If you go to the Hong Kong Cemetery, you can find two memorials, placed there from their original positions in Hong Kong’s streets, to British and American steam warships. One is to the men of a sailing brig, HMS Vestal, who died 1844-47, her battles against the pirates much assisted by the steam paddlers HM Ships Vixen and Vulture. The other, to the casualties of HMS Rattler and the USS Powhatan, both steamers, who died fighting a pirate base near Macau in 1855.

The steamships were just four of the many serving in Chinese waters between 1844 and the early 20th century that were engaged in suppressing the endemic piracy that plagued coastal waters and some major rivers. Their huge advantage over the pirates – apart from generally better weaponry – was their complete independence of the weather. When the navy had recourse only to sail it could be seriously handicapped, as might have been the case in 1849 in the action against Shap Ng-tsai in Mirs Bay, that was a success because HMS Columbine could be towed into action by the P&O paddle steamer Canton.

That use of steam power was possible, of course, because of the coal shipped out from Britain stored in British controlled locations like Singapore and Hong Kong. We can see Hong Kong’s first coal store – quite a big one – very clearly labelled on the detailed map of Central by Lt T.B. Collinson RE of 1845. My rough calculation has it storing around 3,000-5,000 tons of coal.

The answer – well, an answer – is coal. How so? Generally, the take on the British victories tends to emphasize the fairly sorry state of the Qing military in terms of funding, equipment and training, and those forces’ huge disadvantage faced with massive broadsides of British ships and the lethal firepower of the British infantry’s muskets. It isn’t much commented on in the umpteen histories of the Sino-British wars in the 1840s and 1850s, but there was another huge advantage. For the second time in the history of warfare (everyone forgets about the 1st Anglo-Burmese War and the paddle steamer Diana) ships could be moved about independent of the wind. During the 1st Opium War, Britain was able to call on the services of not just one but 17 – yes seventeen – steam-powered warships. They could, and did, tow troopships when the wind failed. It was the same with the heavily gunned sailing ships of the line, which could be towed to where they were needed if there was no wind. The armed steamers, especially the shallow draft Nemesis, could go where the sailing vessels could not. No coal, no steam ships…and maybe a different outcome. In the 2nd Opium War almost all the British and French naval ships involved were either paddle or screw propelled steamers, so the technological advantage at sea, if not on land, was even greater because China’s navy had yet to modernize.

In previous episodes we’ve touched on cricket and sailing, in short, a peripheral mention of the arrival of modern, rule based organized sport in China. The treaty ports played a big role in this, which we could argue had a sort of happy ending in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and China striding large on the world sporting stage.

The story of the arrival of those sports in Hong Kong, usually began with expats doing their thing…and too often doing it with a nasty racist bias. That’s partly because one leg of that arrival, as it were, lay in the importance of sport to British military life. Both routes led sooner or later to the establishment of clubs and associations that did not exclude people on grounds of their ethnicity…well, not so much.

On the way we’ll see how the origins of one of Hong Kong’s best known sporting outfits – the South China Athletic Association – had its origins in what became China’s first national football team.