CO129-608-7 Future policy- Report on Port Administration by Sir David Owen 24-2-1941 - 24-2-1941 — Page 4

HONG KONG, 24th February, 1941.

Το

His Excellency Sir Geoffry A. S. Northcote, K.C.M.G.,

Governor,

Hong Kong.

Your Excellency,

1. In accordance with your invitation to me to visit Hong Kong for the purpose of investigating the Port facilities, etc., there, and making recommendations for the future control and development of the Port, I beg to report that I arrived in the Colony on the 10th January, 1941.

2. I was accompanied by Mr. Duncan Kennedy, M. Inst.C.E., who was appointed by you to advise me on any engineering matters that might arise in the course of the Inquiry.

3. The exact terms of reference given to me were:

"To investigate the whole question of Harbour facilities, organization and administration at Hong Kong, having regard to the existing system of pier leases which are due to expire in ten years' time; and, in the light of physical, economic and political conditions, to make recom- mendations for measures by which the Port could in future be developed and controlled to the best advantage of all persons and in- terests dependent on its services."

Hong Kong, with Mr. Kennedy I care- listened to representations from the apart from receiving a considerable

4. During the period of my stay in fully inspected the whole of the Port and various interests connected with its trade, amount of information from Government officials.

5. I think it desirable, in order that the conclusions to which I have arrived may be the better understood, that I should first of all set out, as briefly as possible, the nature of the problem as it presented itself to me.

6. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. The historical background of the Port is not an extensive one. It appears that, in the third decade of the last century, the island now known as Hong Kong was a place of small consequence inhabited by a few fishermen, stonecutters and farmers, and it was a notorious hiding place for smugglers and pirates. In 1841 it was taken by British forces partly as a reprisal for the bad treatment of British merchants in Canton and partly to provide a base from which trading might be carried on with merchants in South China. The cession of the island to Great Britain was confirmed by the Treaty of Nanking in August, 1842.

7. The Convention of Peking in 1860 added the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island to the Colony, while, under a further convention of 1898, the area known as the New Territories, including Mirs Bay and Deep Bay, was leased to Great Britain for a period of 99 years.

8. GOVERNMENT IN RELATION TO THE HARBOUR.-The Government of the Colony is administered by a Governor aided by an Executive Council and a Legislative Council, there being various departments dealing respectively with such matters as finance, the administration of justice, public health, public works, education, police and so on.

9. The Harbour is not run as a separate department, the engineering side of it being a sub-department or section of the department of Public Works. The control of navigation within the Port is under the Harbour Master whose department is a separate one, but his functions are wider than those usually performed by a Harbour Master, as he is also apparently Emigration Officer, Superintendent of

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