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BARBARA E. WARD
(i.e. grandfather) was master (on the three others he had retired in favour of an eldest son); on 7 of the 8 with the families of undivided brothers on board the eldest brother was master. Similarly, if we consider instead, and rather more realistically, the 18 purse-seiner firms (pairs) as they existed in 1953, we find that in 2 of the 4 which comprised three generation extended families the senior father was master (in the other 2 he had retired), and in the 12 comprising undivided paternal units the elder brother was master. The two firms composed of two unrelated crews were in a somewhat different situation, discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 below. In 1970, again, a very similar picture emerges: the 7 three-generation extended family crews were each under the mastership of the senior father, or, where he had retired, his eldest married son except in one case described more fully a little later on; in all the 4 undivided fraternal units the masters were the eldest brothers present; the 1 nuclear family crew was under the mastership of father.
There is nothing unexpected in this recital, except perhaps the fact of going through it at all. Normatively, of course, in any Chinese population with its known cultural predilection for the moral rectitude of strict patriliny and the award of respect by seniority this is the result that would be expected. The lingering prejudice against the Boat People is such, however, that their social customs are still sometimes alleged to be non-Chinese. For this reason, if for no other, it is probably worth recording the above data in detail, and adding to them the further information that investigation throughout the Hong Kong fishing fleets reveals substantially the same facts: normally, as well as normatively, of all those (i.e. family members) who are eligible it is the senior married male who is boat's master.
The few cases which appear to run counter to this norm in Kau Sai find echoes also and in roughly the same proportion (that is somewhat under 10%) elsewhere in the fishing fleets and, what is more, on land. Being, like many other exceptions, explicable only within the terms of the rules they throw a good deal of light upon them. They were of two main types, one of which the pattern of retirement has already been touched upon more than once. There an eldest son takes over the