Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  I shall set forth as prompt for enterprise,

  By reason of his boldness, and yet apt

  For composition, owing to that vein

  Of fancy that enhances, prudence which wards

  Contingencies of peril.9

  Courageous, cautious, intrepid, discerning, daring, prudent – the picture is again one of contrast, even contradiction. What seems certain is that Charles Elliot was a complex character. That complexity gave rise to unpredictable, sometimes bizarre, behaviour on occasion, but it never affected his essential professionalism. One testament to that came from an unlikely source; in an observation mainly intended to be critical of the British government, the Irish dissident John Mitchel commented that ‘it is one of the privileges of a superior officer in the British service to invent and publish any story he pleases to screen himself and government at the expense of a subordinate – and one of the duties of inferior officers to support him in his story, though to their own ruin’.10 Giving as an example the captain of the ship on which he had travelled to Bermuda, he continued

  Captain Wingrove can tell something of that practice – and so could Captain Elliot, from his experience in China. Perhaps you do not know that he acted in China according to his plain instructions, and when the transaction was supposed to have turned out unfortunate, and Parliament and the press were raving, he durst never plead those orders, but had to let ministers make up what story they liked.11

  It was Elliot’s experience in China that most thoroughly illustrated his liberal background and beliefs. His well-known abhorrence of the opium trade made him unpopular from the start with the merchants whose commerce he was charged with overseeing. Taylor was clear that while Elliot deplored the violent methods used by the Chinese against opium dealers and users ‘he still felt that on our side the quarrel was tainted in its origin.’12 Elliot’s empathy with the Chinese people (as opposed to their government), and indications that they respected him, were regarded with suspicion by his colleagues and superiors. Edward Belcher, captain of the survey ship HMS Sulphur, recounts how, when the British force was poised to take Canton, on the Chinese side ‘the ominous white flag was again displayed, and for some hours there had been repeated cries of “Elliot, Elliot!” as if he had been their protecting joss’.13 Above all, his determination to rely on force of arms as a deterrent to strengthen his negotiating position, and to use it only as a last resort, was contrary to the prevailing military and popular ethos. Austin Coates, the historian and former Hong Kong Assistant Colonial Secretary, wrote perceptively of Elliot that

  at every critical juncture he deliberately took care to demonstrate to the Chinese that he resorted to arms only under provocation, and he never missed an opportunity to enter into peaceful negotiations. In doing so he steered a miraculous course between the conflicting orders of his conscience, his superiors and his exceptional insight into Chinese realities.14

  As Julia Lovell has put it, setting the consequences of Elliot’s approach in operational context, ‘It was perhaps the dismissal of Charles Elliot that marked the true turning point in this war: from here on, the campaign would be more about gunboats than diplomacy’.15

  Elliot was never, in anyone’s estimation – except possibly Henry Taylor’s – a national hero or role model. He made mistakes, and it would be wrong to suggest that what he achieved was at all times the result of a clear strategy or tactical plan; but it can be argued that the sum of his contributions in a variety of arenas to different causes, viewed over his whole career and in the light of what was expected of him, has been underrated. The conclusions he drew from his experience as Protector of Slaves helped towards the framing of abolition legislation; the combination of negotiation and military force in China led to the ceding of Hong Kong and opening of more ports to trade; and determined diplomacy in Texas, despite health-related absences, almost succeeded against the odds in delaying, if not preventing, annexation by the United States. His naval career had been steady and competent rather than spectacular, and except for Trinidad his colonial governorships were successful assignments in which important progressive initiatives were undertaken. He could be paternalistic, vacillating, rash, and sometimes self-absorbed but his views, including those on racial and gender equality, were ahead of his time. He was essentially a patriotic man of principle who, while making his personal opinions clear, never in the end allowed such opinions to interfere with the discharge of his official responsibilities as he saw them.

