Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841-1941
COLONIAL REPORTS-ANNUAL.
Colony. The centre of a third moving from South East to West on the 28th and 29th passed not far from Gap Rock and resulted in considerable further damage. On October 1st the typhoon signal was hoisted for the last time in the year.
A disaster on a smaller scale than the typhoon but not less horrid in its details occurred about 3 a.m. on the morning of October 14th, when the s.s. "Hankow" (3,073 tons), of the Hong Kong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company, within a few minutes of tying up to the company's pier and with some 800 persons still on board burst into flames. Ninety bodies, including those of 52 women and 19 children, were recovered of persons who had sought but failed to find safety by jumping into the water, and the charred remains of 19 others were found on board, while two persons died in hospital from injuries received. A valuable cargo was lost, and the whole interior of the ship destroyed. The cause of the fire was not definitely ascertained, but is believed to have been a coolie smoking on a heap of matting on deck.
Apart from these calamities various occurrences outside the Colony tended to make the year a bad one for trade. Piracy in the waterways leading to Canton was rife, culminating in an attack on the British steamer "Sainam," of 349 tons, belonging to the Hong Kong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company, which took place on the evening of the 13th July near Sam Shui, on the West River, when the ship was on her way from Canton to Wu Chow. In this attack the master and several Indian watchmen belonging to the ship were wounded, and a missionary—the Revd. R. J. J. Macdonald, M.D.—killed. The Chinese authorities, stimulated by H.B.M. Consul-General at Canton, showed some vigour in detecting and punishing the persons engaged in this outrage, but the problem, in which the mercantile community of the Colony took an active interest, of how to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future had received no solution by the end of the year.
Bad as were the effects on trade of the insecurity of the waterways, far greater evils resulted from the direct action of the Canton authorities in issuing from the provincial mint vast quantities of subsidiary coins containing about 10 per cent. less silver than the dollar of which they purported to represent fractional parts. This over-issue, bringing down the value of stocks of similar coins already in the country by about 5 per cent. greatly reduced the purchasing power of the Kwang Tung consumer of foreign goods. It incidentally brought down the dollar value of the Hong Kong subsidiary coins, to the inconvenience of various trading concerns in the Colony and of its Government who were unable to get rid of a large stock of this coin purchased in the preceding year and had eventually to return $3,398,000 of it to England for sale as bullion. The Hong Kong Government decided as a result of this lesson to eliminate from their future financial policy the idea of making