[
    {
        "id": 212309,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 251,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "By the 1970s, it was no longer such a competitive and profitable organisation and its operations were scaled down. A purpose-built factory was completed on Tsing Yi island in 1991.\n\nAlthough the Swire Group over five generations has always had its head office in England, it has interests throughout Asia and the South Pacific, as well as in North America and Australia. Its China Navigation Company began operations on the Yangtze River in 1872. In World War II, more than half of Swire's ships were lost. A dockyard (of which more later) was established in Hong Kong at the turn of the century.\n\nThe group, which adopts a relatively low profile, has about 28,000 employees in 1988, and is the second largest employer in Hong Kong after the Government. Its complement included, up to 1990, 78-year old Madame Ho Sau-King who had worked at Taikoo Sugar Limited since 1928.\n\nIn 1981 John Bremridge (later Sir John), Taipan of Swire's, became Government Financial Secretary for a term of five years. This was an unprecedented appointment as previous 'FSs' had been promoted through the ranks of the civil service. Like the son of the founder of Swire's, Sir John Bremridge writes and speaks to the point”.\n\nThe conglomeration of interests of this (still largely) family firm and private limited company includes an elite collection of Hong Kong enterprises. Swire's has a controlling interest in Cathay Pacific Airways, founded in 1948, as well as in HAECO aircraft maintenance company. Property is also big business and about 45 per cent of the group's net asset value is in bricks and mortar. Other interests include container terminals, technology, engineering, air catering, investment banking, travel and general trading. Sir Adrian and Sir John Swire have a family fortune estimated at HK$6.3 billion, and in 1989 Sir John was quoted by the Sunday Times Magazine as being Britain's 12th richest person, a position he held jointly with his brother.\n\nDodwell's\n\nW.R. Adamson and Company (later, Adamson Bell and Company), the forerunner of Dodwell's, was founded as a result of the efforts of a group of Cheshire weavers who needed to increase supplies of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212310,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 252,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "224\n\nraw silk for their mills. Adanison arrived in Shanghai, on their behalf, in 1852. In 1858 he formed his own firm, exporting tea and general merchandise, and set up branches in Hong Kong, Foochow and Hongkow. There were ten European employees.\n\nIn 1872, the firm appointed a shipping clerk in its Shanghai office named George Benjamin Dodwell. He was 20 years old, born in Derby, and was paid 400 pounds for the first year of service, with a room, fire, light and medical bills met by the firm. Dodwell was allowed five per cent of all profits of the shipping business on everything earned above 700 taels per annum (equivalent to 2,100 sterling). He also had a share in other profits in an attempt to stop him branching out on his own account. Another condition of appointment was that he should 'not indulge in racing of horses and ponies'. This contrasted with the conditions of service for Jardine's who were not against their employees having a wager.\n\nIn 1876, Adamson Bell and Company's tea shipments (at the end of the nineteenth century nearly 60 per cent of China's exports consisted of tea and silk) were only marginally behind those of Jardines and Butterfield and Swires. For much of his work Dodwell was assisted by the firm's compradore. Nonetheless, a considerable amount of financial risk was involved. Dodwell and A.J.M. Carlill finally took over the bankrupt Adamson Bell Company [which is still known as Tien Cheang (天昌) meaning heavenly prosperity] on May 1st, 1891.\n\nCanadian Pacific Railways (CPR) chartered sailing ships to import goods from China and Japan. Dodwell had entered into a three-year contract with Sir William Van Horne of CPR. But, as business was good, CPR decided to run its own fast mail line in place of hiring old Cunarders.\n\nDodwell was told his contract would not be renewed, but he was asked to continue to manage the CPR services at the Far Eastern end. Van Horne was impressed by Dodwell as a man, and he offered him full control of the new CPR shipping line if Dodwell would abandon his newly established firm and join CPR as an employee. He was offered a salary and commissions totalling at least 4,000 pounds a year. Dodwell declined, preferring to head his own new enterprise which he had rescued, and would rebuild, from bankruptcy.\n\nIt is the worst day's work you have ever done, Dodwell\",",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215828,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 127,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "60 \n\nwould be unfavourable. \n\n18 G.S.P. Heywood, Hong Kong Typhoons (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1950), p.15. \n\n19 Spring 1944 estimates for the number of Japanese aircraft able to oppose a Hong Kong landing numbered 400, with perhaps another 1,150 in nearby areas able to be diverted to Hong Kong. Allied planners believed that they could maintain a CAP of about 120 aircraft over Hong Kong at any time. See (1) CPS107/1, p.35-36, 40. (2) JIC177, \"Campaign in China: Japanese Aircraft Available to Oppose a Landing in the Hong Kong Area,\" 21 Mar 44, p.3-4; CCS381 Hong Kong; RG218; NA, Washington, DC. \n\n20 Heywood, p.15. \n\n21 There are other possible origins of the word. Tufan means smoke in Arabic, and typhon means monster in Greek. See William J. Kotsch & Richard Henderson, Heavy Weather Guide, 2nd Ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), p.167. \n\n22 (1) Heywood, p.1-2. (2) Hans Christian Adamson & George Francis Kosco, Halsey's Typhoons (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1967), p.10-14, 176-177. \n\n23 Heywood, p.1. \n\n24 (1) HKRO, Tropical Cyclones, p.2. (2) Heywood, p.16, 19. (3) Adamson & Kosco, p.11-12. \n\n25 (1) HKRO, Meteorological Results, 1937 (Hong Kong: Government Printers, 1938), Appendix II, p.4-5 (hereafter referred to as HKRO, Meteorological Results). (2) Denis Campbell Bray, Hong Kong Metamorphosis (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), p.144. (3) Gordon John Bell, Surface Winds in Hong Kong Typhoons: Preliminary Report (Hong Kong: Royal Observatory, 1963), p.1 \n\n26 (1) HKRO, Meteorological Results, p.6. (2) South China Morning Post (SCMP), September 4, 1937, p.12. \n\n27 (1) HKRO, Meteorological Results, Appendix II. (2) Charles E.J. Eather, Airport of the Nine Dragons: Kai Tak, Kowloon (Surfer's Paradise, Queensland: Ching",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]