The pirates of Cheung Chau – what really happened in 1912 raid on Hong Kong outlying island?
- In August 1912, a gang carried out an audacious assault on Cheung Chau police station
- They killed three Indian constables, stole Crown rents, and left the colonial administration in turmoil
At 10pm on August 19, 1912, night had fallen across Cheung Chau, bringing an inky darkness to an island community that was as yet without electric lights. Oil lanterns glowed dimly from a few houses and moored sampans, but most of the hard-working fisherfolk were asleep.
In his room above the Wo Sang Pawn Shop, near the police station, 14-year-old Wong Pak-hoi was finishing his homework. Constable Jhanda Singh stood guard at his post on the police jetty, but could hear little beyond the lapping of the waves and the occasional dog barking. The other policeman on duty, lance sergeant Baggat Singh, paced the deserted streets on evening patrol. Suddenly, out of the darkness, came shouting and volleys of gunshots, and 40 pirates emerged from the night to surround the police station.
Within minutes, both policemen and off-duty colleague, constable Inder Singh – who, on hearing the firing, had raced out of his house in the village half-dressed, revolver in hand – lay dead, riddled with bullets. Jhanda Singh did not have time to fetch his rifle from the station.
Piecing events together from newspaper reports, evidence given to magistrates in January 1913, government records and a 1964 police magazine interview with eyewitness Wong (see sidebar), it appears that money from government rents in the station safe had attracted the attention of the pirates.
They had beached their junk on a sandbank off the island’s east coast and scrambled ashore, unchallenged, to approach the village from the rear. There, in the darkness, the pirates had become confused and opened fire on their own men, incurring several casualties.
Despite this, with only one policeman on guard and no locks on the station doors, their first objective – to steal the Crown rents – proved far easier than expected. They looted the guardroom of its guns and ammunition and smashed open the safe, carrying off about HK$1,000 (only about half of Cheung Chau’s rents had been collected for that quarter). Then leaving the building they spread out along the main road and the surrounding alleys and passageways.