ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with the practicalities of the British occupation and utilisation of the islands surrounding the anchorage of Port Hamilton. A good deal of information was recorded on this subject by the outsiders who coveted and then seized the extensive harbour of Port Hamilton within the small archipelago. In fact it was actors in the Port Hamilton Affair, if not those actually based on the islands, which were among the first outsiders to travel extensively in Korea and leave accounts of their journeys. Certainly, there was a report that the British ships in Port Hamilton had disturbed the fish stocks, but it might be that so was making of political point about the occupation of Korean territory than accurately portraying the totality of the islanders' experience. Kim Kil-so and another, unnamed, visiting official of higher status drew up the documents for the two transfers after the Korean fashion, using the naval plan as a record of the plot boundaries.