1784 was not a good year for Anglo-Chinese relations. British merchants were already trading opium in Canton. The Lady Hughes, a British ship, was at anchor near what is now Hong Kong. The ship fired a salute but the gunner in charge of the cannon rather stupidly left a cannonball in the gun, which killed an innocent Chinese man onshore. The gunner was arrested then tried in a Chinese court where he couldn’t understand a word of Chinese and the judge didn’t know any English. He was kept in jail for six weeks and then executed by strangulation. All a bit unfortunate for both the gunner and the dead Chinese man – and sadly neither of their names are recorded for posterity.