  It has been his role in China on which Elliot’s reputation has been largely based. The last word is perhaps best left to the American merchant W. C. Hunter. He had been visited in 1853 by the French traveller the Abbe Huc, who recounted a meeting with the exiled former Commissioner Qishan. Drawing on what the Abbe had told him, Hunter subsequently wrote of Elliot that

  Throughout the difficult position in which he was placed after the death of Lord Napier, as HM’s Chief Superintendent at Canton, and however grave the events to which the opium surrender gave rise, it was remarkable the personal esteem in which he was held by the Chinese authorities, by the Co-Hong and particularly its chief, How-Qua, who would say ‘Elut No.1 honest man’.16

  Appendix 1

  Genealogies

  Charles and Clara Elliot’s children and grandchildren

  Charles Elliot’s Siblings, Nephews and Nieces

  Charles Elliot’s Aunts, Uncles and Cousinsi

  i Names of children of Sir Gilbert Elliot and of the 1st Earl of Minto as listed in Collins’s Peerage of England (Collins, London, 1812), Vol. VIII, 560-561

  ii 1st Earl of Minto

  iii 1st Baron Auckland

  iv 2nd Earl of Minto

  v Admiral

  vi 1st Earl of Auckland

  Appendix 2

  Timeline

  Monarchs, Ministers and Mandarins

  in office during Elliot’s post-naval career1

  1 To show who held office and the sequence of their appointments; lengths of tenure of ministers varied from a few months to several years

  2 Formally Permanent Under-Secretaries of State

  3 Secretaries of State were Secretaries of State for War and the Colonies until 1854 when a separate Colonial Office was established.

  4 Formerly Lord John Russell

  Appendix 3

  Ships

  In which he served

  HM Ships of Elliot’s career in the Royal Navy, 1815–1829 (Admiralty record ADM/196/4/161)

  1 Flagship

  2 Flagship, in use as a convalescence ship

  3 In command

  4 Convalescence ship

  5 Flagship, in use as a hospital and store ship

  6 In command

  7 In command

  Notes and References

  Prologue

  1 Andrew Yanne and Gillis Heller Signs of a Colonial Era (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 42

  Chapter One: Forbears, Father and Family

  1 G. F. S. Elliot The Border Elliots (Edinburgh, David Douglas, 1897), 21

  2 Ibid., 287–8

  3 Dennis Rodwell The Minto House Debacle, Context (Magazine of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation) Vol.36, Dec. 1992, at ihbc.org.uk/context_archive/36/minto.htm (accessed 1.7.2012). Minto House was demolished, amid much controversy, in 1992.

  4 MP for Selkirkshire 1753–65 and Roxburghshire 1765–77

  5 See H.M. Scott Elliot, Hugh 1752–1830 diplomat and adventurer in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)

  6 Countess of Minto A Memoir of the Right Honourable Hugh Elliot (Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas, 1868)

  7 Henry Taylor, 1800–86, writer and civil servant

  8 Taylor to Elliot, 27 March 1869 in Edward Dowden Correspondence of Henry Taylor (London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1888), 289, at https://archive.org/details/correspondenceof00tayl (accessed 26.2.2016)

  9 See Carl G Slater The Problem of Purchase Abolition in the British Army 1856-1862, Journal
of the South African Military History Society Vol 4 No 6, Dec.1979, at http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol046cs.html (accessed 16.7.2012). Slater notes that the purchasing of commissions for children was ‘originally conceived as a means of providing for the male orphans of deserving officers, but it quickly degenerated into a major abuse that was not abolished until the Duke of York’s administration as Commander-in-Chief at the end of the [eighteenth] century.’ The refusal to confirm Hugh Elliot’s commission in 1771 may in part have been because the practice was already falling into disrepute.

  10 Scott Oxford DNB and Clagette Blake Charles Elliot RN 1801-1875 A Servant of Britain Overseas (London, Cleaver-Hume Press Limited, 1960), 2

  11 See Jeremy Black British Diplomats and Diplomacy 1688–1800 (University of Exeter Press, 2001), 44

  12 Quoted in Scott Oxford DNB

  13 Jacques Rambaud (ed.) Memoirs of the Comte Roger de Damas (1787-1806) at http://archive.org/stream/memoirsofcomtero00damauoft#page/306/mode/2up (accessed 18.7.2012).

  14 Sources vary on the surname, some suggesting, since both words appear in her name, that it must be either Lewis or Jones; but Lewis Jones also seems possible.

