REVIEW
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the company completed a second ocean-going berth and built two reinforced concrete godowns nearby.
Although Junk Bay is now seldom used by ocean-going ships, at the turn of the century many vessels regularly anchored there at the flour mills better known as Rennie's flour mills where they discharged about 6,000 tons of wheat a month and loaded substantial cargoes of flour and bran for China, Japan, Indo-China, the Straits Settlements, Burma and India. It is recorded that the godowns at the mills could hold 26,000 tons of wheat, 250,000 bags of flour and 10,000 bags of bran. The site formerly occupied by the mills was recently purchased by a shipbreaking company, thus marking new use of a site that played an important part in Hong Kong's early commerce.
The business of the China Navigation Company became so large at the turn of the century that Messrs Butterfield and Swire decided to establish a dockyard in Hong Kong, and purchased land at Quarry Bay for this purpose from the Government. By 1908 the Taikoo Dockyard was in full operation, although a severe typhoon in July of that year did a considerable amount of damage to some of the main workshops and caused a postponement of shipbuilding activities. The first vessel to be docked at Taikoo was the China Navigation Company's ship ss Sungkiang on 3rd October 1908, and the first vessel to be slipped on patent slip No 1 was the steamship Newchwang, on the last day of the year. The first vessel to be built at the dockyard was ss Shasi, of 1,327 tons, which was constructed for the China Navigation Company in 1910. Seven years later Taikoo launched for the Ocean Steam Ship Company the ss Autolycus, stated to be the largest ship built in any British overseas territory up to that time. One of the best Chinese repair yards in the early days of the Colony was Kwong Hip Lung and Company Limited, whose engineering work in 1908 compared favourably with that of European companies. The firm is still in existence today under the name of Kwong Yue Loong and has its workshops in Jordan Road, Kowloon.
The physical development of a port depends on the constructing of seawalls, piers, wharves and warehouses, and cement is an essential ingredient. For many harbour projects this was, and still is, supplied by the Green Island Cement Company who built their first works at Green Island, near Macau, in 1890. Nine years later