Serendipity

Serendipity: noun "the fact of finding interesting or valuable things by chance"

During the "jaw-jaw" session of last week's game for some reason it became pertinent for Chris to mention that one of his ancestors (a distant great uncle) was blown up in South East Asia during the 19th century whilst fighting pirates. As is often the way with family anecdotes there was no further detail available. Stories passed down by word of mouth often follow one of two routes. They are either embellished with extra elements in the retelling or quite the reverse, information is lost and it is pared down to its bare minimum. In this case "I had a great-great-something uncle who was blown up fighting pirates".

It was an entertaining anecdote that raised a smile and I thought no more of it, until a couple of days later. I've been reading this book recently, it having sat on my bookshelf for two or three years. I've always claimed that you can use "Taiping Era" for the 1839-42 1st China War (or "1st Opium War" or just "Opium War" depending upon your point of view) so when I saw the book on Dave Lanchester's stand at a show - I forget which one - very reasonably priced I picked it up. And then immediately started working on Jacobites, pushing firmly onto the back burner. Well, having reached a surfeit of interest in the 18th century I thought it would be worthwhile to give it a read as I start to get up to speed for my 1840s China / Sikh project as trailed in the last post.

Any how, I came across this passage in the book. As background, having broken the power of the local mandarins because they keep reneging on promises and so on, the British forces in China found that local disreputable elements, including pirates, had a bit of a resurgence. They therefore put a number of vessels on duty to prevent piracy. Then this happened:

"The boats of the squadron, however, under the direction of Captain Smith, C.B., of the Druid, succeeded before long in suppressing this system of violence, so desolating to those classes of the people of China from whom it was our policy to avert as much as possible the horrors of war. This was not effected, however, before several terrible examples had been made of the crews of pirate-junks and row-boats captured, and some loss suffered on the part of the captors, chiefly upon the occasion of the boarding of a large vessel which blew up, injuring and destroying many of our men, while a boat of H. M. S. Druid was alongside, and part of her crew in the act of mounting the sides of the junk."

I've shared the extract with Chris. He doesn't know for sure if his ancestor was on the Druid or not, but it would be a bit odd if such a thing happened twice, wouldn't it?