In the Professional Notes of the PROCEEDINGS of the Institute for September, 1924, under the caption of "Great Britain" there is a sub-heading as above. There follows an extract from the Naval and Military Record quoting the famous dictum although mis-spelling the name of our gallant officer who gave utterance to it and who little dreamed that it would persist as long as the Anglo-Saxon race survives. The Record draws a parallel between this saying and a recent incident, also in Chinese waters, when an American, named Hawley, in the employ of a British firm in Shanghai, was murdered by junk men at Wan-hsien. As set forth in this quotation, when Commander Whitehorn of the British river gunboat Cockchafer heard of the outrage he at once proceeded to the spot and compelled the Chinese authorities promptly to execute the two junk men most involved in this crime; also to march in the funeral procession of the murdered American and to eat humble pie in various other ways. This he brought about by training the guns of his ship on the town and threatening to blow it into the sky if his demands were not instantly complied with.
In this day and generation but little is actually known as to the exact origin of this immortal phrase, as nearly all the actors in that far away drama have since passed on. It happens, however, that the writer was privileged to hear the story in the year 1899 from the very British officer to whom the utterance was made by our Commodore Josiah Tattnall, who had served as a midshipman on the Constellation in both the War of 1812 and our war with Algiers in 1815; he was in the Powhatan with Perry at the signing of our treaty with Japan, and in our Civil War attained much prominence as commodore on board the Merrimac in her fight with the Monitor.
Early in December, 1899, it was my good fortune to sail from Southampton to Colombo on the P. & O. steamship Rome and among my fellow passengers was the senior admiral of the British Navy, Sir Henry Keppel, better known as Sir Harry, and of course retired, as he was then ninety years old and still going strong, for he lived to be ninety-five before death came to him. He was a son of the fourth Earl of Albemarle and had been in the service for sixty-five years under four sovereigns, George III, George IV, William IV and Victoria. The old admiral was of small stature with beady, black eyes, still bright and alert, and with a wonderful memory, especially for the many events of the earlier part of his long career. His hair was white as snow, worn rather long, and he was smooth shaven. I was the only passenger he took any interest in and we spent many hours up on the boat deck, during which he told me of fights and expeditions he had participated in all over the world. His narratives were most interesting, especially as he greatly admired our naval officers, with whom he had been much in contact during so many years.
This led him to relate to me the true story of the Chinese incident which led up to the historic utterance which heads this paper and just how it came about. He was excellent authority on the subject for he happened to be the British officer to whom the declaration was made by Commodore Tattnall. In 1857 or 1858 the British Government felt that it had reason for punishing the Chinese by attacking their forts at the mouth of the Peiho River and assembled a squadron off there, with a lot of troops on board for that purpose. The day came for the attack and the British commander sent in about all the boats of his fleet, filled with soldiers and sailors to land, as he supposed, under the sea wall of the forts, so as to carry them by assault. Through ignorance of the character of the shore line, this force was landed on what looked like the mainland but what was really a mud bank separated from the true shore by a body of water known as the Fatshan Creek. This was not very wide but was of a muddy, sluggish nature, probably with a sticky mud bottom and of unknown depth. The Chinese, seeing the mistake of the invaders, promptly took advantage of it, opening a galling fire from the higher walls of their forts which mowed the Britishers down without their being able to do much execution in return. Incidentally, the Chinese shot most of their boats to pieces, for the mud bank was not very wide.
The situation of the landing force was truly desperate, with every prospect of their being shot down to a man in the course of time. Commodore Tattnall, with several of our ships, was lying off shore just out of range, watching the conflict. Seeing the slaughter of the British and foreseeing their probable extinction in their helpless position, he ordered all the boats of his squadron away and sending them to the sea edge of the mud bank embarked the remaining Britishers and conveyed them around the end of the mud bank, landing them on the real mainland. Here they quickly formed up and soon after carried the principal forts by assault.
When it was all over, the British commander, Sir Henry Keppel, went off to the American flagship to express his gratitude for being helped out of so tight a place. It happened that this vessel was named Toeyan, probably a chartered Chinese steamer, perhaps on account of her light draft, for this entire coast is notoriously shallow. Also she had run aground a few days previously and had been helped off by some British warships. Possibly this incident left some feeling of gratitude in the bosom of our commander; who knows?
