[ { "id": 207396, "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-1975", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "156\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nsteeply to one of the passes, Magazine Gap, through which roads passed from one side of the Island to the other. The hospital had wide shady verandahs but no lifts, and all windows had heavy wooden shutters for use during typhoons. A reservoir for fire fighting purposes had been constructed a little above hospital level and was fed by hill streams. Above that again was the Nursing Sisters Mess. About the same level as the hospital were quarters for warrant officers and a barrack block for male staff, a NAAFI block for recreation and a tennis court together with some lesser outbuildings. Below the hospital was the Sergeants Mess and a residential block for married staff, \"H\" block. There was only one approach road winding up to the hospital, Borrett Road, but there was a subsidiary road, Bowen Road, running along a contour line but not strong enough to take heavy traffic. The hospital was one of the landmarks of the Hong Kong scene when viewed from the mainland. Below the hospital the ground fell steeply to the main road linking the city of Victoria and the Island to the east, and to the Naval Command Headquarters in H.M.S. Tamar, the Naval Dockyard and the headquarters of China Command. The hospital was therefore close to legitimate enemy targets and any margin for error in artillery fire and aerial bombing was reduced still further by the precipitous slope on which it stood.\n\nThe hospital however had nowhere else to go, and Colonel Shackleton the commanding officer used his considerable ingenuity to have two operating theatres with their necessary adjuncts and X-Ray rooms constructed in the basement of the administration block. Engines for generating electricity, one capable of supplying the theatres and X-ray room, the other able to serve part of the hospital as well were installed and were of great value during hostilities and during the long period of captivity. When the hospital was severely damaged and the kitchen totally destroyed very early on by aerial bombs and shell fire, Shackleton speedily got an emergency kitchen operating in the sergeants mess and set up a protective wall of concrete blocks, known to us from a much publicised local court case as \"Mimi Lau's”, on the harbour side of the ground floor wards. Shackleton was a forceful character, apparently not aware of fear, who was ready to cut through any red tape which obstructed his aims. He liked his own way and was not an easy man to have under command, but to those relying upon his administration in war he always provided what was needed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212387, "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": 329, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "306\n\nthe San Bernadino Strait and searched the east coasts of Samar and Mindanao.\n\nBy the 24th December the Sphinx had arrived in Davao and made preparations for an eastward search through the Caroline Islands. Following fruitless enquiries in Palau from the local chieftains, the Sphinx churned her way further east through the myriad islets and atolls.\n\nBy the time HMS Sphinx had reached the Enderby atolls, Cmdr Brown had begun to lose hope of finding the Norna survivors. One last possibility lay ahead of him. Truk (now known as Chuuk), was the group of islands closest to St Augustine on the intended route of the Norna's castaways. In the early morning of the 3rd March 1862, HMS Sphinx eased her way through Truk's 100 mile circular coral fringe.\n\nNo sooner had they entered the lagoon than they saw an European style boat being rowed frantically towards them. The four lascar occupants scrambled up to the Sphinx's deck and explained they were from the shipwrecked barque Norna. They also told Brown that the rest of the crew were being held captive as slaves on various other islands in the group; they themselves had managed to escape.\n\nAfter a minor skirmish with the natives, HMS Sphinx rescued all the castaways from the Norna save for one who had died a few months earlier from the treatment meted out by the Trukese. It had been all but a year since the Norna was wrecked on the reefs of Oroluk Lagoon.\n\nOn the 19th March 1862, HMS Sphinx set course for Guam where they arrived six days later. After 10 days of rest and recreation, Brown set the Sphinx on course for Hong Kong and came to anchor close by the guardship, HMS Princess Charlotte, which was anchored not far from today's Kellet Island.\n\nHMS Sphinx had more than successfully acquitted herself in her endeavours. She had sailed and steamed nearly 6,000 miles through the little known waters of the Western Pacific in search of a crew who might or might not have survived. However, the naval authorities in Hong Kong firmly believed there was more than a fair chance of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213418, "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-1995", "page_number": 14, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "I Jul 95\n\n19 Aug 95\n\n23 Sept 95\n\n18 Nov 95\n\nTraditional Trades and Crafts of Hong Kong - HK Museum of History (Exhibition)\n\nHeaven's Embroidered Cloths A Thousand Years of Chinese Textiles (Exhibition) - HK Museum of Art\n\nLife Under the Japanese Occupation 1941-45 (Exhibition) - HK Museum of History\n\nExhibition of Chinese Folk Art - HK University Museum and Art Gallery\n\nNew Territories Temples and Da Jiu at Kam Tin\n\n26 Nov 95\n\n16 Dec 95\n\nJade Exhibition - HK University Museum and Art Gallery\n\n13 Jan 96\n\nPrince of Wales Barracks and former HMS Tamar Site\n\n20 Jan 96\n\nVillages of the north eastern New Territories\n\n10 Feb 96\n\nWalk through