424 LOECHAS AND THEIE CREWS. Chap. XXII. 



whicli have been delivered in Parliament for in- 

 formation upon this subject. But whether we 

 may be right or wrong in a legal point of view 

 I doubt much whether it be good policy to allow 

 such vessels as this " Arrow "to fly the English 

 flag. Every one who has travelled much on the 

 coast of China knows well what the majority of 

 these " lorchas " are. And here, perhaps, I had 

 better endeavour to give some information on this 

 point to those who have not had an opportunity 

 of seeing and judging for themselves. 



Lorchas are not English vessels, as some people 

 appear to imagine, and are rarely owned or sailed 

 by Englishmen, They are Portuguese vessels, and 

 were originally built at Macao, although of late 

 years a few have been built at Ningpo and some 

 of the other ports on the east coast. They fly the 

 Portugu.ese flag, have Portuguese papers, and are 

 numbered and registered by the government of 

 Macao. They are manned, almost without excep- 

 tion, by Chinese — natives of Macao, Canton, and 

 adjacent ports in the south of China. Nominally 

 they are commanded by Macao-Portuguese, but the 

 Chinamen always seemed to me to have the chief 

 control of the vessels. The few owned by Eng- 

 lishmen, which fly the English flag and have 

 English papers, are sailed just in the same way, 

 the only difference being that the latter may boast 

 of an English " cajDtain." 



A few of these lorchas are common traders 

 on the coast, particularly in the south, about 



