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- Devonport is rather plain while the bell in Victoria is handsomer, being covered with more relief decoration and text, and has a more elegant shape.To argue for the other side, the inscription on the bell in Victoria states that it was made for a temple by the people of Funing, a town south of the Great Wall not far from Shan Hai Guan. Since Macdonald mentions that the bell was taken from a ruined temple north of the wall or the Manchurian side, it would seemingly rule out the Victoria bell. On the other hand, the original temple near Funing may have been destroyed some time in the past, and there is the possibility that the bell was moved to another temple north of the Great Wall, where Macdonald found it.
However, it is more likely that the bell mentioned in Macdonald's memoirs is the Devon- port bell as he did state on page 84, "That bell now hangs in front of the naval Commander- in-Chief's official residence at Devonport."
Macdonald's letter to the Colonist, August 30, 1932, (previously quoted) which states, "The bell (in Victoria) was taken from a ruined temple in a Manchurian village about seven miles north of the Great Wall... at Shan Hai Kwan," seems to contradict his memoirs, as the same story cannot belong to two different bells.
Macdonald's memoirs or diary, which was written at the time of the bell's removal in 1900, would seem more reliable than his recollection more than 30 years later in 1932 when he writes to the Colonist newspaper with a different version. Thirty years is a long time to have to recall the incident of the bell's removal. Therefore, Macdonald probably confused the story of the Devonport bell with the Victoria bell. This conclusion was put forward by Mr. Patrick Strachan, a Langford resident and Victoria Chinese bell enthusiast who, with his wife, travelled to Funing, China, in 1987 to try to unravel the mystery of the Victoria bell.4
This conclusion then opens up all sorts of possibilities. It is possible that someone in Victoria heard of the capture of the bell by Macdonald or another tale like it and informed Victoria Mayor Hayward, who corresponded with Macdonald. After hearing of the interest in Victo�ria, Lt. Macdonald may have then acquired a second bell for his native city of Victoria. However, it is also possible that Macdonald had acquired the bell from the Manchurian side with the intention of giving it to Victoria, but his superiors decided it should go to Admiralty House in Devonport; therefore, Macdonald had to find another bell for Victoria. OR Mac�donald may have got the first bell for Victoria and then had to acquire a second one for Admiralty house in Devonport, which led to his Manchurian adventure. The intermixing of information pertaining to the two bells taken by H.M.S. Pique makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to sort out from where each bell came and it may remain unsolved. Considering the drama of acquiring the bell from the Manchurian side, the acquiring of the other bell may have been very anti-climactic and easily forgotten.
Another interesting aspect which enters into the bell saga is the Halsall family who lived from 1927 to 1935 in an abandoned temple south of the Great Wall not far from Shan Hai Guan near the sea. Members of the Halsall family, now living in Victoria, recount that they had been told (perhaps by the Chinese caretaker of the temple or other locals) that a bell was taken from this temple by a British naval officer during the Boxer Rebellion. Their father, Captain Walter Halsall, was the Manager of the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute (NAAFI), which served the British troops during the summers when they were in the Shan Hai Guan area. It is therefore possible that one of the bells either in Devonport or Victoria comes from this site. However, it is also possible that this was just one of many bells taken by various ships of the British navy. (e.g. There are various large Chinese bells placed in the courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum in England.) There were still a number of bells left in this area from 1927 to 1935, as evidenced by Walter Prozorovsky-Halsall's photographs of that period, and some of them were even very similar to both the Devonport and Victoria bells.
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