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Great Britain: Chinese Junk Keying / Baron de Stassart
Great Britain: Chinese Junk Keying / Baron de StassartGreat Britain: Chinese Junk Keying / Baron de Stassart
Form: Circular
By: T. Halliday, Birmingham (obv) & C.A Barbier, Belgium (rev)
Date: 1848
Ref:  AM2: 13 (obv); BHM: 2320 (obv); Laidlaw: 0248e;
Variations:
SizeMetalMassValue
44.5 mmBronzed White Metal41.4 gm $150
Edge: Plain

Obverse: Port broadside view of the Junk Keying with no sails set. Five small boats in front. Signed on the exergue line: “HALLIDAY (left) BIRM. (right)”. Legend above: "CHINESE JUNK . KEYING / CAPTAIN KELLETT”. In the exergue: “EXTREME BREADTH 33 FEET / BURDEN 750 TONS / DEPTH OF HOLD 16 FEET (in an arc)”.

Reverse: Bareheaded bust of Baron de Stassart, left. “GN. JH. AN. BON. DET. DE STASSART DE NAMUR AUX ETATS GAUX.”. Signed: “BARBIER” below the truncation..

Notes: The Keying was a three-masted, 800-ton Foochow Chinese trading junk which sailed from China around the Cape of Good Hope to the United States and Britain between 1846 and 1848. The ship had been purchased in August 1846 in secrecy by British businessmen in Hong Kong, who defied a Chinese law prohibiting the sale of Chinese ships to foreigners. She was manned by 12 British and 30 Cantonese sailors under the commanded of Captain Charles Alfred Kellett. The Keying left Hong Kong in December 1846; rounded the Cape of Good Hope in March 1847; stopped at St Helena in April 1847; arrived in New York in July 1847; visited Boston in November 1847; arrived in Britain in April 1848.

Goswin Joseph Augustin, Baron de Stassart (1780 - 1854) was a Dutch-Belgian politician. During the revolution for Belgian independence from the Netherlands he defended the right of Belgian to form a separate state. He was appointed governor of the Belgian Province of Namur from 1830 to 1834.

The reverse of this medal is the same as the medal of Baron de Stassart by the Belgian medallist Charles Auguste Barbier. The is no known connection between Baron de Stassart and the Junk Keying.