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CLUBS (6) Continuation
column on 25-9-33 dated about 1873. There we have a #
2 soldiers' Gymnasium" shown just north of the racket court, below Kennedy Road, and bordering on Garden Road almost opposite St. John's Cathedral. It would appear that when the V.R.C. was formed and the civilian Gymnasium moved to the seafront, the military took over the vacated building and used it for the same purpose of physical culture.
The Swimming Bath, as it was first called, was established in 1866, on the waterfront, a little inland of the present site of the V.R.C. A new bath had to be formed when the Naval Dockyard reclamation was carried out at the close of last century as we shall presently see. The Victoria Recreation Club thus combined aquatic sports and gymnastics, and became so well established that when its site was included in the reclamation, it was accommodated on Naval land at Kowloon until the completion of the work at Hongkong enabled the club to move back to a spot only a few yards from its former site. In old plans of the seafront is to be seen a long pier jutting out from the V.R.C.'s mat shed boathouse, evidently serving the same purpose as the piers now built opposite the Chinese bathing clubs at North Point.
An old photograph is reproduced to-day which shows the H.R.C. as it appeared before the present brick building had been erected. The story of its removal to Kowloon is well set out in the local Naval records, for access to which I am obliged to the Commodore.
An interesting feature of the Victoria Recreation Club's history is its constant contact with the Navy, as one would expect from the proximity to naval property. In looking through the Commodore's files I find the first direct reference to the Club in 1874, when the boathouse and pier had been damaged by a naval hulk which broke adrift in the big typhoon that struck the Colony just after midnight on September 22-23, 1874.
A letter from Mr. Edward Beard Secretary of the Victoria Recreation Club, to Commodore Parish, in September 1874, states that he is directed by the Committee of the Victoria Recreation Club to bring to the Commodore's notice the fact that early on the morning of the 23rd when the typhoon was at its height, the bath house boat house and other premises belonging to H.M's Navy slipped from her moorings.
It appears that after driving through the bath house and utterly destroying it, the ship was ultimately thrown by the force of wind and sea on the boat house, "smashing the walls and bringing down the roof completely and entirely destroying the place and boats contained therein belonging to the Club and its members.
In view of the above, Mr. Beard had been directed by his Committee to ascertain what action the Naval authorities were disposed to take to enable the Committee to defray the heavy expenses.
It is evident the Navy did not consider itself liable. In a letter from Vice-Admiral Goodall to Commodore Parish written on board the Iron Duke at Woosung October 6, 1875, the Commodore