[ { "id": 204801, "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-1964", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "92\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\n19 The Harbour Master's Report for 1906 in Sessional Papers 1907, p. 130, which presumably gives figures for the whole Colony, states that 1,796 native craft were sunk, and in the majority of cases totally lost. The total loss of life, he said, \"must have been excessively high, amounting to approximately 5,000, though there are no positive records to show the actual number that perished\". The typhoon was not expected, and a few days afterwards a committee was appointed to enquire whether earlier warning could have been given to shipping. A month later its members opined that \"reviewing the evidence as a whole, the committee find that prior to 7.44 a.m. on the 18th September 1906 there was no indication of a typhoon approaching Hong Kong... and warning was given as soon as, in the circumstances, was practically possible.\" The Report of the Typhoon Relief Fund Committee in Sessional Papers 1907, pp. 277-287, gives no information about Peng Chau, though Table 1, p. 283 may include some Peng Chau craft,\n\n20 The system of credit is briefly described on p. 2 of the Report of the Fisheries Department, Hong Kong Government, for 1946-47.\n\n\"The practice of the laans before the war was to obtain control over the fisherman by granting loans to him for the repairing of his boat, buying of new gear, etc. at certain period during the year. In return the fisherman was expected to market all fish caught through the laan who would make appropriate deductions although, in many cases, the laan would ensure that the fisherman never settled the loan and therefore was never free to market his catch through anyone else.\"\n\nPeng Chau appears to have had several concerns of this type, though they combined their activities in this direction with general shopkeeping. They dealt in a variety of goods and sold also to land customers, besides acting as middlemen for the fishermen's catch and providing them with all their requirements. The big dealers connected with the Peng Chau fishing fleet at the time of the repair tablet of 1878 appear to have been seven Hong Kong laans mentioned on the tablet. This shows that the number of Peng Chau boats was sufficiently large for outside merchants to do business with them, either directly or through the local smaller dealers.\n\nOne should not, however, take too narrow a view of the fishermen's position vis-à-vis the laan. The same willingness to allow the fishermen goods on credit, and so run up debts and incur obligations which would ensure that they continued to patronise the same shop or laan, was also extended by shopkeepers to the farmers and townspeople. S. Y. Lan op. cit. gives much detail on laans, some of whom were Tankas.\n\n21 For this information see Hong Kong Annual Report for 1899, pp. 14-15, Colonial Reports, Annual, 1899, No. 314 (London, HMSO, 1901).\n\n22 BCL.\n\n23 BCL.\n\n24 Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (London, Allen and Unwin, 1958) p. 101. Orme's Report mentions, p. 44, the diversity of the fishing population thus, \"The Hoklos, who are a kind of sea-gypsy, only form a very small section of the land population, some 1500 in all, but much of the fishing is in their hands. Of the junk population, the large majority are Puntis (I assume he means Punti-speaking), and of the remainder some Hakka and some Hoklo.\"\n\n25 Hong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification No. 557 of 1901.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204840, "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-1964", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "118\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\n14 They had every reason to be alarmed on account of the continual attacks from pirates on coastal villages in Kwangtung and other places during the period from about 1787 until 1810. See A. W. Hummel: Eminent Chinese of the Ching Period, 446-8. Also C. F. Neuman, History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810.\n\n15 Macartney took with him on the embassy a \"gardener and botanist”, David Stronach. For the botanical side of the embassy see J. L. Cranmer-Byng, op. cit., 317-19.\n\n16 These nets are known locally as \"stake nets\" or tsang pang are lowered and raised by means of a tackle. They are frequently used along the coasts of Kwangtung today. The fishing season is from February to mid-September,\n\n17 The island is now reasonably well covered with pine trees and there are a few small feng-shui woods of deciduous trees. A large number of kites have been observed using pine trees on a ridge in the centre of the island as a roost during the winter months.\n\n18 Parish knew the island, which he had been sent to reconnoitre, under the name of Cowhee. Now he learned that the inhabitants called it Toong Shing-ow-a. However, this name does not appear to have survived and the island is now always known as Ma Wan4 and was so called as far back as 1859. See Rev. Krone, op. cit. (note 8) p. 73. The word Cowhee was probably a phonetic rendering of the name of an island between Ping Chau island and Hong Kong island known as Kau I Chau 交椅洲.\n\n19 By the small island to the south-east Parish presumably meant Tang Lung Chau## which now has a small light-house on it. There is now a small harbour with a jetty at Ma Wan village, and this is the normal place for landing on the island today.\n\n20 This is a doubtful statement.\n\n21 The word as written in the manuscript report is clearly \"profil\". I can only suggest that Parish meant \"profile\", and was using it in a technical, military engineering sense, meaning \"outline\". A reading of Tristram Shandy and other eighteenth century books about sieges and defence works might give a clue to its technical meaning at that time,\n\n22 From the anchorage position marked on the chart this must refer to the bay of Tsing Lung Tau. Today Ma Wan is connected to the mainland by a regular ferry service running from the bay of Sham Tseng, where the Hong Kong Brewery is situated.\n\n23 By the word \"bay\" in this context Parish appears to refer to the wide bay formed by the northern coast of Lantao from its headland opposite Tsing Lung Tau to Chek Lap Kok opposite Tung Chung bay, but the wording is somewhat ambiguous at this point.\n\n24 Probably the western arm of Luk Kang\n\n-\n\n· + +\n\non Lantao.\n\n25 Tung Ku #island opposite Tap Siak Kok on the Castle Peak peninsula. It forms part of the Urmston Road.\n\n26 See Charles Tulse, Local Master's Handbook. Seamanship Illustrated (Hong Kong University Press, 1960).