1904-1919
HONG KONG, 1906.
23
diocesan inspection. Captain L. A. W. Barnes-Lawrence, R.N., the Harbour Master, died on the 2nd October as the result of exposure during and overwork after the storm. Two thousand three hundred and eighty-five Chinese were actually reported missing, but the loss of Chinese life is believed to have been much greater than this, and probably exceeded 5,000. Fifty-nine European-built merchant vessels, of 72,185 aggregate tonnage, foundered, grounded, or otherwise received injuries which in the case of 18 vessels, of 8,198 aggregate tonnage, amounted to or resulted in total loss. In addition, 50 steam launches were more or less damaged, including 32 that were sunk, of which most were, however, afterwards raised. H.M.S. Phoenix, a sloop of 1,050 tons, went ashore and has since been broken up; the French torpedo-boat destroyer “Fronde,” though broken in two by a similar accident, was considered worth repairing; a number of Colonial Government vessels were damaged; 796 junks, 798 cargo boats, 275 sampans and 544 other boats, making a total of 2,413 Chinese craft, were reported lost or missing. All the temporary and some of the permanent piers in Victoria and Kowloon were destroyed, and much injury was done to sea walls in both places and to dykes protecting cultivation in the eastern part of the New Territories. Eighteen houses in Victoria, 122 in Kowloon, and about 50 in the New Territories were blown down wholly or in part or rendered unsafe for habitation. Considerable injury was done to the roads in various parts of the Colony, to the telephone systems, to public buildings in progress, to the pine plantations on the Island, and to the crops on the low-lying grounds on the shores of Tide Cove and Tolo Harbour. Two days after the typhoon a relief fund was started, of which the principal object was to enable the boating people to again carry on the work of the harbour. The sum raised amounted ultimately to $279,903, of which $127,494, mainly subscribed by European firms, residents and sympathisers, was collected by the Relief Fund Committee, and $152,409, subscribed by Chinese in Hong Kong and elsewhere, was collected by the Committee of the Tung Wa Hospital. Of the aggregate sum, $244,892 has been expended in buying, rebuilding, and repairing 1,600 junks, sampans and other boats, in recovering and burying corpses, in maintaining destitutes, in relief to widows and orphans, &c.
The great typhoon called forth expressions of sympathy from His Majesty the King, from His Majesty's Government and from various British and foreign governments and communities in the Far East. Another bright aspect of it were the acts of heroism and duty performed in the rescue and aid of sufferers and in the clearing away of the more gruesome evidence of the catastrophe. The latter work and the putting in hand of the salvage operations in the harbour and of the heavy repairs on shore were delayed by subsequent storms of which one on the night of the 19th to 20th September passed within 300 miles and a second on the 23rd passed just beyond this distance of the
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