General Yang Son, Wa Pei-fu's protege, who has been bounced. out of Chungking for the second time in a year by his rivals, has t hhis headquarters at' Wanhsien the upper end of the Gorges. His semi-bandit troops are eternally galavanting up and down the river and when they want accomodation in large numbers, find it convenient to pirate a foreign steamer, but put the officers under guard' and force them to go to whatever destination suits the military convenience, The steamer Wanliv, bound for Wanhsien, was boarded in this fashion, August 29, by 16 armed men who tried to rush the bridge and the engine room. Junks full of soldiers also pulled along. side to aid the boarding party. The officers outraged the proprieties, however, by standing off the pirates and taking the ship on her way. As she was pulling out a couple of sampang fouled one another and one filled with water and sank, This probably entailed the loss of a few ardent patriots, but it was no fault of the foreigners. Upon arrival at Wanhsien the Cockchafer removed the armed ruffians and considered the incident closed, but Yang Sen sxw an opportunity to stand up for his right of confiscation, made absurd claimg for damages and put three or four hundred men on each of the steamers, Wanhsien and 'Wantung, then in port, holding the six foreign officers as hostages. 'The British consul at Chungking arrived day or so later on the Widgeon and attempted to show Yang Sen that he was in the wrong, but this little upstart had made up' his mind to be thoroughly unreasonable and disagreeable and would not retreat tun inch from the position ko had taken. Persuasion of a sterner sort was obviously called for and when the case was reported in Hankow in detail Admiral Cameron chartered the steamer Kiawo and sent up a small force under Commander F. Darley, Executive Officer of the Despatch, with detachments from the Scarab and the Mantis.
The Warning to Yang arrived at ing of Septemder 5. Yang Sen was warned that if the ships were not cleared of his troops without resistance, they would be taken over by force and that in the event of serious trouble certain official buildings and military areas in Wanhsien would be shelled, This had no effect whatever, so the little expeditionary force ' rashly undertook to clear the ships. They went alongside the Wanhsien and boarded "her and were at once greeted by a terrific fire at short range from all the soldiers on board. The ships' officers on both the Wanhsien and Wantung- jumped overboard and were picked up below, with the exception of an engineer who was presumably drowned. All the dead, seven altogether, and the fourteen wounded, were carried away by the repulsed boarding party except Commander Darley whose body could not be recovered.
When the party returned decimated, there was nothing to do but demonstrate to Yang Sen and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.