boat commenced to turn turtle, escaped the explosion—probably caused by the bursting of the boilers.

He was a sick man with a temperature over 100°. He swam as long as he could, but weakened by fever he was in danger of collapsing, when Midshipman West came to his rescue and supported him.

Very probably, but for young West, Jellicoe would have gone under. The nation owes him a debt to-day. Eventually they were both picked up by one of the boats sent from the Fleet.

The Camperdown herself was in a bad way; her bows were crumpled up, and for a little while it looked as though she would sink too, and follow her sister-ship to the bottom of the Mediterranean. But thanks to the celerity with which the water-tight doors were closed and the collision-mats got out, she was saved; the crew were kept working right through the night to keep her afloat.

There were numerous instances of courage and devotion besides that quoted of Jellicoe, who, before going on deck, went below to warn and hurry up any men he might find there. One of the boatswains continued semaphoring until he was washed off his feet. Admiral Tryon refused to try and save himself though implored to do so by his coxswain. The last words he is reported to have said were addressed to a midshipman:

“Don’t stop here, youngster; get to a boat.”

He might have got to that boat himself, but he went down with his ship.

At the court martial Captain Bourke was exonerated from all blame, and the finding of the Court was that the collision had been caused by Admiral Tryon’s order.

CHAPTER V
THE BOXER RISING IN CHINA

After the loss of the Victoria Jellicoe served as Commander on H.M.S. Ramillies, flagship in the Mediterranean.

Early in January, 1897, he joined the Ordnance Committee, and received his promotion, attaining the rank of Captain.

But valuable as his services were now, as they had been when assistant to Fisher, he was again not allowed to remain at the Admiralty for long. Admiral Sir C. H. Seymour chose him as Flag Captain on the Centurion. It is hardly necessary to point out that the Centurion of 1898 is no longer on the active list, if indeed she exists at all. H.M.S. Centurion, now “watching and waiting” somewhere in the North Sea, was built in 1912, and belongs to the King George V. Class; she has a displacement of 25,000 tons, and a speed of 21½ knots.

The old Centurion was a very different class of boat. She was on the China Station, and when the Boxer Rising occurred in 1900—just as we hoped we were finishing our work in South Africa under Kitchener—Jellicoe found himself in the firing line again.

The Boxers were the moving spirit in a vast organization which had for its object the extermination of Christian Missionaries and the aggressive commercial white men who followed in their train.

“China for the Chinese” might be translated as their popular war cry. The Dowager Empress of China was, if not at the head of the movement, certainly at the back of it, in spite of her protestations to the contrary.

The Chinese are the most conservative people in the world. They love and respect the traditions of their race as they love and respect their Ancestors. The “foreign” missionaries, railway concessionaries, mining agents and other outriders of modern civilization threatened to destroy and outrage their cherished ideas and institutions. They did not particularly object to the British; the Englishman—when he did not try to convert them—was the least hated of the foreign devils.

Americans, French, Russians, Germans, were all hated and feared.

The Boxers decreed that they would have to go. The rebellion started quietly enough, but once having started it spread with alarming rapidity until Europe saw itself face to face with the Yellow Peril. China threatened to over-run the Western Continent.

Proclamations were issued by the Boxers in all the towns and villages of the great Empire and appeared on the walls of Pekin itself.

“The voice of the great God of the Unseen World—

“Disturbances are to be dreaded from the foreign devils; everywhere they are starting missions, erecting telegraphs, and building railways; they do not believe in the sacred doctrine, and they speak evil of the gods. Their sins are numberless as the hairs of the head. Therefore am I wroth, and my thunders have pealed forth.... The will of Heaven is that the telegraph wires be first cut, then the railways torn up, and then shall the foreign devils be decapitated. In that day shall the hour of their calamities come....”

And forthwith the Boxers arranged that disturbances should commence at once. They commenced with pillages and robberies. The Empress launched edicts against the rising, while secretly she encouraged it. Soon a direct attack was made on all Christians; missionaries were tortured and murdered. Churches set on fire and houses torn down.

One or two Legations in Pekin were destroyed. On May the 1st the German Minister, Baron von Kettener, was assassinated.

This was the signal for a general rising, and all the Legations in Pekin were besieged, the Imperial troops joining in the attack. Sir Claude MacDonald had been assured that there was no danger whatsoever. He was appointed commander of the Legation Quarter by the foreign representatives, and a plucky resistance was made.

Early in June he sent a telegram to Sir Edward Seymour, Commander of the China Station, informing him the situation was perilous, and warning him that unless the Legations were soon relieved a general massacre would take place.

Seymour acted as quickly as possible, and with a force of two thousand men he started to the relief of Pekin.

This little army was composed of men and guns drawn from the ships of the eight Great Powers then in Chinese waters. Great Britain—who provided nearly a thousand men—France, Italy, Russia, the United States, Japan, Austria and Germany. Their combined artillery consisted only of nineteen guns.

Captain Jellicoe was given command of the British Naval Contingent, and the whole force was under the command of Admiral Seymour. Mr. Whittall, Reuter’s correspondent, accompanied the column, and he gave, in the diary which he kept, a very graphic account of the fighting of the allied forces, their failure to relieve Pekin, their attempt to get back to Tientsin, Jellicoe’s bad luck in getting dangerously wounded—it was feared, fatally, at the time—and the narrow escape of the whole force from annihilation.

“We left Laufang at dawn on June the 13th,” he wrote, “and arrived at Tientsin at 12.30 p.m. without incident.

“We left Tientsin again at 2 a.m., but the Marines were at Yangtsun, and the Chinese officials declined to take the responsibility of affording protection, so we took them on with us. At Lofa we found three trucks derailed, and so remained there all night outside ‘Fort Endymion.’ We moved out from Lofa about midnight on June 14th for headquarters, but found that they had been removed further up the line. A party of Americans, foraging, ran across a band of 150 Boxers and fired on them, killing six and wounding many others. The Aurora’s advance party was