This was Thomas’s second sea service; before Devonport, he had spent 3 years on the Mediterranean Station with HMS HUSSAR, a Dryad-class torpedo gunboat only an eighth of the tonnage of his new posting. HMS KENT was a Monmouth-class armoured cruiser of 9,800 tons, completed in 1903 but put in reserve, and now recommissioned for the China station.

“Said goodbye to my dear young wife. I never thought I should have felt so “cut up.” Never felt so bad before in my life!! However I had to bite my lips & grin & bear it!!! That’s the worst of a seafaring life.” (pp.6-7)  For all that,  Thomas seems to have taken the opportunity of the voyage to absorb as many new experiences as possible, from “ginrickshaws”* to the occasional “flutter” at the gambling tables of Macao, then a Portuguese territory where pastimes forbidden in Hong Kong attracted visitors both Chinese and European.

*Rickshaws; a variant of the original spelling jinrikisha, according to the Oxford English Dictionary from the Japanese jin man + riki strength, power + sha ve

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