When Pirates Plundered Central

When thinking of piracy, one often imagines raiders targeting trading ships and fishermen. Yet these were far from their only targets. In Hong Kong alone, coastal villages like Tai O and islands like Cheung Chau frequently fell prey to raiders; some pirates even targeted Victoria City itself—the heart of nineteenth-century Hong Kong.

The shoreline of Victoria City was lined with docks and warehouses (godowns). Pirates constantly monitored these wharves. Whenever merchants loaded a vessel with valuable cargo, raiders would launch a surprise ambush, boarding the ship right in front of the piers before vanishing.

At night, other pirates rowed directly onto the city's mudflats to target small shoreline shops and Chinese commercial houses (hongs). They smashed open doors, bound the shopkeepers, plundered everything of value into their boats, and rowed away.

In the 1850s, Eli Boggs, an American pirate, commanded a fleet of heavily armed war junks that patrolled the entrance to Victoria Harbour. Famed for his cruelty, Boggs routinely raided outgoing clippers. Merchants living in Victoria City were forced to pay hefty tributes or risk seeing their ships burned and their crews thrown overboard.

The situation was exceptionally difficult for the Hong Kong government to manage, as many of the pirates’ informants lived within Victoria City itself. These spies worked as legitimate dockworkers and, in some cases, even as clerks inside the colony’s largest trading houses.

Ultimately, the creation of the Water Police was the government’s direct response to these relentless assaults on Victoria City's shorelines.