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Chinese history
LifestyleArts & Culture

‘Treachery’: how US officer who fought for China in first Sino-Japanese War came to a bad end

  • Unable to obtain a commission in the US Navy, naval officer Philo Norton McGiffin left America in 1885 to seek employment in China
  • His story, including being seriously injured during a battle against Japanese warships, is told in a Hong Kong Maritime Museum online exhibition

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Philo Norton McGiffin helped modernise the Imperial Chinese Navy and was severely wounded during an battle against the Japanese. Photo: Courtesy of Hong Kong Maritime Museum
Stuart Heaver

The modernisation of China’s military is widely perceived as a threat in the United States today. Yet some 135 years ago, one US naval officer travelled to the Middle Kingdom and was engaged to help the country develop its prowess at sea – and it did not end well.

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The unlikely and tragic story of Philo Norton McGiffin, who left the US in 1885 as a naive but determined 24-year-old to serve the Imperial Chinese Navy and was wounded in action, is revealed in a new online exhibition presented by the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.

After eight years of intensive officer training, McGiffin failed to obtain a commission in the US Navy because of the lack of available ships in its tiny fleet. So instead he travelled to China, to seek employment fighting for the country in the Sino-French War (1884-85).

“McGiffin is an important figure in the naval development of the early modernisation of China and his story is really interesting,” says Katherine Chu Man-yin, consultant curator (archives, library and special collections), who curated the online exhibition that launched this month.

Some of McGiffin’s personal items, such as his Imperial Chinese naval officer’s dress sword and dress jacket, on display at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.
Some of McGiffin’s personal items, such as his Imperial Chinese naval officer’s dress sword and dress jacket, on display at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.
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The war with France was over by the time he arrived in the country, but McGiffin, almost out of funds, managed to secure temporary command of an ironclad battleship in dry dock, before taking up the role of an instructor at the naval academy in the northeastern city of Tianjin.

He became one of a handful of naval and military experts from America and Europe recruited to assist Chinese officials including Viceroy Li Hongzhang. Li was one of the architects of the “self-strengthening movement”, which commenced in the early 1860s and was designed to radically modernise and reform the defence capabilities of Qing dynasty China.
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