8
REVIEW
as has always been the case for vessels registered under the Merchant Shipping Acts.
It was the custom to print notices to mariners in official publica- tions and one seen frequently during the first 30 years or so of the Colony's history makes curious reading today--a notice calling for sealed tenders for passages from Hong Kong to Singapore for Chinese convicts. Another type of traveller, the Chinese emigrant, was causing the Hong Kong Government some concern and the appointment in 1854 of the first marine surveyor, Mr John Rickets, was mainly made to prevent contravention of the Passenger Act of 1852. This Act sought to improve conditions on vessels carrying emigrant passengers, which were well known to be deplorable. Ships leaving Hong Kong with Chinese emigrants were regular offenders, the captains regarding overcrowding and under-feeding as normal practice. The first returns for emigrants leaving the Colony were published in the Government Gazette on 5th July 1854, showing that 4,341 emigrants left for Australia and 10,496 for California.
By 1856 the P&O Company's vessels, on their United Kingdom mail service, were calling twice a month at Hong Kong, and in addition the company's coastal fleet was operating regularly to Shanghai. A large part of the cargo on these mail steamers con- sisted of opium and the Government Gazette stated that in 1852 ships of the P&O fleet brought into Hong Kong 15,747 chests of opium; by the following year the number had risen to 36,499 chests. One of the most dynamic shipping personalities in the early history of the port was Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Sutherland, of the P&O, who arrived in 1854 and remained until 1866. He not only furthered the P&O's shipping business with great energy, but was also the first chairman of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dockyard Company in 1863 and was closely associated with the establishment of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. It was usual in those days for the P&O to publish notices in the Government Gazette showing departures of their mail steamers and the passage rates between Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, via the Egyptian overland route. In 1854 the fare to