I PORT HAMILTON. Further Details of its Occupation-Laying a, Cable.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 119, 12 September 1885, Page 3

I PORT HAMILTON. Further Details of its Occupation-Lay-ing a, Cable.

The Hongkong f • China Mail " of June 3rd says :— There are now half-a-dozen British meu-of-war in Port Hamilton, and the tender of Thalea makes frequent trips between thafc port and Nagasaki with coal, rough spars, and stores. . „ The telegraph steamer Agnes has just laid a submarine cable between Port Hamilton and the North Saddle, which is the extreme north end of the Chusan archipelago. The details of the occupation of l^orC Hamilton are given as follows by the Japan " Gazette " : •* It seems that the annexation of Port Hamilton took place at llp.m on May 10th. The orders had been not to run up the British flag unless the occupation was directly or indirectly challenged, and the appearance of a Russian ship constituting such a contingency, steps were ■} once taken to declare the nationality of the new owners. There are some 2,000 Corean inhabitants, and they are described by an officer of the occupying squadron as dirty and lazy, the women and children doing all the work, and the men sauntering about in soiled white clothes. No doubt they will benefit largely by being brought under British rulo, but it would be interesting to know what is their present status. Are they British subjects or prisoners ? Speaking from an administrative point of view, they must have been a tolerably self, sufficing community, for certainly the Government of Corea seldom, if ever, can have interfered to control them. Still the authority of their officials must have been derived from Soul, and with a British squadron in the harbour Soul has been removed to an indefinite distance. We doubt whether Admiral Dowell's instructions included any solution of this problem. The programme was that the place should not be annexed except under certain circumstances, and so long as those circumstances were absent, the use of the harbour by foreign ships need not have g^iy <J«»turbed the local official*. But with the Union Jack floating from their peaks the inhabitants are reduced to a somewhat anomalous position. We are told that the occupation is to be temporary only-say, a six months' affair. During the next six months, then, the island will be without an administration, for it is not at all likely that England will be at the pains to appoint an administrative staff, and it is still less likely that the Corean Government will undertake to administer a district which is in English occupation. The Probability is that questions of this nature will be letb to settle themselves." r ... ,i W -_i.t 1 The Tientsin correspondent A the Worth China Daily News "of June Ist pays : Li Hung Chang has sent in his formal protest against the British occupation of Port Hamilton. You may safely rely upon it that the protest is formal and nothing more, and has been made for a definite purpose. Ine occupation of the islands was probably arranged with Corea through Mr Ashton, actine under the guidance of Sir Harry Parkes. The German officers who went some weeks ago in the two cruwers of Admiral In q htvebeen boasting that they hauled down the British Hag there, and showed by tneir talk that their present masters did not approve of its being in British hands. A good stoiy is current that last year Li Hung Chang mentioned to a foreign Minister Plenipotentiary that Great Britain should never have Port Hamilton, for she already possessed eaough smuggling stations in Hongkong, without getting another on tne coast of China." . . , It is the general impression in Japan that Russia, to offset England's occupation of Port Hamilton, will try to gain possession of the Corean port of Fusar, or of one of the eeveral fine harbours to the south of that place. Itis not thought that Tuelpart will be selected, as the island is, from a strategic point, badly situated, and has no good harbours. TheratificationsoftheßusHO-Corean Treaty were to have been exchanged on June 26th, but this has been delayed. This, it is thought, is to allow the insertion of an article permitting Russia to occupy a port. Mollendorff, the German adviser of the, Corean Government, has strong Russian proclivities. IA ., The Shanghai "Mercury" of June 10th has a letter from Port Hamilton of May 17th, in which the writer, who is on the ship Merrionethshire, says : " The portis all laid with ! mines and torpedoes, and we are iuu up with coals and stores, and have provisions for a month for 1,000 men. Sometimes the British men-of-war come and take an anchor or five tona of coal away. Two Chinese gunboats came in this morning. I don t know what they watit, unless they are windbound, for it has been blowing a gale of wind for these few days past. This is a lovely harbour, quite landlocked and sheltered from all winds. It is a second Hongkong, and, in fact, far better.'