A victorian empire a poo.., p.1
A Victorian Empire (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 14), page 1
Poor Man at the Gate
- Book Fourteen -
A Victorian Empire
Andrew Wareham
Copyright © 2023 Andrew Wareham
KINDLE Edition
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This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
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Contents
A Victorian Empire Characters
Author’s Comment
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
A Victorian Empire
Characters
The Andrews family:
Robert, Earl of St Helens.
His surviving legitimate twin sons, Thomas and Robert Iain.
Bastards by Judy, Patrick Andrews and Kathleen.
Surviving brother: James Andrews, First Baron Finedon, plus wife and lone surviving son.
Mrs Joseph Andrews, widow, plus three surviving children.
Miss Verity Andrews, stepsister by second marriage
Bastard brothers: Lord Burleigh; Mr Thomas Miller of New York.
Related by marriage, Sir Iain Mostyn, Bart. Lord Paynton.
A pack of mastiffs, descended from family pets of Thomas Andrews, First Baron.
The Star family:
Thomas, Second Baron, wife and children.
Surviving brothers: Sir Matthew, Bob, Mark, George, Henry and John, Rajah Star.
The Grafham family:
George, Marquess of Grafham, son Lord Rothwell.
Marchioness, insane and confined plus parents and brother.
Sister, married to Captain Hood, ex Intelligence, naval and other. Two sons.
Alexander Fraser and family, senior manager and one-time tutor to James.
Sir William Rumpage, senior manager, once Rumpo Willy, a navvy.
Patrick Murphy. Shipyard manager and confidant to James Andrews.
Lawyer Michael, confidential adviser.
Keith Michael, disgraced son.
John Quillerson, son to steward of Andrews Estates, now active in America.
Various political and industrial figures and minor relatives, tenants and managers.
Author’s Comment
This book is set in the early 1840s and attempts to be as close to reality as is possible.
Characters are to be found in Hong Kong, San Francisco, Baltimore, London, the English Midlands, Dorset, and the Northeast of England.
Inevitably, local dialects vary substantially and in some cases use terminology that we currently find offensive but which was then casually commonplace.
Particularly, racist stereotypes and terminology which were unnoticed then are considered intolerable now.
Where possible, I have avoided racist usages – I intensely dislike them, and it’s my book! On one occasion it was impossible to remain authentic without offensive terminology. After a lot of thought and several attempts to recast the whole chapter, I have permitted the term to stand because I need the plot for the next three or four books in the series.
I apologise to those who inevitably will be offended.
The only thing worse than causing such offence is self-censorship, a form of dishonesty I reject.
Andrew Wareham
Chapter One
“Hong Kong, Mr Andrews! A tiny, barren island and the door that will open up the whole of China to Queen Victoria’s Britain!”
“Do you really think so, sir? I can see how it will be preferable to Canton for opening the south of the Empire, but the north will still remain closed to us. I suspect we might need a second colony closer to Peking if we are to enter into the northern trade.”
Mr Jardine, twice Patrick’s age in his early forties, was forced to agree that in fact he had no plans to penetrate Peking itself.
“No, that will be more for the Americans, I suspect, Mr Andrews. Our interests must still lie with our customers and suppliers to the south, for the next decade at least. With the aid of Rajah Star and his enclave on the Borneo coast we shall build our trading city here and then expand our interest. When does your first shipload of timbers arrive?”
“Weather permitting, sir, in three weeks. Baulks of house-building teak initially, to be followed by softwoods and then more of teak in greater lengths on a true timber-carrier procured from the Burma trade with India. As well, sir, I am to arrange for some hundreds of tons of rice to be sent inwards, together perhaps with Australian wheat flour. It would seem that famine is a regular friend on that coast and we are to ameliorate its effects as an early intent. It is advantageous to us, flour and rice neither being expensive goods to exchange for fine timbers.”
“Excellent, my boy! I do not doubt you will manage to extract a profit from a trade that I expected to break even at best! Timber is essential to our plans for the building of a great harbour and I had expected, as they say, to pay through the nose for it!”
Patrick smiled under praise from Mr Jardine, renowned as the canniest trader on the China coast, a man of great dreams with an unusual ability to turn his airy speculations into reality.
“What of you, Mr Andrews, have you managed to find any personal endeavours that will turn you a profit?”
Patrick leant back in his chair, thinking quickly, his face as impassive as he could make it. He was not at all certain that he wished to invite Jardine into his full confidence regarding the source of alluvial gemstones he had come across. He had a report from Canton recently sent to him, assaying the rocks he had placed in the hands of a reputable pair of dealers.
