8.
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which would deal with passengers arriving from all South China
ports, there might be some excuse for medical examination;
but as conditions are at present there is absolutely none.
Harbour Department. The chief idea appears to be
to create as large a department as possible and run it on the
most expensive lines. Beckwith ran the Hong Kong Harbour
on decidedly economic lines. He worked with a minimum staff
and was at all times ready to render the Mercantile Marine and
the shipowners all the assistance and help he could. Under
conditions as they are to-day the foreign personnel of the Harbour Department is steadily increasing and all sorts of
expensive craft some of them quite unnecessary
for use
of that Department are being constructed. No better example
could be given than the action taken over the rescue tug just
after the "Hsin-wah" (China Merchants S.N.Co.) foundered off
Waglan. Someone wrote to the press and said that they could not understand why having a rescue tug in Hong Kong it was left
to the shipyards to despatch their tugs in the rescue of passengers on board the "Hsin-wah". The Department then wrote
to the Government to the effect that the rescue tug was totally
unsuited for the requirements of the Colony, that instead of having reciprocating engines she should be an internal
combustion boat, and advised the Government either to scrap the
vessel (which incidentally was constructed at a cost of
something like $280,000) or at least replace the reciprocating
engines with internal combustion ones. As a matter of fact,
the Hong Kong rescue tug for the work she was originally
designed leaves little or nothing to be desired. A Committee,
at the request of the Hong Kong Government, consisting of the Managers in the two shipyards, I think Mr.James, our Superintendent and the then Government Marine Surveyor, and several other