  15 Countess of Minto A Memoir, 338

  16 Ibid. The Raphael painting was the Virgin, Child and Saints Sixtus and Barbara (1512), better known as The Sistine Madonna, which had been in the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister at Dresden since 1754

  17 Quoted in Black British Diplomats…, 161

  18 Ibid., 97

  19 Ibid., 101

  20 Ibid., 5

  21 The year of birth of [Theodore] Henry Elliot is not known, but he is referred to as the ‘eldest son’ in the Morning Post’s announcement of his marriage, at http://www.themastertons.org/james_masterton_gogar_braco.html (accessed 2.8.2012)

  22 Minto papers, ms 11084 f264, 7 September 1802, Hugh Elliot to Lord Minto. The reference to nine children suggests that Harriet and Carrie were elder sisters to Charles, or that there were other, unidentified, siblings.

  23 Scott Oxford DNB

  24 Blake Charles Elliot RN, 4. Blake ascribes the absence of further diplomatic appointments to a government decision, but also suggests that Elliot himself opted for a career change.

  25 Minto papers, ms 11084 f268, 9 March 1808, Hugh Elliot to Lady Minto

  26 Ibid., f270, 12 May 1808, Hugh Elliot to Lady Minto

  27 Ibid., f278, 6 June 1810, Hugh Elliot to Lord Minto

  28 Quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 9

  29 John Buchan Lord Minto: A Memoir (London and Edinburgh, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1924), 5 ‘I was not aware that Providence was one of your allies’ … ‘The only one, Sir, whom we do not pay.’

  30 Quoted in Buchan Lord Minto, 118

  Chapter Two: Minor to Midshipman

  1 Countess of Minto A Memoir, 338

  2 Ibid.

  3 FO70/21/8-11, 4 July 1803, Hugh Elliot to Lord Hawkesbury

  4 Blake Charles Elliot RN, 4

  5 FO70/27/194-195, 25 August 1806, Hugh Elliot to Charles James Fox

  6 Minto papers, ms 11084 f282, 8 June 1810, Hugh Elliot to Lord Minto

  7 See TAB Corley Valpy, Richard (1754–1836) schoolmaster, Oxford DNB

  8 Oliver Oldfellow (Benjamin Bradney Bockett) Our School: Or Scraps and Scrapes in Schoolboy Life (London, John Wesley & Co., 1857, reprinted Kessinger Publishing, 2009)

  9 Minto papers, ms 13138 ff157-159, Ned to Emma, 22 May 1814

  10 The extent of reductions in naval expenditure after the wars with France was controversial; opponents claimed that it left the Royal Navy ill able to discharge its growing non-war commitments such as suppression of slave-trading, piracy and smuggling. See C.J.Bartlett Great Britain and Sea Power 1815-1853 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963) passim

  11 Anna Maria, Lady Minto (1752-1829), Hugh Elliot’s sister-in-law and Charles’s aunt, whose husband Gilbert had died in 1814; her role in supplying careers guidance to the 14-year-old boy was clearly significant.

  12 Minto papers, ms 11789 f33, 12 February 1816, Hugh Elliot to Lord Minto

  13 On the closure of the Academy (in 1806 renamed the Royal Naval College) in 1837 institutional provision for officer education and training ceased until 1863 when it resumed on HMS Britannia, moored in the River Dart; the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth opened in 1905 and was renamed Britannia Royal Naval College in 1953.

  14 William R. O’Byrne A Naval Biographical Dictionary: comprising the Life and Services of Every Living Officer in Her Majesty’s Navy, from the Rank of Admiral of the Fleet to that of Lieutenant, inclusive (London, John Murray, 1849) 332

  15 J. J. Colledge and Ben Warlow Ships of the Royal Navy (Newbury, Casemate-UK, 2010), 227

  16 Samantha Cavell Playing at Command: Midshipmen and Quarterdeck Boys in the Royal Navy 1793–1815 MA thesis Louisiana State University 2006, 24 at http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-03312006-200152/unrestricted/Cavell_thesis.pdf (accessed 13.9.2012)

  17 Data in Robert Mackenzie The Trafalgar Roll: The Ships and Officers (London, Chatham Publishing, 2004), quoted in Cavell Playing at Command, 106, indicates that each of the sixteen 74s at Trafalgar had between fifteen and twenty-five midshipmen and volunteers (first class).

