cpm manding the Asiatic fleet, ordered an ad- vance upon the forts. « | roin and a spear stab in the side. In " accordance ~with the orders the Monocacy, the Palos and four steam launches, together with the Benecia. on board of which there were 505 men f-om the various ships of the fleet, entered the Salee river, and before forty-eight hours had passed five Korean forts had been taken, 200 guns destroyed and one battlc fought. in which the loss of, the ener was 330 killed and wounded, while th forces of the United States lost only three killed and nine wounded. The steam launch Weehawken, sound ing. led the advance of the fleet June 1 1871, followed by the Monocac Beneciz, three steam jaunches o Palos towing in the landing party of nite teen boats in the order named. - - * An hour later they shelled the Korear battery on Louise Island, which did not reply, and then engaged the second of the line of forts. This fedoubt gave them battle, and the Korean shots cut away the standing rigging of the fleet, but did not damage their hulls. TI fort silenced, the fleet proceeded to the third embankment, where, under shelter of fire, the landing party and artillers were put ashore. Fort du Conde and the earthworks at Sun-tol-mok fell before the Korean cita- del was attacked, and when that fell to the American forces it was discovered that the enemy had Intrenched them- selves upon a knoll a mile to the north- ward, and it was there that the hand-to- hand fighticg took place fn which Lieut. H. W. McKee received a mortal wound. The late Rear Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, then Meutenant commander, and the man who organized the expedition, was the second to gain the inside of the redoubt with Lieut. McKee. and he it was who shot down the Korean who had given McKee his mortal wound. The re- doubt was later renamed in honor of the young lieutenant. Here is. Schiey’s own Teport of the fighting st the redoubt: “About 12:30 p.m., June-11, the charge was made through a deep ravine fully eighty feet deep, with 350 saflors and ma- rines. The approach was clear of any covering and the fire of the enemy most terrific and severe. Nothing could with- stand the men. The impetuosity of the charge was met by brave men in the fort. who contested inéh by inch and whe fought hand to hand 3 ““The honor of gaining the first foothold in the fort fell to Lieut. McKee, who was at once charged by the enemy. But a moment had elapsed béfore I gained the inside and went to his aid in his des- perate fight. In a moment he fell mor- tally wounded by a musket ball in the The same brave ome Who had speared McKee rushed upon me, but the spear passed between my left arm and my body and before he could withdraw it for a second trial he was shot dead and lifeless at my feet” e — Almprovmg the Potato. FRE.\'(‘H agricultural experts have de- cided that the potato, that standard f00d of the western hemisphere, needs rejuvenation. The common practice in raising new potatoes is to cut up old ones and plant them. After a serles of experi- ments the scientists have come to the conclusion that the continual reproduc- ton of the potato without the use of seed has resulted In its deterloration, on the same theory that the interbreeding of animals will resalt in their deteriora: tion. Mence they have. with the aid'of ‘& certain fungis, hegun the planting of a crop which has so far shown itself prac- tcally tmmune from potato diseases. It Was at firat thought that the pOtate cro uid be fmproved i raised from. This process. however, proved too Tong *Fhe mew fungus process will probably e adopted by Whee Bem. 5 ~—