75
of their families and many of their belongings ashore. Fourteen of the seventeen houses inherited by fishermen in 1970 were owned by them.
Despite the fact that the boats were almost the same size, purse-seiners traditionally also housed an appreciably larger number of people than did the liners. Figures collected in 1953 when all the Kau Sai's Boat People still lived on board give an average of 10 persons for purse-seiners, 6 for small long-liners and between 3 and 4 for hand-liners and others. The difference is not fully explained by the fact that only the purse-seiners carried hired men, for as many as two-thirds of the purse-seiners in this count did not do so. Of greater numerical significance was the fact that whereas the liners contained only simple (nuclear) or at the most stem families, virtually all the purse-seiners housed extended families. In other words, the full three-generation family in which sons all stayed at home and brought in their wives to live with them was the norm on the purse-seiners; on the small and hand-liners it did not occur. This difference, considered in detail in the following chapters on technical and economic organisation, with which it was closely connected, carried with it also a number of significant differences in family structure, marriage choices, and kin relationships which are the subject of later chapters.
The Boats: propulsion
The changeover from sail to mechanisation was so complete that by 1970 most Kau Sai boats had no sails at all. Only the masts remained. (On most of the harbour craft and many of the smallest inshore boats even these had either disappeared or been drastically cut down). One or two careful families considered this to be flying in the face of providence. "Where should we be” said Lo Shing Chui one day in 1968 “if the engine packed in while we were out at sea and a storm coming up?” But the Lo family was unusually careful in everything; no one else at that time both kept their sails and saw to it that they were properly dyed and maintained as in the "old days" less than a dozen years before.
--
75
of their families and many of their belongings ashore. Fourteen of the seventeen houses inherited by fishermen in 1970 were owned by them.
Despite the fact that the boats were almost the same size, purse-seiners traditionally also housed an appreciably larger number of people than did the liners. Figures collected in 1953 when all the Kau Sai's Boat People still lived on board" give an average of 10 persons for purse-seiners, 6 for small long-liners and between 3 and 4 for hand-liners and others. The difference is not fully explained by the fact that only the pursc-sciners carried hired men, for as many as two-thirds of the purse-seiners in this count did not do so. Of greater numerical significance was the fact that whereas the liners contained only simple (nuclear) or at the most stem families, virtually all the purse-seiners housed extended families. In other words, the full three-generation family in which sons all stayed at home and brought in their wives to live with them was the norm on the purse-seiners; on the small and hand-liners it did not occur. This difference, considered in detail in the following chapters on technical and economic organisation," with which it was closely connected, carried with it also a number of significant differences in family structure, marriage choices, and kin relationships which are the subject of later chapters."
The Boats: propulsion
The changeover from sail to mechanisation was so complete that by 1970 most Kau Sai boats had no sails at all. Only the masts remained. (On most of the harbour craft and many of the smallest inshore boats even these had either disappeared or been drastically cut down). One or two careful families considered this to be flying in the face of providence. "Where should we be” said Lo Shing Chui one day in 1968 “if the engine packed in while we were out at sea and a storm coming up?” But the Lo family was unusually careful in everything; no one else at that time both kept their sails and saw to it that they were properly dyed and maintained as in the "old days" less than a dozen years before.
--
!
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.