THERE is an echo from history in the news that the Royal Navy might have to take action against piracy in the South China Sea. They have fought many similar battles in these waters, right from the time that Hongkong was founded.
There have always been pirates in this region. There was the great Ming patriot Koxinga who drove the Dutch out of Taiwan and held the high seas against the invading Tartars; the formidable Mrs Cheng whose buccaneers defeated a combined fleet of 93 Chinese Imperial war junks and six Portuguese vessels at Chek Lap Kok in 1809; and there were the Japanese ''dwarf robbers''.
When the British arrived in 1841 the area was infested by pirates. Sir George Bonham was the first Hongkong Governor to do anything sensible about the problem. Already a veteran pirate fighter, Sir George had freed the waters of Singapore and Malaya of this menace by the simple device of disguising his warships as harmless Arab traders. When the pirates attacked, Bonham's ''Q Boats'' blew them out of the water.
However, in Hongkong the Royal Navy had great difficulty telling the difference between an innocent fishing junk and a dastardly pirate.
But Bonham was a practical man. He asked the Imperial Chinese Navy for help. With Chinese Mandarins aboard, the Royal Navy gunboats cleared the China coast of pirate junks in two years.
From 1849 to 1850 British sailors of the China Station were awarded GBP76,690 in prize money. This was too much for the British Admiralty which had to foot the bill. It stopped giving financial rewards for the capture of pirates.