Chapter 12

As far as Capt. Winslow was concerned, the next few days were fortunately quiet and he was able to purchase four double-barrel 12-gauge shotguns at our next port of call. The only suitable ammunition that could be found was #00 buckshot, but that certainly would work.

Capt. Winslow asked me to train the men in using the new guns and to take over defense of the ship the next time we met pirates. Naturally, I agreed to do this because it would give me some early experience in what I needed to do to protect our own ships. The four defenders were Chinese, and their command of English was marginal at best. Therefore, Hoi was my interpreter whenever I dealt with these men.

I found the men willing to follow my orders, but they were not expecting much from the shotguns, mostly because they were new to the guns and didn’t know what such weapons could really do. They had seen Hoi and me using the weapons during the previous pirate attack, but they had been so busy that they had not seen very much. At least, these shotguns were all breech-loaders, so it was easy to make the men understand how to reload them.

The ship’s carpenter made up some two-foot-square wooden targets for the men to practice shooting at. We were going to toss these into the water and then shoot at them as if they were pirates. The ship’s deck was only about 18-feet above the waterline, so the range was quite acceptable.

I spent an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon in shooting practice, and I was pleased to see that all four men quickly became adequate shots. The shot made enough of a splash when it his the water that each man could see exactly how close he had come to his target. The result was that all of the men soon became adequate shots.

I also worked with the men with a simplified set of tactics for repelling boarders, and the men quickly gained confidence in themselves. Hoi said that they all felt that they could do a much better job defending the ship than they ever could have under the command of the second-mate. I was glad to hear that, and I was in a hurry to see how much good my training had done.

Fortunately, we had 10 days before the next pirate attack, so there was plenty of time to be sure that each men understood what he was expected to do. This time, we were attacked by a medium-size junk with what looked like a 12-man crew. That was enough attackers to provide a real test of the defenders and their new weapons, but not so many that we could not hope to drive them away.

I had asked the captain to slow down to the point where he just had enough speed to control the ship. I figured that moving slowly would give my shooters a more stable shooting platform, and that had to be an advantage. Anyway, the pirates’ junk pulled alongside in order to hurl the grappling hooks over our deck railing.

That was when I had my men start shooting. The full crew of the junk was on their deck, but I had the shooters aim at the men heaving the grappling hooks. The first shots were fired in a volley. The shotguns were a fantastic success. There were four men heaving the grappling hooks, and I had Hoi tell each shooter which pirate was his target.

The shooters fired one barrel upon Hoi’s command, and three of those men were killed outright. The remaining target was badly wounded, but not killed. For practical purposes, he was as good as dead from our point of view, since he was out of the fight. The shooters then were ordered to shoot at the men on the deck, but to pick a specific target and not to just shoot into the crowd.

Meanwhile, I fired at the man doing the steering. My first shot wounded him and another man took over. My next shot killed the replacement at steering. At this point, the junk began to drift away from our ship, and we cut the ropes from the grappling hooks to the pirates’ junk. The junk drifted away from us, but not before every man on deck had received at least one blast from a shotgun.

At this point, I signaled Capt. Winslow to return to his normal speed, and we soon left the junk as a drifting derelict. Maybe the sight of it would discourage other pirates.

In celebration of such a successful fight, I gave each of the four men a silver coin as a tip for the quality of their service. Such a thing had never happened before, and Hoi said that all four men would follow me into Hell. Their defense of the ship had never been so easy. Now we all wondered what would happen if we encountered that large junk again.

We were attacked by pirates five more times before we returned to Shanghai. In every case, the results were the same. When the captain released the crew for shore leave, I noticed that the four defenders actually strutted down the gangplank. I told Hoi that he had done such a good job in commanding the defenders that I wanted him to take that job every time. I also gave him a gold coin as a token of appreciation. Dammit, I thought the man was going to cry!

I wrote up a detailed report for George and mailed it to him in New York City. Hell, it was going to take something like a month to reach him, but I did not know of a faster way to get the information to him. The report contained a lot of information about Chang Hoi, and pointed out what a good job he had been doing for me. I also said that I was going to begin studying Mandarin Chinese, concentrating on the concepts I needed to talk to the defenders of the ships.

I guess that you can tell that I had decided to stay in this region for some time. I asked Hoi to find me a teacher of Mandarin Chinese. Damned if Hoi did not volunteer to be my teacher. That was perfect from my point of view, so I took him on and raised his salary to fit his additional duties.

Hoi had no immediate family to be concerned with so when I started looking for housing, I specified that I wanted a place large enough that Hoi could move in with me. I figured that, if nothing else, it would speed up my learning the language. I figured that I was going to wind up hiring mostly Chinese as ship defenders, so I also wanted to lean as much as I could of Chinese culture. This should help my relationship with my employees.

As was usual with Hoi, he took over finding a real estate broker to locate a house for me. The plan was to have a suitable house located for me to purchase as soon as we got back from our next trip to look for pirates.

That first ship had English ownership, but the second ship was owned by a local outfit. The crew, from the captain on down, was Chinese, but they all spoke Mandarin. Fortunately, most of the officers also spoke English. There was no specific crew assigned to defend the ship from pirates, and that seemed to make the ship a magnet for pirates. Naturally, everybody in Shanghai knew of the problems that plagued the ship, so it was practically impossible to find Westerners who were willing to ship goods on this ship or to take passage on it.

The result was that I was treated with suspicion by many of the passengers and most of the crew. Captain Chou asked me to drop by his cabin for a general conversation. Hoi clued me in that everybody aboard ship was wondering why I would sail on this ship when I could sail on one with less trouble with pirates. Okay, I was going to give the captain the complete explanation of why I was there.

I was treated with the utmost courtesy when I met the captain. After the conventional beating around the bush with trivialities, the captain got to the point of why he had asked to meet me. I explained who I was and why I was there on his ship. Captain Chou was absolutely amazed that I would take such a chance because the pirates would demand a ransom for me if they captured me and would probably kill me as soon as the ransom was paid.

I admitted that I knew of that danger, but I was sure that I could take care of myself, since I had successfully fought Comanches in Texas. Well, that certainly impressed the captain because he had heard all kinds of lurid tales of the Indian wars and how the Comanches treated prisoners. I did not go into any kind of detail about fighting Comanches, but let him think of me as some kind of super man.