\n\n27 See photograph of the \"race\" between Ma Wan and Lantao on page\n\nIt is interesting to know that Professor Deryck Chesterman of the Department of Physics in the University of Hong Kong is carrying out research into the currents off Ma Wan and their effects on the sea bed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207336, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "96\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nand China Gas Company, the Hong Kong Electric Company, the Hong Kong Distillery Company, all needed skilled European labour.\n\nThe Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company employed European foremen, clerks, book-keepers, shipwrights, engineers, boiler-makers, storekeepers, and superintendents. 'Where the eastern seas', J.S. Thomson enthuses, 'bubble up hot to the flame of an equatorial sun, Chinese workmen, with Scotch overseers, turn out six thousand ton steel ships and do battleship repairing worthy of Woolwich or Devonport.' The skilled British mechanic experienced a degree of upward social mobility in Hong Kong: the skilled worker became an overseer, with all the compensations of improved status and salary.\n\n13\n\nApart from any non-qualified engineers, mechanics and artisans, there were a number of Europeans employed in other low status occupations. We should mention lighthouse keepers, employed by the Harbour Master's Department (later Marine Department), tide-waiters in the Chinese Maritime Customs, whose duty it was to board ships and junks at the various treaty ports, some of whom were domiciled in Hong Kong. They were, like the skippers and engineers of the vessels owned by the Hong Kong, Canton, and Macau Steamboat Company, mostly retired A.B.s from the Royal Navy and non-commissioned officers who had served their time. Lastly, there was a sprinkling of European tailors, hairdressers, milliners, confectioners, bakers, booksellers, printers, photographers, owners of sporting-goods shops, livery stable keepers, and gunsmiths. Most bars and tap-rooms employed Europeans as managers and barmen, though many were not of British nationality. As Macmillan concludes:\n\nThe bulk of the foreign population is employed in commerce, but the police, revenue, and sanitary staffs, schools, public works, docks, etc., give employment to a large number of overseers and supervisors, mostly engaged direct from home or from military and naval men whose service with the garrison is completed.1 Macmillan, however, forgot to mention the important beachcomber element in the overseer force.\n\n14\n\nEuropean outcastes were mainly prostitutes, nearly all of whom were of working class origin. Many of these women were professionals from the red light districts of San Francisco, Honolulu, Sydney, and Melbourne, who, for one reason or another (usually", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215135, "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": 231, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "188\n\ncopy which was corrected in 1900. Earlier versions do not, apparently, show the two Obelisks. It seems then that the two Obelisks were erected in their present forms at the end of the 19th century. I was, however, told by a Chinese Chief Inspector of the Royal Hong Kong Police, at the informal meeting organised by Chatwin, that at one stage in his career the Chief Inspector had served in the Tai Tam district. There he had met an elderly, retired police officer who informed him that, before the two concrete Obelisks were constructed, two timber obelisks stood in about the same places. This is purely oral history and, although it may well be true, I have not been able to trace anything more about them. Joseph Aspdin did not invent artificial Portland cement until 1824, in Britain. It would take time for its use to spread around the world. This meant that if obelisks were erected in the middle of the 19th century, in Hong Kong, they would likely have been made of some material other than cement concrete.\n\nThe two beacons were probably used by shipping, then, as navigational aids when entering the Bay, and sailing on into the Harbour, to avoid hazards or for use in times of bad visibility. In a Government Antiquities and Monuments Office paper a master mariner, Mr A Davidson, is quoted as saying that following the courses of the two Obelisks, 'in line,' results in a course which clears a patch of rocks lying across the entrance to Tai Tam Bay. These rocks, he states, are now lighted (Antiquities and Monuments Office, 1980).\n\nBearing in mind that just about all useful records from the Government Harbour Master's Office and the Public Works Department were lost during the Japanese occupation (1941 to 1945), it has not been possible to trace who erected the two Obelisks although attempts have been made to do so (Lack, 1994). It could have been the Public Works Department. It could have been the Royal Navy itself through its Royal Naval Dockyard. Until the late 1950s this was situated where Admiralty is today, in Central District. If it was the Royal Navy one would have thought there would have been some marking on the Obelisks, such as the Admiralty fouled anchor. One would also perhaps have expected the concrete finish of the Obelisks to have been better although they have stood the test of time.\n\nCould the Obelisks have been used for other purposes? Sometimes two sets, each comprising two beacons, are erected to clock ships in a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215584, "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": 361, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "311\n\n43\n\n+ At King George V School the medium of instruction was (and still is) English.\n\nMost of the pupils, when Deakin attended, were Europeans.\n\n44 Allen John Stockman Lack is a Master Mariner who served in the Hong Kong Government's Marine Department. He became Deputy Director.\n\n45 Conversation 25th February, 1999, between author and Paul Brown, a family member then working as Chief Information Officer in the Hong Kong Government Information Services Department.\n\n46 Lai Tak-wah interviewed by author on 12 February 1999.\n\n47 Lighthouse keepers frequently had mechanical engineering backgrounds.\n\n48 Tam Cheong-wai interviewed by Author on 23rd February 1999,\n\n49 Some old seafarers have requested permission to have their ashes scattered in Hong Kong Harbour. This has been done on several occasions.\n\n50 Interview by author with Master Mariner Roger Henry Parry who joined the Government Marine Department in 1973.\n\n51 Observations by author.\n\n52 Hong Kong Government Marine Department caption under picture of Waglan with no title and no date.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]