Chapter 18

Hoi showed up with a candidate for Justin’s assistant. He introduced the man as Chou La-Lee. That was very quickly shortened to “Lee.” He said that he did not mind as long as he got paid, and Hoi and I laughed at that. Lee spoke passable English, not nearly as good as Hoi’s, but easily understandable. I figured that he would improve as his contact with Justin continued. Of course, his Mandarin was excellent, as was his Cantonese, and he could get by in Wu. That was good enough for me, so I told him that he was hired, subject to the approval of Mr. Justin.

Finally, the Asian Queen arrived with Capt. Harmon and Mr. Justin. Justin was something of a stuffed shirt, but that might be what was needed to do business in Shanghai. On the other hand, Harmon seemed to be a great fellow with a very good dry wit. He and I bonded after less than an hour of exposure to each other. I figured that it was going to be a pleasure sailing with him.

As planned, I put both of them up in a couple of spare bedrooms, and I was kind of amused at the way both men were impressed with my home. They had a full scale Chinese banquet that night in my dining room, and Liz made quite an impression dressed in a formal Chinese outfit sitting at the table and supervising the serving of the meal. Of course, the servants were all thrilled by this because they got to eat all of the leftovers, and there was plenty of that.

Once the meal was over, all four of us had brandy and cigars. That was unusual for China, but acceptable in New York City, so I had to make no excuses for Liz. I really shook the newcomers when I told them that Liz was a major contributor to the firepower of my defenders. I said, quite honestly, that we did not know just how many pirates she had personally killed, but it had to be at least a dozen.

Both men needed to know exactly how we operated at sea, so I proposed that Justin come with us on our first voyage so that he could see how effectively we defended the ship. Matt Harmon agreed that my proposal was a good idea so that Ed Justin would know how effective shotguns could be in defending a ship. Ed agreed to give it a try, but warned us that he was not a fan of ocean voyages.

We spent some time going over what I had in mind for the operation, including the use of the fire bombs dropped onto the pirate junks. Both men were anxious to see that, so I suddenly had a fan base for my ideas. That was a help. By the way, Ed loosened up during the dinner and became quite likable. That was a very pleasant surprise.

The following day, Ed made his first calls on potential customers, and Lee went along to translate. Everybody in Shanghai knew by now of my success in fighting off pirates, so he had less trouble that he might otherwise have faced if he had not been able to say that I and my shooters would be aboard the Asian Queen when she set out.

It took Ed about a week to find enough cargo to make the trip worthwhile, and that gave Capt. Harmon time to collect the remainder of the crew he needed for the ship. I already had my squad ready. They had practiced on the range with the lever-action shotguns, so I was sure that they could do a more than adequate job when called upon.

Hoi and I spent most of this time rigging up a way to drop the fused kegs of fuel onto the junks when they got in close enough. Ed also asked why I did not plan on arming the ship with a Gatling Gun. My answer was that I was not familiar enough with that weapon to trust it for what we needed, so I wanted to stick with what I knew would work. I agreed to go with the Gatling Gun if we ever needed one, but I wanted to stick to the shotguns for now.

The next question was, “Why not a Maxim machine gun?” My answer was the same as for the Gatling Gun. We did not need it, so why spend all of that money for something that could not justify its cost. Ah, at last, here was an answer that appealed to Ed’s economic sense. That shut off the questions.

This trip was going to be a trip to Korea and Japan and then back to Shanghai by the same route. It made no difference to me, but this would be a trip over a lot of open ocean. From what I had heard, I did not expect to meet many pirates there, but we would be prepared for whatever was required of us.

Liz, Hoi, and I made an inspection trip to the Asian Queen while it was in port at Shanghai to look over our living accommodations and our fighting post. I particularly wanted to see the two loading cranes, since they would be used to hoist the “bombs” over the junks ready for dropping. Capt. Harmon had several test drops made for us so that we could test the mechanics. He assured me that his crane operators could handle the job in any but the worst weather, and he doubted that any pirate would be foolish enough to try to board us in that kind of weather anyway. Well, at this stage, as long as Matt was happy, I was happy. The system worked the way we expected, and that was all we could do while tied up in port.

At last, everything was set and we left Shanghai for Pusan, Korea. We would continue from there to Hiroshima and Osaka, Japan. Hopefully, we would retrace our route on the way home. Mostly, we were carrying agricultural products in both directions, so we were not much of a magnet for pirates. I did hope that we would get to show off at least once, but I was not betting on the pirates being that cooperative. I expected us to be a target of opportunity at best, so who knew what we would see​?

The first day out of port was kind of boring, but then we did see a pirate some distance away. I guessed that anybody who knew anything about modern sailing ships could see that we were a brand new ship, and would want to investigate. The pirate did create some temporary excitement when it turned toward us, but it was a tail-end chase, so it was doubtful that the pirate could catch us.

I asked Matt if he could slow down enough so that the pirate could catch us tomorrow about mid-morning. At first, he thought that I must be crazy, but, upon reflection, did decide to give me the chance to show our wares. Yeah, the pirate was still behind us when the first light of the sun showed. Matt even slowed down some more to make sure that the pirate could catch up to us by mid-morning as I had requested. The wind actually increased a little bit, and that must have encouraged the pirate. In any case, he began to overhaul us noticeably. We certainly should make our schedule.

Hoi called out the defenders and issued the Winchester shotguns and 20 rounds to each man. Everybody loaded his weapon and then sat around smoking and shooting the breeze until the pirate got close enough. That junk was a little larger than the average pirate vessel, so that would explain why they stayed on our tail. With that many pirates on board, they needed a rich victim to pay for their efforts.

I wanted to be able to test our bomb technique, so I refrained from shooting the helmsman. They had to get close to make for a decent test. The wooden kegs we were going to use were a little larger than we really needed, but Hoi just could not find the 20-gallon kegs that I had specified. Our kegs were more like 30-gal. in size, but they would do for this test run. I supervised two regular crewmen getting the two kegs ready. They poured in 10 gallons of gasoline and loaded the contact fuse to ignite the fuel. The top of the keg was sealed and the line was lowered from the crane to pick it up. Now, all we could do was wait.

It took another 30 minutes before the junk got close enough to make a shift in the closing angle to be sure to come in against our side. That helmsman had a very deft touch as he moved in closer and closer to the side of the Asian Queen. Finally, he was there and four men moved to the proper distance to heave grappling hooks onto our gunnel. There was no railing where the grappling hooks were heaved, and I had attached safety ropes to the shooters to be sure that they would not fall over the ship’s side if they got caught up in the excitement of the battle.