A Chinese junk visits Jersey
The first Chinese junk to visit Europe, the Keying, made Jersey her first European port of call in March 1848.
In August 1846 at Canton a group of enterprising English business men invested in a Chinese junk in the hope of using the vessel as a floating trade exhibition, with the view of attracting tourists and trade to Hong Kong, which had been ceded to Britain by the “Treaty of Nanjing” in 1842, at the end of the first opium war of 1839–42. The junk was named after the noble Qiying (Keying), a Manchu mandarin of the dynasty of Purity, who was entrusted by the Emperor to deal with westerners in Hong Kong.
The purchase may have been against Chinese law under the Manchu Dynasty, which forbade in several ways interaction with foreigners. What is interesting is that a mandarin known as He Sing, and a well-known Chinese artist Sam Sing, were picked to go on the voyage, and it is suggested that the Emperor was aware of the project from the start and secretly kept informed about it, and that the mandarin served as an informer to report back in detail.
The junk Keying was a 160 feet long, with a hold depth of 19 feet, 800 tons (Chinese), mainsail 9 tons, mainmast 85 feet long from the deck of the ship, which was made of teak. The rudder was suspended by a series of ropes and weighed 7 tons and could be lifted by two winches. The ship was painted black and white, with a large eagle on her stern and two eyes on her bow, which gave its hideous assemblage of planks an appearance of a great marine monster. She cost $75,000.
After the Governor, Sir John Davis, Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane and all the Officers of the Fleet had visited the Keying she left Hong Kong on 6 December 1846 bound for London, under the command of Captain Charles Auckland Kellett (born Plymouth 1820) with a crew including 30 Chinese and 12 English. She rounded Cape Horn on 6 March 1847 and after being at sea for four and half months she put into St Helena on 17 April, leaving on the 23rd. She carried on her passage but was driven westward and running low on supplies she instead made for New York, arriving there on 9 July, 212 days from Canton.
She created a great deal of interest with 7,000 to 8,000 visitors per day initially, paying 25 cents each. She left New York for Boston and arrived there on 18 November and on Thanksgiving Day attracted 4,000 to 5,000 visitors.
Arrival off Jersey
She left Boston for London on 17 February, with her masts adorned with strips of red cloth that the Chinese crew believed would bring a good and safe journey to them. On about 11 March 1848 the vessel found herself near the Roches Douvres and was approached by the cutter Peirson under the command of Captain Chevalier, who escorted the junk into St Aubin’s Bay, for which he was paid £60.
The junk having made a quick crossing of the Atlantic in 21 days anchored off Jersey, her first European port of call, where she stayed for ten days. Crowds gathered on the Esplanade with their glasses to view the junk in the bay. Several boats ventured out to get a closer look at her, but no women were allowed to board her as the right of the first European woman to board was reserved for Queen Victoria.
Two boatmen, John Stone and John Kimber, took a party of onlookers out. As they neared the junk the packet from Plymouth the Zebra rounded Noirmont and steered a course close to the junk to also view the marvel. In doing so she swamped the boat of Stone and Kimber and the party were thrown into the water with Lieutenant Bassen of the Royal Navy, Boatman Kimber, and a boy, George Hamon, drowning. Among those who survived were:
- Josue Brayn, George Ingouville Perchard, Jean De Gruchy, Thomas De Gruchy, M Boisnet (of the Pomme D’Or), with his chef and commisionnaire, Elias Tinckam, Samuel Tinckam, (George Hamon was their apprentice) George Hamon, James Murphy.
The Keying left Jersey for London with the steamer Monarch under Captain Priaulx as her escort, with the trip expected to take three days. She arrived at her destination and tied up at the East India Docks, adjoining the Railway and Steamboat Pier, Blackwall on 27 March, 477 days after leaving Canton. She created no less a stir in London, as she had elsewhere, with her Mandarin of rank and the artist of celebrity hosting visitors in the grand saloon, gorgeously furnished in the most approved style of the celestial empire with its collection of Chinese curiosities. The Times stated:
- “There is not a more interesting exhibition in the vicinity of London than the Chinese Junk: one step across the entrance, and you are in the Chinese world; you have quitted the Thames for the vicinity of Canton.”
Some famous visitors toured the junk, including the Duke of Wellington and Charles Dickens, and several of the young Chinese crew visited Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.
From the Jersey Times, 5 April 1850
- "The Chinese Junk – On Saturday last an accident of a very serious character, but unattended with any loss of life, happened to a large wooden structure which had lately been in the course of erection at the Essex pier, at the bottom of Essex street, Strand, London, for the purpose of exhibiting the Chinese Junk. This building was erected on piles driven down into the river, and was 400 feet long, 60 feet high, and about 50 broad; and one side, the ends, and a portion of the roof had already been enclosed in boards. Throughout Friday night the whole shook and trembled under the influence of the wind, which was very high, and about ten on Saturday morning, while half a dozen workmen were engaged in securing the woodwork, the structure fell down with a large crash. A strong gust of wind was blowing at the time from the east, and the piles were not strong enough to resist the pressure occassioned by the wind acting on the whole length of the side. All the men escaped unhurt, except one, who was precipitated from a considerable height on the mud below, into which he sank several feet; and another who received such injuries on his arm as to render it necessary to remove him to the Hospital. Men had been employed on this building nearly a month, and the cost will be about £500".
The Keying was eventually taken to Liverpool where she was scrapped and her timbers used in the building of ferry boats for the River Mersey.
