3-017-197 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Chinese pirates attacked by the British gun-boat Opossum, near Hong-Kong, 1865. 'The Opossum, commanded by Lieutenant H. C. St. John, has been employed for some months past in chastising the pirates who infest various parts of the coast...and who were inflicting cruel injury upon the peaceful traders - usually killing all the men on board every vessel which, they captured, and making slaves of the women...The affair represented in our Illustration (from a sketch by an officer present) took place on the 1st of March. "This was a hard chase. No less than forty-three pirates were on board the junk, and they had two big guns. They ran for it on the gun-boat's appearance, reached the shore, and got up the hills before us; but some of them were so foolish as to go away in a sampan, which we overtook close to the rocks, when the pirates jumped overboard, closely followed by a boat from the gun-boat. In their hurry, our men had taken no arms, and between one tall bluejacket and a pirate on the rocks there was a rare fight, the bluejacket ultimately knocking him down and, of course, securing him...Three of them we kept considering them young enough to change their mode of life; the other eighteen were all sent to Canton and executed".' From "Illustrated London News", 1865.