When Sir Henry met our commodore he expressed his sincere thanks for what had been done for him and went on to say that he marveled the more at it, because the United States was at peace with China. To this Commodore Tattnall replied that blood was thicker than water, and that he could not stand to see the British shot down without their being able to fight back decently. This, he considered, justified his intervention. Sir "Harry" had admired American naval officers ever since, which meant about half a century.
It is possible that George III, when receiving the first American Minister (about 1784), could have had prophetic vision when he said, among other things; "I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power. Let the circumstances of language, religion, and blood have their full effect."
The old admiral told me many other interesting experiences of his long career and one of them concerned the long dispute between the British Government and ours, over the settlement of the northwestern boundary of the United States or more specifically where the northern border of (the then) Washington Territory should be fixed. This almost brought us into war with Great Britain, but it was happily averted. I believe very few of the present generation have any clear ideas of the situation at that time and one of Sir Harry's stories presents an amusing situation which grew out of it.
As finally determined, this boundary begins out in the strait of Georgia, inside Vancouver Island, and comes ashore at latitude 49° N. which it follows exactly for about 260 miles due east to the western border of Idaho, where it continues as the northern limit of that state. South of 49° the dividing line follows the Haro Channel southerly, and the strait of Juan de Fuca due west, fairly near the middle of these waterways. In fact, the dispute began in 1847 over the Haro Channel and waxed in fury until 1859 when war was openly talked about. Our populace, then as now, worked itself into a rage over this matter concerning which it had little real knowledge and gave birth to the slogan, "Fifty-four forty or fight," which must have been very embarrassing to our government.
Somewhere about this time Sir Harry Keppel came to the coast of British Columbia in command of three warships. He, as well as everybody else in that remote region, was far from anywhere. There were no overland railways, no telegraphs, no means of communication with any government excepting by sea, taking months for a message to reach its destination, during which period important changes might have occurred in affairs. Soon after the arrival of the British squadron, it was enveloped in a dense fog which lasted well into the next day. When the fog finally lifted an American frigate was discovered some miles to seaward, all of the warships being becalmed at the time.
Sir Henry decided to pay a visit to the American captain to see if he could hear any news about the state of affairs, especially pertaining to the boundary dispute, so he ordered away a boat and in time came alongside our ship. To his astonishment he found no gangway over the side to receive him and was obliged to request that one be put over so he could come aboard. When he arrived on deck he was greatly surprised to find all the guns run out, round shot piled on deck, the men at their battle stations and the ship cleared for action. When our commander received him in his cabin Sir Henry said, "Isn't this a peculiar and rather unfriendly way for you to receive an officer from the warships of a nation with which you are at peace?" "Waal," drawled the American commander, "I didn't know whether it was peace or war, so I thought I wouldn't be caught with my breeches daown." Admiral Keppel laughed heartily as he told me this story and said that he learned later that our man came from Nantucket.
This dispute became so bitter that finally the two governments entered into a sort of protocol by which the tentative boundary (presumably 54° 40") was occupied by the troops of both nations until the matter should be settled. This condition of affairs must have lasted for many years, for it was not until 1871 that it was agreed to submit the contention to arbitration and the German Emperor was chosen arbitrator. He did not make his decision known until in 1872, when William I gave us the boundary which exists today. This must have been one of the very earliest instances where the United States left a dispute of such far reaching importance to be settled by arbitration, and abided by the decision.
The existing boundary is, of course, known to all of our naval men, but let us consider for a moment where 54° 40" would have left us had we been awarded that degree of latitude for our northern boundary. This line would probably have run due east until it reached Lake Winnipeg at about its center, which would have given us about half of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, together with a goodly portion of the western half of Manitoba. From Lake Winnipeg it would probably have dropped gradually down to Lake Superior, as the boundary east of the former lake was already established, or practically so.
On the Pacific Coast, such a decision would have been a very serious matter for the British Government and the Canadians, as 54° 40" would have taken us up to the present southern border of Alaska (then Russian) and the Dixon Entrance, shutting Canada off from the Pacific except by passing through United States waters to get in and out of the Portland Canal. In such case Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo and all of Vancouver Island would have been ours, as well as all the islands to the northward along Queen Charlotte Sound. By this award of the German Emperor we lost about 450,000 square miles of additional territory.
Today, with the shadows of the Great War still resting upon us, is there anyone who wishes that we had started a long bloody, fratricidal war with the other half of our own race, over this far northern territory which even at the present time is mostly wilderness, or very sparsely populated?