Irene incident

The Irene incident of 1927 was a significant event of the British anti-piracy operations in China during the first half of the 20th century. In an attempt to surprise the pirates of Bias Bay, about sixty miles from Hong Kong, Royal Navy submarines attacked the merchant ship SS Irene, of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, which had been taken over by the pirates on the night of 19 October. The British were successful in thwarting the hijacking though they sank the ship.

Background

Following the end of the age of sail, the pirates of southern China were forced to change their tactics when it came to taking over merchant ships. New steam-powered vessels, used both by the navies and the merchants, rendered fleets of heavily armed sailing junks useless. By 1927, the long history of piracy in China continued and the pirates themselves had perfected the tactic of boarding a merchant vessel as passengers and then taking it over while at sea. Some of the most successful groups of pirates at the time were based in Bias Bay; there the outlaws would hijack a vessel as close to the bay as possible before taking it in and anchoring it close to shore for the offloading of everything valuable, including hostages. On more than one occasion, when British warships were sent into the area, the pirates would have been warned ahead and thus escaped arrest. So the Royal Navy created a plan to stealthily patrol the area with submarines. The British fleet at Hong Kong included twelve submarines, so they assigned the L class boats HMS L4, under Lieutenant Frederick John Crosby Halahan, and HMS L5 to the operation in October 1927. The two submarines left under everybody's assumption that routine exercises were to take place, though they were actually sailing for the bay.