the deserted villages of Sai Kung\n\n9 Mar 96\n\nMaritime Silk Route (Exhibition) - HK Museum of History\n\n16 Mar 96\n\nOrganic Farm on Lamma Island\n\nVisits outside Hong Kong:\n\n22/23 Apr 95\n\nDapeng, Xin'an County\n\n2/3 Feb 96 14/17 Mar 96\n\nBocca Tigris Forts of the Pearl River\n\nTemples of northern Taiwan\n\nSuch activity demands some very dedicated organisers and besides those already mentioned in the Activities Committee we are particularly grateful to Dr. Joseph Ting, Dr. Anthony Siu, Mr. John Wilson, Mr. Philip Bruce, Dr. Patrick Hase, Mr. David Sheil and Dr. Michael Lau for their help. Sometimes not all members can obtain places on these outings and I would like to say that we are quite willing to run the trip again provided we can find someone to assist in organising it. In fact, if any member is willing to propose any trip to somewhere of interest the Society will always be prepared to consider it.\n\nThere is one other activity to which I would like to draw your", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215136, "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-2000", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "189\n\nspeed test over a set distance. This is done, for example, for ships built on the Firth of Clyde, in Scotland (Sinclair, 2000). The late James A W Deacon, Superintendent of Lights in the Hong Kong Government Marine Department, told me they tried unsuccessfully to find a place for timing ships over a measured sea mile on the south side of Hong Kong Island. Eventually such a \"course\" was, it is understood, set up at Tseung Kwan O (Junk Bay), in the eastern New Territories. It seems unlikely that the two Obelisks at Tai Tam were ever used for timing ships because of their rather 'tucked away' positions. There is also no evidence of there ever having been a second pair of beacons in the vicinity.\n\nAre there other possible uses for the two Tai Tam Obelisks? I was informed firstly in the late 1970s by a master mariner and senior civil servant in the Government Marine Department, that a Royal Navy Officer, who had served in Hong Kong before World War Two, had told him that the two Obelisks had been used when submarines submerged during tests. This practice came into being (so it was said) because of the loss of HM Submarine Thetis, on 1 June 1939, on its maiden dive with the loss of 99 sailors and civilians. A diver who went down to try to effect a rescue was also lost. Only four occupants managed to escape from the submarine using the Davis Escape Apparatus. The Royal Navy Officer told the senior Marine Department Officer that submarines were sent to Tai Tam Bay, after repairs or refits in the old Royal Naval Dockyard. At Tai Tam they could dive to periscope depth, in line between the two Obelisks. Then, if anything were to go wrong, the submarine could be traced and the crew rescued hopefully relatively quickly. The now retired Marine Department member of staff acknowledges that he never had material in writing to support this statement but he believes the information was given to him in good faith.\n\nWhen this information was put to Guy Clarabutt, who served in Royal Navy submarines in Hong Kong before World War Two, he said he had never heard of such a practice (Sinclair, 2000). Neither could he remember the two Obelisks at Tai Tam (Waters, 2000). I spoke to a young British naval officer stationed at HMS Tamar, on Hong Kong Island, in 1995. He felt that such a practice was highly unlikely. In 1997, however, I raised the same question with Commodore PJ Melson CBE, Chief of Staff and Deputy to Commander British Forces. He, as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215570, "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-2001", "page_number": 347, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "297\n\nCROWN\n\nB.P.36 1844\n\n(Harrison; 1999)\n\nApart from oral history, no written evidence has been uncovered to confirm that these two cannons, now at Queen's College, once fortified Waglan Island (Lee; 1999).\n\nBadly corroded, an old cannon is set on its muzzle and buried into the rocks up to its trunnions, where the old landing stage used to be. This old cannon acted as a bollard for tying up boats. A small boat would transport supplies from the mother ship to shore. From there drums of diesel, bags of coal, firewood and other material were manhandled up the steps to the top of the Island. Coal and firewood were the only fuels for cooking up to the late 1960s. A new, larger landing stage, a little to the north, was constructed in the 1960s. A cable railway was also installed for raising stores and equipment.\n\nBecause it is a restricted area, there were (and still are) few visitors to Waglan although there was a visitors' book. It was considered an auspicious day when the late Sir Robert Black, Governor of Hong Kong from 1958 to 1964, visited the lighthouse in 1963.\n\nCommunications\n\nIn other parts of the world lighthouse keepers, years ago, would use semaphore for signalling. The author has not seen nor heard of this happening in Hong Kong. Also, in the Hong Kong Marine Police (previously called Water Police), up until about 1926 around 50 pigeons were kept on strength. Half a dozen or so were taken out on each police launch to fly messages back to headquarters. There is no record, as far as the author knows, of pigeons being used to fly messages from lighthouses. Signals used to be sent by flashing lamps, however, using Morse code, to passing ships. In the mid-1950s HMS Tamar operated a radar station on Waglan.\n\nWaglan also had two sets of fog horn signalling equipment (there were also two electrical generators), in case one broke down. When the foghorn was operating it sounded every five minutes. Normally the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]