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CHAPTER III

CAPTURE OF THE TAKU FORTS-SIEGE OF TIENTSIN-GALLANT CONDUCT OF MR. WATTS AND MR. SEEBERG-TONG-SHAN REFUGEES-NARROW ESCAPE OF MR. HUGHES-PREDICAMENT OF CHINESE MINE MANAGER.

THE Taku Forts were taken on the night of June 15, the action being begun by the Chinese, who opened fire a little after midnight, their first shot going through the rigging of the Algerine.' The details of the action were given so fully at the time by various correspondents that it is superfluous now to do more than state shortly what occurred. The bar at the mouth of the Peiho River is shallow, and only vessels of small draught can cross it. The larger ships of war of the allied fleets, twenty-eight in number, had therefore to lie outside it some ten miles away from the Forts at Taku, at the entrance of the river, and could take no part in the fighting. In the river, inside the bar, were only the following vessels: British-H.M.S. 'Algerine' and two torpedo destroyers, the Fame' and the Whiting;' Germanthe 'Iltis;' French-the 'Lion; Russian-the 'Bobr,' the Koreetch,' and the 'Gilyak.' In all, six gunboats and two torpedo destroyers.

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The forts these vessels had opposed to them were

exceedingly strong: the Northern forts having about eighty guns, all told, of various sizes, and the Southern forts no less than a hundred and twenty guns, some of them being 10-mm. Krupps of the very latest pattern.

The action lasted from a little before I A.M. until six in the morning, when the big magazine in the South Fort was blown up, and the fire from both the Northern and the Southern forts somewhat slackened. Up to that time it had been heavy, but badly directed.

The storming parties-the British being under the command of Commander Cradock, R.N., of the 'Alacrity,' with Lieutenant Kemp of the Aurora' as second in command-which had been landed in the darkness an hour or two before, and had quietly taken up their positions, then raced together to the assault, and in half an hour the whole of the Forts were in the hands of the Allies. The storming parties were made up as follows: 350 British, 230 Japanese, 150 Russians, 130 Germans, 50 Austrians, and 25 Italians.

The Japanese had no gunboat in the river, but sent a number of men to take part in the assault, and they, with the British, were the first into the North Fort, the first fort taken, with a loss of 26 men killed and wounded; their leader, Commander Hattori, being amongst those killed.

The Chinese lost, it was computed, about a third of their number, the strength of their garrison being a little over three thousand. The Allied casualties were also heavy, though nothing like in the same proportion, the Russians having 16

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men killed and 3 officers and 52 men wounded, the Germans 6 men killed and 15 wounded (Commander Lans of the 'Iltis' being badly injured); whilst the French had only 1 officer killed and 1 man wounded, and the British 3 men killed and 1 officer wounded.

The Algerine' escaped with small loss, although she was right between the Forts, partly because Commander Stewart put her so close under the guns that most of their shot passed over her, and partly because she had shifted her moorings slightly just after nightfall, and the Chinese guns, which had been trained on her in her old position, were aimed in consequence too high and passed mostly through her rigging. This, however, was to some extent the case with all the ships; indeed, but for it they must have been blown to pieces, the fight being at such close range and against guns of such large calibre. A little higher up the river four Chinese torpedo boats were taken possession of by the 'Fame' and the Whiting' without resistance.

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The Monocacy,' which in accordance with Admiral Kempff's orders took no part in the fight, had on board a number of women and children, refugees from Tientsin, who had come down late that night by the last train that left the Tientsin settlements. She was lying at Tong-ku, three miles higher up the river than Taku, but many of the shells came uncomfortably close, the bend of the river bringing Tong-ku into the direct line of the fire from some of

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the Chinese guns. One shot passed through her bows, but without injuring any one.

With the occupation of the Forts the immediate danger to the Tientsin settlements was heightened, not decreased. The same night the Boxers made a determined effort to break through the barricades. They set fire to the buildings in fourteen places, burnt down the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Tientsin City, and the greater part of the French settlement, and very nearly succeeded in capturing the railway station, which was held by a Russian guard; and the next day the regular troops joined them and opened fire with their heavy artillery.

It was a fortunate circumstance that the seventeen hundred Russians who had come from Port Arthur had not arrived in time to take part in the Seymour expedition, for had they been with it nothing could have saved Tientsin from a general massacre, and the Admiral's force and the Legations in Peking must have shared the same fate. As it was, the settlements were only saved with difficulty by these Russian troops, and by the handful of British sailors who had been left there under the command of Captain Bayly of the Aurora,' aided gallantly by the Tientsin Volunteers. When the Chinese opened fire from the fort in the city Yamên, a mixed force of 175 Austrians, British, Germans, and Italians, attacked the Military College on the other side of the river, from which a damaging flanking fire was being kept The Chinese students stood bravely to their

up.