The Siamese royal yacht Maha Chakri lies moored along Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River a few hundred yards upstream from the city’s 16th century Temple of the Dawn (Wat Arun). The Siamese naval ensign – an elephant on a red background – flutters languidly from her mizzen mast. Numerous sampans ply the busy waterway providing a lively foreground for the photographer. The six satangs stamp in the top left corner of the image, manufactured by Leipzig-based printers Giesecke and Devrient, dates this postcard to 1910, the year in which King Chulalongkorn, Siam’s first modernizing monarch, was to pass away. The Maha Chakri, a warship designed for diplomacy, was emblematic of the King’s efforts to maintain his country’s independence in the face of Anglo-French influence and aggression.
The first instances of western penetration in Siam had occurred during the reign of Chulalongkorn’s father King Mongkut (1804-1868). It was Mongkut who had first employed foreign missionaries and tutors, the most famous among them Anna Leonowens, to educate his legions of children, and foreign military experts to train his army in modern warfare. Mongkut was deeply interested in technology and scientific enquiry. He was also the first to have to contend with western political power, being forced in the wake of recent British military successes in China and Burma, to enter into an unequal treaty that introduced free trade, and residential rights and extraterritoriality for British businessmen – an act soon emulated by other imperial powers – leading to the country’s rapid economic and social transformation.
Mongkut was also the first Siamese king to acquire a royal yacht. Such a prerogative had been instigated by the British royal family in 1843 with the launch of the paddle steamer HMY Victoria and Albert 1843. This ship was soon superseded by an even larger and more commodious vessel given the same name. The practice was soon taken up by other royalty including the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, Ismail Pasha. His yacht, El Mahrousa, was launched on the Thames in 1865 by Samuda Brothers shipyard.
Another British shipyard was responsible for building Siam’s first royal yacht. The Sepsahai Maitree had started life on the Clyde as Little Eastern. Constructed as a three-masted schooner in 1859 by Thomas B Seath & Co, she had served four years with Singapore merchants William H Read & Michie F Davidson before her sale to the Siamese government, after her conversion to a paddle steamer. The Sepsahai Maitree was among a handful of small steamers acquired during Mongkut’s reign. Another paddle-steamer, Akarat Waradet (Royal Sovereign), was the vessel used by the King and his entourage during a voyage to the south of the kingdom to witness the solar eclipse of 18th August 1868. It was during this scientific endeavour that the king fell ill with malaria, dying a few weeks later.
Mongkut’s teenage son Chulalongkorn, the first issue of his favoured queen, was obliged to wait until the death of his father’s appointed regent, Sri Suriwongse, five years later before he could ascend the Siamese throne. During this period, Chulalongkorn made a number of overseas trips to British colonial territories, where he cultivated his own liberal and modernising mindset.
As Rama V, Chulalongkorn inherited a kingdom facing an increasing number of external threats. As a result of the 3rd Anglo-Burmese War, British rule in India had expanded east to the borders of Siam. Meanwhile, French colonial expansion had resulted in Siam’s loss of suzerainty over most of modern-day Cambodia. Finally to the north of the kingdom, the Haw Wars had led to the overthrow of monarchic rule in Luang Prabang and embroiled Siamese forces in a series of costly and poorly-executed military campaigns against French-backed Vietnamese militias. By the late 1880s, it seemed increasingly likely that Siam would be forced to become a protectorate of either Britain or France.
Modernisation was regarded as the most effective counter to the accusations of despotism and uncivility on which imperialist interventions were all too often predicated. To expedite the nation’s transformation, the King had brought in a number of foreign advisers. These included a Belgian lawyer and diplomat called Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns. Appointed as General Adviser of Siam in September 1892, Rolin-Jaequemyns was to lead the way in reforms of the Siamese legal system that were to underpin all other aspects of what became known as the Chakri Restoration.
Following the tradition established by his father, Chulalongkorn ordered his first royal yacht from Britain. Design of the vessel was given to George Lennox Watson, founder of the world’s first yacht design office, and a favourite with European aristocracy and wealthy industrialists. Watson’s other royal commissions carried included the racing yachts Britannia, built for the future King Edward VII, and Meteor II, owned by Kaiser Wilhelm II. However, the design of what would be known as Maha Chakri was unlike any other vessel created by Watson. She was in fact a small protected cruiser, a design more akin to the warships built by William Armstrong at Elswick on Tyneside.
Measuring 88 metres in length and displacing approximately 2,500 tons, she was similar in dimensions to one of the Royal Navy’s Pearl Class cruisers. She was equipped with a 50mm protective deck, and an offensive ram bow, and she was designed to carry an armament four 4.7-inch guns arranged in sponsons amidships, as well as ten smaller calibre guns.[1] In spite of these armaments, the Maha Chakri was comparatively weakly armed, and a design speed of 15 knots meant that she was slower than a modern cruiser. Her high freeboard, distinctively tall ventilation cowlings, and sail-rigged fore and aft masts further mitigated against her effectiveness as a warship.
The Maha Chakri was launched on 27th June 1892 at the Clydeside shipyard of Ramage and Ferguson, and she was evidently completed by November of that year. Her exact delivery date is not known, but it seems likely she arrived in Bangkok in the first half of 1893, a year that was to prove pivotal in the survival of Siam as an independent state.
[1] The 4.7-inch gun was an Armstrong QF design.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 