  18 Cavell Playing at Command, 21

  19 The scale of the activity is discussed persuasively and in detail in Robert C. Davis Counting European Slaves on the Barbary Coast, in Past and Present No.172 (Oxford University Press, August 2001) 87-124

  20 See Andrew Lambert The Last Sailing Battle Fleet: Maintaining Naval Mastery 1815-1850 (London, Conway Maritime Press, 1991), 184

  21 William Laird Clowes The Royal Navy – A History from the Earliest Times to the Present (London, Sampson, Low, Marston and Co., 1901), quoted Blake Charles Elliot RN, 8

  22 Brian Lavery Empire of the Seas (London, Conway, 2009), 235

  23 Quoted ibid.

  24 George Grover to his father, 29 August 1816, Official Catalogue and Guide, Chelsea Royal Naval Exhibition, 2 May 1891, 32 at http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/1891-may-2-chelsea-royal-naval-exhibition (accessed 29.9.2012)

  25 Data in William James The Naval History of Great Britain 1793-1827 (London, R. Bentley, 1837), Vol. VI, 408 at http://pbenyon.plus.com/Naval_History/Vol_VI/Contents.html (accessed 1.10.2012)

  26 Ibid.

  27 Minden in Index of 19th Century Naval Vessels, data from William James The Naval History of Great Britain at http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/18-1900/M/03033.html (accessed 5.10.2012)

  28 See Sugata Bose A Hundred Horizons. The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (London and Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2006), 45

  29 Antigua, Bermuda, Bombay, the Cape, Gibraltar, Jamaica, Malta, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Trincomalee

  30 Noted in HA Colgate Trincomalee and the East Indies Squadron 1746 to 1844 unpublished MA thesis University of London 1959, 293

  31 From ADM1/190, correspondence of commander-in-chief East Indies with Admiralty, 1817-1820, and ADM7/561, Royal Navy ships and movements, 1814-1824

  32 ADM1/190, Sir Richard King’s letters written from ‘Minden, Trincomalee’

  33 Minden in Index of Nineteenth Century Naval Vessels

  34 It may also explain a reference in a letter by Charles Elliot of 21 March 1839 in which he describes his son Hughie as being ‘just like Fred [Charles’s brother] was at Madras in appearance’; see Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 228

  35 ADM7/561/347 Minden

  36 The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol.89, 1819, part 2, 185

  37 The Second Earl, Hugh Elliot’s brother the First Earl having died in 1814

  38 Minto papers, ms 11789 f39, 9 October 1819, Hugh Elliot to Lord Minto

  39 Ibid. f44, December 1820, Hugh Elliot to Lord Minto

  40 ADM7/561/284 Iphigenia

  Chapter Three: Commission to Captain

  1 See Harry W. Dickinson Educating the Royal Navy: Eighteenth– and Nineteenth–Century Education for Officers (Abingdon, Routledge, 2007), 31.
There had been provision for schoolmasters to be appointed to Royal Navy ships since 1702, but numbers had been relatively small.

  2 Quoted ibid., 32

  3 Based on the careers of fifty officers joining the Navy between 1788 and 1820; data in William Loney RN – Background at http://www.pdavis.nl/Background.htm (accessed 28.10.2012)

  4 For an illustrative and informative account of the twelve years from 1807 to 1819, and of the role of the Royal Navy in suppressing the slave trade thereafter, see Sian Rees Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships that Stopped the Slave Trade (London, Chatto & Windus, 2009), 26-49 and following.

  5 The other countries included Spain (1817) and The Netherlands (1818)

  6 Noted in Philip Aubrey Preventive Squadron – The Royal Navy and the West African Slave Trade 1811-1868 (Julian Corbett Prize Essay, University of London, 1948), 27

  7 ‘Cutting out’ was the term for a surprise attack by small boats on larger stationary vessels, with the object of capturing or cutting the target out of future service.

  8 Aubrey Preventive Squadron, 29. This seems a plausible description of the encounter; the author does not cite his source.

  9 Ibid., 30

  10 It is estimated that between 1808 and 1860 some 150,000 Africans were freed by the Squadron from around 1,600 slave ships (Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth at http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/visit_see_victory_cfexhibition_infosheet.htm (accessed 3.11.2012))

  11 ADM7/561/361 Hussar

  12 ADM196/4/161. For the key dates in Elliot’s naval career Blake Charles Elliot RN relies on O’Byrne’s Naval Biographical Dictionary, to which reference is also made in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong. O’Byrne cites brief periods on ships not mentioned in the Admiralty record, the schooner Union (June to August 1825) and the brig-sloop Bustard (immediately before joining the Harlequin). A further variation from the Admiralty record is that O’Byrne cites only one period of service in Serapis (January to April 1826), not two.