James Allan, Under the Dragon Flag

Do you ever stand at Suicide Cliff, gaze northward, and wonder about exotic lands beyond the horizon? Does adventure beckon? If so, let’s do some gazing, and not only at the horizon, but back in time as well.

The year is 1892. The Qing Dynasty reigns in China. Japan is riding a wave of modernization. Victorian England, strong and industrialized, stands astride the world.

And standing on a street in Manchester, one of England’s industrial centers, is a young man named James Allan. Thanks to a random encounter with a drunkard, fate is about to steer Allan into a Pacific war and to the business end of a Japanese bayonet.

Before we join Allan’s adventure, though, let’s climb our promontory at Saipan’s northern cusp.

Looking north-northwest, our line of sight, if extended 1,300 nautical miles, will hit Tokyo. If we shift our gaze to the west by a couple dozen degrees or so, it will sweep over Korea and then it will hit China’s Port Arthur, which is about 1,900 nautical miles from Saipan.

This arc is the setting for the First Sino-Japanese war, which spanned from 1894 to 1895, as China and Japan clashed over their rivalry to dominate Korea and the broader area called Manchuria.

And now we re-join young Mr. Allan in Manchester, where he is idling with no job, no money, and no prospects.

“I am the son of a Lancashire gentleman,” writes Allan by way of introduction, “who accumulated considerable wealth in the cotton trade. He died when I was still a boy. I found myself, when I came of age, the possessor of upwards of £80,000. Thus I started in life as a man of fortune; but it is due to myself to say that I took prompt and effectual measures to clear myself of that invidious character… I ran through that eighty thousand pounds in something short of four years…my sphere was the gaieties of Paris and the gaming-tables of Monte Carlo.”

As Allan stands around ruminating, a stranger staggers up. Thus begins Allan’s acquaintance with Charles Webster, a hard-drinking merchant seaman. Webster arranges for Allan to sign onto a ship as a crewmember. After making several voyages together, in 1894 the two wind up in San Francisco, and then wind up gun-running and troop-carrying off the Chinese coast, playing cat-and-mouse with the Japanese navy.

One day, when his ship docks in Port Arthur, Allan takes advantage of his shore time to wander around the place. Allan returns to the dock to find that his ship has departed early. He’s stranded in Port Arthur.

He finds outbound passage on another vessel. It’s promptly blasted to bits by the Japanese navy. Allan is confined aboard a Japanese warship. He eventually escapes, swimming back to Port Arthur, so he’s stuck there once again.

The Japanese army is on the inbound march. Once it arrives it makes short work of overrunning the Chinese defenses. Port Arthur is sacked in a scene of blood and guts. Allan narrowly survives a couple of encounters with Japanese soldiers, then he slips away, with two Chinese associates, to the waterfront.

The three find a small boat, divest it of its burden of fresh corpses, then launch it and row out of the port.

They encounter a Chinese sailing vessel named the King-Shing. It’s an old-school design known as a “junk.” Allan and his companions are allowed to board the junk, which, not surprisingly, is also fleeing the Japanese.

Allan is very much impressed with the junk. This is the only segment of his tale where he relates substantially more description than action. The boat’s design, highly evolved for its environment in China, is totally alien to Allan’s European eyes.

The main mast, he notes, is from a solid spar of teak, standing 95 feet tall and measuring 10 feet in circumference at its base; in order to preserve the natural strength of the wood, a natural bend in the mast is accepted. The rudder is suspended by a couple of windlasses which can raise it or lower it depending on conditions. He also notes that the Chinese compass is regarded as a pointer to south, not to north as is the Western convention.

The King-Shing gets knocked around by a severe storm, but the boat and crew are equal to the challenge. The Japanese fleet is left safely behind. The adventure is over.

Allan’s narrative, Under the Dragon Flag, was published in 1898. It’s now available as a reprint from a variety of sources. It can also be downloaded for free on the Web.

He concludes: “If my little narrative should for only a few furnish not mere entrainment but admonition, I shall not have gone through quite uselessly my varied and painful experience in life.”

And, with that in mind, we shift our gaze back from the distant horizon. Our excursion has ended. We’re back in 2018 again.