Enclosure No. 1 to Despatch No. 551 of the 19th.
December, 1902.
C. O.
2431
-010. JAN CZ
521
The proposed purchase of land adjoining Kowloon Marine Lct
No.27 by the HongKong and Whampoa Dock Company.
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The idea of constructing a new dock at Hunghom appears
to have been suggested to the Cock Company, in the first
instance, by various reports which appeared during 1896 in the
leading London newspapers reflecting on the inadequacy of the
docking facilities at the port of HongKong. Vr.3.8.Dodwell,
the Chairman of Dock Company, while contending that the "exist-
ing locks and establishments are very ample, as far as we are
able to judge, for our requirements for the present and for
the near future," wrote on the 19th December 1995 to Vice-
Admiral Buller proposing that, in view of the necessity under-
stool to exist from an Imperial point of view for increased
dock accommodation at Hongkong for heavy vessels of Her
Majesty's Navy, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty
should make a free grant to the Company of £150,000 to be
applied towards the cost of the construction of a new dock,
and in return for this financial assistance the Company
offered the Admiralty the use of all their docks and slips for
Her Majesty's ships free of hire for a period of 50 years, the
Admiralty paying only a fixed sum to cover cost of pumping cut
the lock and shoring the vessel in lock.
On the 10th Ncverber, 1896, the Loris Commissioners of
the Admiralty intiaated to the Secretary of State for the
Colonies their decision that, "under all the circumstances of the case, the terms proposed by the Cock Company are
inadmissible,"