Chapter 11

The ship we wound up taking was ideal for my purposes. It was to voyage from Shanghai to Bangkok, Siam, the kind of route that the AGTC ship would be taking. There were 20 White foreigners including me on board, and that filled the available first class accommodations. Chang Hoi rode in the second class section used by Asian passengers. I could have gotten him into first class if I had claimed that he was a personal servant, but he was where he was to see what kind of effect a pirate attack would have on Asian passengers.

Anyway, we had been at sea about a week when we pulled into our first stopping point along the coast of China. This was a routine stop to discharge five of the Asian passengers and to pick up three others. None of the Whites were interested in this port.

I had not had time to become bored because I was busy circulating among the White passengers to get to know them, and, frankly, to see if I could pick up a willing female companion. That was a lost cause on this portion of the trip because all of the women were with their husbands and did not dare show any sexual interest in me, even if they were so inclined. Oh, well, better luck next time.

I did meet a Frenchman who was traveling with his Indochinese mistress. The interesting thing to me was that he was making no secret the status of the woman with him. The other thing of interest to me was that none of the White wives were the least bit put out by the way he was flaunting his mistress. The Indochinese woman was very reserved and never approached any of the other male passengers. That may have been why the White women tolerated her.

Anyway, the complete change for me in the social climate kept me from getting bored, so I had no problem with that. Shortly after we left that port, we had our first run-in with pirates. They were in a quite small junk, one of those stereotypical Chinese sailing vessels. These pirates tried to challenge us, but the captain ignored them and sailed past without a serious effort to stop us by the pirates.

Actually, the captain was fully justified because of the size disparity between our ship and the junk. I think that the pirates were more in the mood of having fun than seriously thinking that they could stop us. Of course, if we had a timid captain who did stop, the situation would have been seriously different. Oh, well, such was my first experience with Chinese pirates.

Anyway, the episode was a source of entertainment for the passengers and the subject of most of the conversation for the rest of the day and evening. However, the next day was an entirely different situation. A much larger junk approached us and actually fired a small cannon shot across our bow. That got everybody’s attention right away, and most of the passengers headed for their cabins.

Naturally, my curiosity would not let me do the same beyond making a quick trip to my cabin to pick up my shotgun. Chang Hoi was waiting for me at the doorway to the cabin, and I gave him the other shotgun and some loose ammunition. We headed immediately back up on deck to observe how the captain and ship’s crew handled the situation.

We were spotted by the second mate, and he warned us to return to our cabins, but I explained that we (well, I did lie a little bit) had some experience in fighting pirates over in Europe and thought to assist in our defense. I said that we would stay out of the way and only come forward if we were called to it, up until the time the pirates gained a foothold on the ship. At that point, I felt that we should do what we could to help drive the pirates away.

He thanked me for my offer of assistance and said that he would call upon me if I were needed. He never mentioned Chang Hoi, and Hoi seemed to expect this from a White man. It turned out that the second mate was in charge of the defense of this deck, so I had talked to the proper person.

We knew that there was only one pirate ship, so Hoi and I stayed on the side of the ship which faced the pirate. I noticed that the second mate was carrying a pistol and a cutlass. He had four crew members with rifles under his command. The rifles looked to me to be ancient Army rifles that were single shot. Maybe that was okay for Asian pirates, but I knew that it would have been a disaster against Comanches, even back when they had been using bows and arrows. If these pirates were worth their salt, I expected that Hoi and I would be a part of the fight before it finished.

It looked to me like there could easily be as many as 25 pirates aboard the junk, and that little cannon could be a formidable weapon if it were used correctly. I did have one means of attacking the cannon if I had to. At this point, though, neither side was shooting at the other, and I wondered what was going on.

Our captain had pushed our ship to its maximum speed, and we were pulling away from the junk. However, the junk also put on speed and was doing a surprisingly good job of keeping up with us. In fact, it seemed to be a little faster than our ship. If that were the case, that might be why there currently was no shooting in either direction—both sides were probably saving their ammunition until it would be of more immediate value. Even I, a landlubber, could see that the junk was slowly, but definitely, catching up to our ship, and should be quite close within a couple of hours.

Hoi and I relaxed and just watched as the pirate inexorably closed with us. At this stage, there was nothing that we could do about it, so we sat and critiqued what we could see of our ship’s preparations for action against the pirates. To my disgust, I could see that nothing constructive was being done by the captain. Of course, there was no way that I could see what was being done within the ship, but I was sure that our captain and crew were just waiting for the pirates to make the first move.

Maybe this sort of thing was the usual way for dealing with the common pirate along here, but it certainly did not fit in with my way of facing an unpleasant situation. My first note of complaint was my doubt that four riflemen were enough to mount an adequate defense. I had no idea of how accurate these crewmen could shoot, but I did not expect much, especially considering the age of the rifles. I was ready to bet that these rifles were no more accurate than the muskets of 100 years ago; therefore, I expected little good to be done by the riflemen.

My second complaint was that the captain was wasting fuel trying to outrun the pirate when it was already certain that he could not do it. The ship was equipped with two cranes used for loading and unloading cargo, and they could reach fairly far away from the ship’s sides. If I were running the defense, I would reroute that wasted fuel into barrels that could be hoisted by the cranes and swung out over the pirate ship when it came alongside our ship. I would drop the barrels of fuel oil onto the junk so that they would smash and soak the wooden ship with the highly flammable oil. Then I would light the oil and let the junk burn to the water line.

That should be enough to protect the ship from the pirates. I was certainly going to recommend that the AGTC ships be equipped for that sort of operation. Hoi was an enthusiastic supporter of my idea about the fuel oil and laughed at the thought of what the pirates would do if that happened to them. Hoi even suggested the addition of an impact fuse to the barrels so that they would ignite when they broke apart and not have to be lit as a separate operation. I gave him credit for that idea, and we continued to brainstorm other ideas while we waited for the battle to be resumed.

Both of us came up with some much more outlandish ideas, but nothing else seemed as practical as the barrel idea. Nevertheless, the discussion did occupy the time while we waited for the pirates to catch us.

Finally, the pirate junk pulled up close alongside our ship, and that was the first mistake made by the pirates. By doing that, they took their small cannon completely out of the battle. The cannon was now too close to our ship to do any good against us. If I had been in command, the pirate ship would have stood off a few hundred yards and fired something like grape shot at the rifleman strung out along the ship’s railing. Once those riflemen were eliminated, there was nothing that I could see that would keep the pirates from boarding our ship at their leisure.