Charles Dickens letter
- "He tried Broadstairs once more, having no important writing in hand: but in the brief interval before leaving, he saw a thing of celebrity in those days, the Chinese junk; and I had all the details in so good a description that I could not resist the temptation of using some parts of it at the time.
- 'Drive down to the Blackwall railway', he wrote to me, 'and for a matter of eighteen-pence you are at the Chinese Empire in no time. In half a score of minutes, the tiles and chimney-pots, backs of squalid houses, frowsy pieces of waste ground, narrow courts and streets, swamps, ditches, masts of ships, gardens of duckweed, and unwholesome little bowers of scarlet beans, whirl away in a flying dream, and nothing is left but China. How the flowery region ever came into this latitude and longitude is the first thing one asks; and it is not certainly the least of the marvel. As Aladdin’s palace was transported hither and thither by the rubbing of a lamp, so the crew of Chinamen aboard the Keying devoutly believed that their good ship would turn up, quite safe, at the desired port, if they only tied red rags enough upon the mast, rudder, and cable. Somehow they did not succeed. Perhaps they ran short of rag; at any rate they hadn’t enough on board to keep them above water; and to the bottom they would undoubtedly have gone but for the skill and coolness of a dozen English sailors, who brought them over the ocean in safety. Well, if there be any one thing in the world that this extraordinary craft is not at all like, that thing is a ship of any kind. So narrow, so long, so grotesque; so low in the middle, so high at each end, like a China pen-tray; with no rigging, with nowhere to go to aloft; with mats for sails, great warped cigars for masts, gaudy dragons and sea-monsters disporting themselves from stem to stern, and on the stern a gigantic cock of impossible aspect, defying the world (as well he may) to produce his equal, — it would look more at home at the top of a public building, or at the top of a mountain, or in an avenue of trees, or down in a mine, than afloat on the water. As for the Chinese lounging on the deck, the most extravagant imagination would never dare to suppose them to be mariners. Imagine a ship’s crew, without a profile among them, in gauze pinafores aud plaited hair; wearing stiff clogs a quarter of a foot thick in the sole; and lying at night in little scented boxes, like backgammon men or chess-pieces, or mother-of-pearl counters! But by Jove! even this is nothing to your surprise when you go down into the cabin. There you get into a torture of perplexity. As, what became of all those lanterns hanging to the roof when the Junk was out at sea? Whether they dangled there, banging and beating against each other, like so many jesters’ baubles? Whether the idol Chin Tee, of the eighteen arms, enshrined in a celestial Punch’s Show, in the place of honour, ever tumbled out in heavy weather? Whether the incense and the joss-stick still burnt before her, with a faint perfume and a little thread of smoke, while the mighty waves were roaring all around? Whether that preposterous tissue-paper umbrella in the corner was always spread, as being a convenient maritime instrument for walking about the decks with in a storm? Whether all the cool and shiny little chairs and tables were continually sliding about and bruising each other, and if not why not? Whether anybody on the voyage ever read those two books printed in characters like bird-cages and fly-traps? Whether the Mandarin passenger, He Sing, who had never been ten miles from home in his life before, lying sick on a bamboo couch in a private china closet of his own (where he is now perpetually writing autographs for inquisitive barbarians), ever began to doubt the potency of the Goddess of the Sea, whose counterfeit presentment, like a flowery monthly nurse, occupies the sailors’ joss-house in the second gallery? Whether it is possible that the said Mandarin, or the artist of the ship, Sam Sing, Esquire, RA of Canton, can ever go ashore without a walking-staff of cinnamon, agreeably to the usage of their likenesses in British tea-shops? Above all, whether the hoarse old ocean could ever have been seriously in earnest with this floating toy-shop; or had merely played with it in lightness of spirit — roughly, but meaning no harm — as the bull did with another kind of china-shop on St. Patrick’s day in the morning.”
- "The reply made on this brought back comment and sequel not less amusing.
- 'Yes, there can be no question that this is Finality in perfection; and it is a great advantage to have the doctrine so beautifully worked out, and shut up in a corner of a dock near a fashionable white-bait house for the edification of man. Thousands of years have passed away since the first junk was built on this model, and the last junk ever launched was no better for that waste and desert of time. The mimic eye painted on their prows to assist them in finding their way, has opened as wide and seen as far as any actual organ of sight in all the interval through the whole immense extent of that strange country. It has been set in the flowery head to as little purpose for thousands of years. With all their patient and ingenious but never advancing art, and with all their rich and diligent agricultural cultivation, not a new twist or curve has been given to a ball of ivory, and not a blade of experience has been grown. There is a genuine finality in that; and when one comes from behind the wooden screen that encloses the curious sight, to look again upon the river and the mighty signs on its banks of life, enterprise, and progress, the question that comes nearest is beyond doubt a home one. Whether we ever by any chance, in storms, trust to red rags; or burn joss-sticks before idols; or grope our way by the help of conventional eyes that have no sight in them; or sacrifice substantial facts for absurd forms? The ignorant crew of the Keying refused to enter on the ship’s books, until ‘a considerable amount of silvered-paper, tin-foil, and joss-stick’ had been laid in by the owners for the purposes of their worship. And I wonder whether our seamen, let alone our bishops and deacons, ever stand out upon points of silvered-paper and tin-foil and joss-sticks. To be sure Christianity is not Chin-Teeism, and that I suppose is why we never lose sight of the end in contemptible and insignificant quarrels about the means. There is enough matter for reflection aboard the Keying at any rate to last one’s voyage home to England again.”