‘Rubies and sapphires of small to medium size and of a good commercial grade, easily moved on the current market. The sample sent worth not less than one thousand pounds, an exact value unavailable until they had been polished and cut.’
Those stones had taken him a bare afternoon of poking about in a very substantial deposit of gravels. He was arranging for a hundred coolies to be transported to Rajah Star’s harbour and to be taken inland to set up a proper mining endeavour, all done with his own funds.
He did not want Jardine muscling in on his private business.
“Ah! I see you have come onto something that will make your own fortune, Mr Andrews! Very good! We are here in China for no other purpose. I will assure you that I shall not make myself a nuisance to you! This pie is great enough for us all to take our slices!”
Patrick laughed and opened a drawer of his desk, took out four rough crystals, uninterestingly dull stones with just a tinge of colour in their unpolished state.
“Three dry river valleys, sir. Each has banks of gravel. A few hours of fossicking disclosed a handful of these.”
“What are they, Mr Andrews? They seem thoroughly dull and boring but I am sure they are not.”
“I believe these two to be ruby, sir, and the other sapphire. First reports from Canton are most encouraging.”
“Ah! Hence the hundred of coolies who have taken ship under your name!”
“Exactly, sir.”
It was a useful lesson for Patrick. Nothing was private if the curious had money and connections. He had made no great show of his activities yet they were known to Jardine.
“Too soon to know if there is a fortune awaiting you, Mr Andrews. I hope there may be. Money begets money, you know – the richer you are as an inhabitant of our new Hong Kong, the richer our town shall grow. Now, regarding our plans for the harbour, our masons tell me the stone towards the inland part of the island is adequate for building. There is better onshore towards the Kowloon side. We must quarry both. I am bound for Calcutta this month, to chase up merchants there who will come out to us and establish trading houses here, so this will be a matter for your hands, Mr Andrews.”
An hour of discussion and they had established how much could be spent out on the first quarries and where the stone should be used. Both agreed the first great need was a deepwater quay capable of handling the largest Indiamen, ships of nearly three thousand tons. There had to be warehouses as well for the ships to load into and they should be made with sturdy stone walls, capable of withstanding the typhoons that lashed the coast at five year intervals.
“Sometimes just two years apart, at others eight or even ten, but the Chinese assure me some twenty will come onshore every century, and they have records extending over one thousand years, so I shall believe them, Mr Andrews.”
“An old civilisation, sir, yet unchanging until we came along and shook them awake.”
“Possibly so, Mr Andrews. I do not know w e did them any great favours in the process, but they could not vegetate in seclusion. Time waits for no man, and yet they attempted to deny the passing of the years. Foolishness. We have awoken them and they will yet acknowledge us as their masters!”
The meeting came to an end and Jardine stepped out of the cabin of the ship moored out in the harbour that was all that currently existed of the great colony to be.
“There is word, sir, that the pirate fleets are interested in us. A suggestion that was they to fall upon Hong Kong, they could take you as hostage and extort many tens of thousands from Jardine for your safe return. They know, I am told, that he is in India now, so they will do nothing for the while. When he returns, however…”
Woodman, Patrick’s private servant, a deserter from the Navy and with a friendly way of speaking to all men that had even brought the local Chinese to confide in him, was certain of his information.
The pirate fleets were much diminished from their old splendour. At their height, the three pirate kings of North, East and South had led more than a thousand junks apiece, and possibly as many as a quarter of a million men. They had terrorised the coast from Siam north to the Arctic wastes, and had raided into Japanese and Filipino waters frequently. Now they were reduced to no more than fifty junks apiece, and none of them the great ocean-going sort. They could still bring out ten thousand men each, though not all armed with firelocks.
“We must not pay them a penny. Cough up a ransom this year and they will be back next. What have we in harbour, Woodman?”
“Two of our trading junks, one lorcha and a pair of opium traders from Calcutta.”
“Make the lorcha ready to sail to Canton. Quickly. I want to be there at soonest.”
The following dawn saw them sailing into the harbour at Canton, the lorcha making nothing of the short run, delaying in fact for daylight.
“How many Americans do you see, Woodman? How are they armed?”
Few merchant ships ventured the waters to Canton unarmed. Most were content with a sternchaser and a pair of small cannon to either beam. Among the Americans, who often traded into the South Seas as well, it was common for the armament to be heavier.
“Seven Yankees, sir. Two of them with heavy pivot guns as well as broadside pieces.”
“Good. What of steamers?”
“Four of steam and sail ships, sir. Two of them are modern screw ships and big, fifteen hundred tons and more.”
