CO129-523-6 Criticism of Hong Kong Administration 29-1-1930 - 3-3-1930 — Page 35

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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