[ { "id": 204648, "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-1963", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n115\n\njourney by chair. He was the first Englishman to travel by this route, which it was hoped would develop into an important trade route from Upper Burma and West China.\n\nIn 1872 John Swire of London formed the China Navigation Company to trade on the Yangtse, and started by purchasing the two steamers of the Union Steam Navigation Company, following this up a year later with three ships of their own specially built on the Clyde. In this same year of 1873 the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company was formed, a Chinese company partly under government control and direction. This company purchased the steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1877, and so became the owners of the largest river fleet. A few years later Jardine returned to the Yangtse with the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, and by the early 1880's the greater part of the Yangtse trade was shared between these three companies: the China Navigation Company, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company.\n\nThe formation of the China Navigation Company in 1872 was a logical development from that of the Blue Funnel Line by Alfred Holt in 1866. Alfred Holt and John Swire were close friends and business associates, and when the latter opened an eastern branch of his company in Shanghai he took over the agency of the Blue Funnel Line ships. One reason behind the formation of the China Navigation Company was to provide cargoes for the Blue Funnel ships to and from the Yangtse. Alfred Holt was unwilling to operate ships so far from his personal control, but was willing to support the Swire enterprise. The inauguration of the Blue Funnel Service to the Far East, the opening of a Far Eastern branch of John Swire and Company in Shanghai in the same year, and the formation of the China Navigation Company six years later, meant the introduction of a new and powerful combination to the China coast. Holt and Swire, in association with the Clyde shipbuilding family of Scott, were soon to play a very important part in the China trade, and in the shipping of the whole of the Far East. Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and Australia, were all to come within their orbit before many years had passed.\n\nIn 1881 the various shipping interests of Jardine were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, of which Jardine were made permanent managers. For a list of the main shipping companies plying on the Yangtze see Appendix on p. 130.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205514, "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-1968", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "THE HANKOW STEAMER TEA RACES\n\n51\n\nsay with any degree of accuracy, although probably one-third of this consumption would drive her about 12 knots an hour. On the principle that, while 100 horse-power would drive a steamship ten knots an hour, it would require 1,000 horse-power to propel her at the rate of twenty knots (all other conditions being in proportion), it will be seen that Mr. Macgregor's grounds and conditions for accelerated speed are not only reasonable but indispensable: the few last knots always the most expensive, and apparently almost prohibitive.\n\n\"Indeed, the present tendency seems to be towards a falling-off in the inclination to pay for such acceleration, so far as Tea freights are concerned: but time will show. Last year [1881] the slowing down of the three Glens was positive proof that the desire for fast passages had declined; and the projected telegraph to Hankow may possibly materially interfere with high freights for the future. In face of these facts, it appears clear that the large capacity of the Glenogle is a decided advantage. The Glenogle took Home this year 5,206 tons of Tea and 185 tons of miscellaneous cargo; and when she left London a few weeks ago she carried 4,022 tons of general merchandise to China; that is, she has taken into London and brought back to the East the largest cargoes that have been carried in one bottom since the opening of the China trade.\"\n\nJ\n\nEvents soon proved the soundness of the view taken by the China Mail's contributor.\n\n[Plates 1 and 2 illustrate this article].\n\nNOTES\n\nThe material has been obtained from articles in contemporary newspapers in the library of the Supreme Court, Hong Kong mainly the Hong Kong Telegraph and the China Mail, which also quoted from many other newspapers in the area. Grateful thanks are given to Messrs. Alfred Holt & Co. for their permission to use this material which was sent to them and formed the basis of an article in their House Magazine. The contemporary account has a vividness which is often lacking in the more formal history. Quotation is therefore used to give light to the story. No attempt is made to deal more than superficially with the events and there are gaps in the information provided.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205639, "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-1968", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "176\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nTHE SENIOR JOHN SAMUEL SWIRE 1825 - 98: MANAGEMENT IN FAR EASTERN SHIPPING TRADES, Sheila Marriner & F. E. Hyde; (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1967) pp. xiv, 206, appendices, illus. 42/-\n\nThis book is the latest product of the Liverpool School of Business History which, under Professor Hyde's direction, has published a number of converging and complementary studies of the Liverpool merchant and ship-owner. Although it is claimed for these studies that \"they are collectively an expression of ideas and techniques in the progression towards more sophisticated types of analysis in the handling (sic) of business records\", a common feature of all of them is the endorsement of Charles Wilson's credo: in the history of business, biography is a powerful element.\n\nWe come to this book, then, with the previous knowledge from these other Liverpool Studies that 'The Senior' was a tenacious, aggressive character, described by a business rival as \"a person who lived by and for business alone\"; with, as well, a considerable understanding of the part played by Messrs. Butterfield and Swire in the Far Eastern shipping trades and, in particular, of J. S. Swire's role as architect and protagonist of the Eastern Shipping Conferences. The commercial history of Butterfield and Swire, and to a lesser extent of Holt's Blue Funnel Line,* has already been examined from several angles which means that the reviewer of this present study has had to read three books instead of one! (The third one is K. C. Liu's study of the Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China (Harvard, 1962) and which drew, if indirectly, on the Butterfield and Swire records.) This effectively strikes the note of competition arising from the establishment and operation of the China Navigation Company.\n\nWhat we have new in this latest piece of research, principally, is the story of the 'Great and Ancient' (Taikoo) Sugar Refinery and, later, of the Taikoo Dockyard in Hong Kong. This project stemmed, as the authors make quite clear, as much from the conflict between Swire's and Jardine's - Swire swore to oppose the Princely House at all points—as from a calculation that it might further the shipping interests of the firm. Indeed, one of the most valuable sections for the historian of the China Coast trade is the\n\n* Blue Funnel: A History of Alfred Holt and Co. of Liverpool from 1865 to 1914, F. E. Hyde and J. R. Harris, Liverpool University Press, 1957.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216499, "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-2003", "page_number": 258, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "209\n\nthe original plaque, with the words as above, has been cleaned and is easy to read,\n\nA new, interesting information panel now also accompanies the exhibit. It reads as follows:\n\nSteam Ship Tyndareus\n\nIn 1916 the 25th (Garrison) Battalion, the Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regiment) was ordered to proceed to Hong Kong from Aldershot. The Battalion was to be taken as far as Durban by S S Tyndareus, a 7058-tonne vessel with a crew of 108 owned by Alfred Holt and Company of Liverpool which was making her maiden voyage. Having sailed from Glasgow, the Tyndareus embarked the battalion, 1005 strong, and left Devonport on 22 December 1916.\n\nAt 6.55pm on February 1917, off Cape Agulhas, 173 Km south-east of Cape Town, the vessel struck a German mine which exploded creating an 84 square metre hole in the starboard side and bottom of the ship. The Tyndareus heaved over, began to ship water and started to go down by the head. No lives were lost in the explosion or the subsequent evacuation and the vessel managed to reach Simontown two days later.\n\nThe Tyndareus received partial repairs in South Africa, served through the Second World War and was not broken up until 1960. The Battalion had recovered sufficiently from its ordeal to form a guard of honour at the opening of the South African Parliament on 16 February, and after a further stop in Singapore the 25th reached Hong Kong on 1 April 1917. Here the Battalion's commanding Officer commissioned the erection of a memorial, sited on the Peak of Hong Kong Island, to commemorate the exemplary conduct displayed by his men when the ship was mined.\n\nAn inscribed metal plaque was later added to the rock which erroneously stated that it was erected in memory of the men who died in the accident - perhaps a confusion with the wreck of HM Troopship Birkenhead in 1852 which claimed 445 lives.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]