“Bring us to a mooring close to the smaller of the two paddle steamers.”
They came almost alongside Hotspur, no more than four hundred tons and at least ten years old, rigged as a three-masted barque, fore and main with square sails, mizzen fore-and-aft. She had tall paddle boxes and a high, thin, dirty funnel amidships.
“Permission to board?”
“Come on up, mister!”
Patrick wondered if he had been recognised as one of Jardine’s people. Ships’ captains were not always so willing to allow strangers aboard.
“I am Mr Andrews, working for Mr Jardine.”
“So you are. What can I do for you, sir?”
“I need the services of a steamer at Hong Kong, probably for some months. I would prefer to buy but might be prepared to offer a charter for a year. I would be putting guns aboard and cannot guarantee the safety of the ship or its people. Are you interested? I can guarantee you more than you would earn trading for a year. If you wish to sell, I will offer best price and passage to England where you could build your replacement.”
“Pirates?”
“I am told they have ambitions towards Hong Kong. With a steamer, I can cut a pirate fleet to ribbons.”
“You would need two, at least. You can’t get them in quick time… Hotspur ain’t the newest of ships, Mister Andrews, but it would cost me seventeen thousand, sterling, to build a replacement in an English yard. Can’t source a steam engine anywhere else, except in the States, and I ain’t American as such, you might say. Seventeen thou’ for the ship and a further one thou’ for me, and a passage Home after twelve months, Mister Andrews, and I am yours.”
“You have a deal, Captain…”
“Morris. I will need to hire on a crew. Some of the people I have aboard will stay on. The engineer will certainly do so if you offer him five hundred.”
“You are captain, Mr Morris. I supply the money, you offer him the five hundred.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Good. Now, where could we mount a pivot gun, one of the big four-ton guns?”
“Have you got one?”
“Not yet. The American three ships up the wharf has.”
“He won’t want to sell. He’s one will be trading down as far as the Solomons on his way back to New York.”
“Can’t say I’m too worried about what he wants, Mr Morris. I need the gun.”
“None too accurate, so I am told, sir.”
“We ain’t going to miss at a hundred yards, Mr Morris. I can pick up half a dozen of nine or twelve pound guns easily to protect our sides, but I need explosive shells that will destroy a junk with a single shot if I am to break the pirates.”
“I can lay hands on a navy gunner, sir.”
“I will see about the gun. Your money will be to hand in the bank ashore when you want it.”
Patrick returned to the lorcha much aware that Mr Jardine would be a surprised man when he discovered just how much he had paid out from the firm’s funds. If he wanted to keep Hong Kong, he had no choice.
“Woodman, load up the revolving pistols, please. John, the big coat to hide the gun belt.”
The American captain might not like the pressure he was about to experience. The pepperbox pistols would help no end.
“I am Mr Andrews from Jardines. Permission to come aboard?”
The wise man did not refuse Jardines when tied up in Canton. There were few officials on the docks but the harbourmaster was to be obeyed by any ship that ever wished to return, and Jardine owned him.
“Good morning, Captain. I am in need of weaponry to deal with one of the pirate fleets. I need, immediately, a large shell-firing gun and a supply of explosive shells. I am ready to pay a more than fair price.”
The captain looked at the sixty-eight pound pivot gun on his forecastle, the obvious requirement. It was little more than a carronade, short-ranged but very powerful at a cable’s distance.
“I need that gun, Mister Andrews.”
“So do I.”
“I have only a score of shells.”
“This is Canton. Give a Chinese mastersmith a day and he will be able to make them, as many as I want. One of their firework makers will produce fuses better than the originals. What’s your price?”
“I have not been able to lay hands on the best brocades this trip.”
“Go to our biggest warehouse in the morning.”
“Right, Mister Andrews. How are you going to lift her out?”
“Damned if I know, Captain. My people will find a way, and will make good the deck.”
The great advantage of working out of Canton was the knowledge that the Chinese artificers would tackle any problem sent their way. They were no more skilled than those to be found in London or any other great port, but the willingness of their own lords to take their heads at any excuse left them ingenious in ways of satisfying any master.
Patrick was still too young to appreciate the extent of the terror that was the background to Chinese life, but he did know that a Chinese worker given a job performed it remarkably well and very quickly. He called for the Jardine shroff to attend him.
The shroff was an important figure in any merchant house. He was not to be treated as a menial, yet he was not a gwailo lord; he was vital to the survival of the firm. Patrick knew to offer the shroff respect and a full explanation of all he was doing.
“The pirate fleet, Shroff. I have word they intend to take me and offer me for ransom at many thousands. If they are paid once, I believe…”
