[ { "id": 204980, "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-1965", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n79\n\nwith sufficient knowledge of navigation and engineering for this. When Bias Bay or Mirs Bay was reached one or more of the ship's lifeboats might be used to take the pirates, their loot, and their prisoners ashore. Sometimes junks were used for this, which might be innocent junks which had arrived fortuitously, or pirate junks which had arrived by prior arrangement. Invariably at least one of the ship's officers would be held as a hostage during this operation, being released when it was completed.\n\nIf everything went smoothly in a piracy of this kind, no lives would be lost. But the pirates were ruthless if they encountered any opposition or if a hitch occurred. A few shots were usually fired in the opening exchanges, perhaps causing a few injuries, but this made the rest of the crew and passengers more co-operative. Towards the end of this era of modern piracy, when the Hong Kong Government and the shipping companies had adopted more effective anti-piracy measures, casualties became more common, as the pirates intensified their resentment to these measures.\n\nOne important anti-piracy measure was the isolation of the centre part of the ship—bridge, engine room, and saloon accommodation—from the rest of the ship by steel grilles. Access was by a steel door, locked and under constant guard. The guards were usually Chinese or Sikh policemen, under White Russian officers; but on special occasions, British soldiers from the Hong Kong garrison were employed. In spite of all these precautions, piracy continued to flourish along the South China coast right down to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. However, there were no attempts on ships with British soldiers as guards.\n\nThere were fifty-one major cases of piracy on the China coast in the years between the two World Wars. The great majority involved British ships, and twenty British Merchant Navy officers were killed. There were also many Chinese casualties, and many Chinese kidnapped and never heard of again. There were also many cases involving Chinese junks which received little publicity in the foreign press. The worst years were 1922, 1927, and 1928, in which there were five, six, and eight piracies respectively. A few of the most famous cases of this period are described below.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204984, "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-1965", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n83\n\nAnother case which might be said to have had political undertones was that of the China Navigation Company's Shuntien in June 1934. The Shuntien was the latest addition to the China Navigation Company's large fleet, and was making only her second voyage at the time. She was captured by some thirty pirates after leaving Tientsin for Chefoo, and was taken to the mouth of the Yellow River where she was beached on soft sand. The pirates then made off inland, taking five European and twenty Chinese passengers as hostages. Before leaving, they told the ship's compradore that the piracy was a reprisal for the Chinese Maritime Customs having stationed an extra customs cruiser in Shantung Bay, thus interfering with their smuggling operations. The Europeans returned a few days later, but nothing more was ever heard of the Chinese hostages.\n\nBias Bay, sixty-five miles northeast of Hong Kong, was notorious as the pirates' stronghold in the interwar years. Unfortunately, it was just outside Hong Kong territorial waters, and came within the jurisdiction of the Cantonese authorities, who were either unwilling or unable to co-operate with the Royal Navy against the pirates. The nationalist and anti-foreign feelings of the Cantonese probably contributed to this, as did the fact that the warlords of Kwangtung were suspected of being in league with the pirates. Whether this was so or not, it was definitely established that pirates based on Bias Bay committed nine major piracies between 1924 and 1926.\n\nAlthough the Navy was unable to suppress piracy on the China coast, so much of which took place almost on its own doorstep, the mere fact that naval ships were in the vicinity must have reduced its incidence. The pirates rarely boarded ships at Hong Kong, partly because of the strict naval and police control there, and also because passengers joining ships there were unlikely to have much money or valuables. In the case of the second Sunning piracy in 1926, it was definitely established afterwards that the pirates came on board at Amoy, and that their weapons were smuggled on board by stevedores. The lack of co-operation from Canton meant that the Navy was unable to follow up action at sea by punitive expeditions against the pirates' shore bases. The Kwangtung authorities had been much more co-operative in the first few decades after the cession of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204985, "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-1965", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "84 \n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nHong Kong, than in the 1920's and 30's. The latter period came within the warlord era when the writ of the central government at Peking or Nanking sat very lightly, if at all, on the southern provinces. In 1925 and 1927, however, the Navy sent expeditions into Bias Bay, to destroy—if possible without damage to innocent lives and property—villages known to harbour pirates and pirate junks. The second expedition was undertaken in exasperation after the pirating of the Jardine steamer S.S. Hop Sang in March 1927.4 The official report issued after the expedition claimed that one hundred and thirty stone and mat shed huts were destroyed in the two villages attacked, and forty junks and sampans destroyed. The raid had been no surprise, and definite evidence was found that the villages had been implicated in recent piracies. These raids only caused a temporary lull in the pirates' activities.\n\nThe Navy had one notable success in the Irene piracy of October 1927, which illustrates the difficulties with which the Navy and the Hong Kong Government had to contend in their anti-piracy campaign. H.M.S. submarine L4 challenged the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company's Irene when entering Bias Bay without lights and in suspicious circumstances. When she refused to stop, and then ignored a warning shot fired across her bow, a live round was fired which still drew no response. The Irene's captain was navigating under the pirates' supervision, and tried to ring down to stop the engines, but was too late.\n\nThe next shot struck the Irene amidships on the waterline, disabling the engines, killing a pirate standing beside the chief engineer, and starting a fire which almost gutted the ship before she sank. L4 went alongside and rescued most of the crew, and 220 of the 248 passengers. Three other warships and the tug Alliance arrived later, but were unable to prevent the Irene from sinking. When L4 arrived at Hong Kong the crew and passengers of Irene were screened by the police, and three men were identified as being pirates. A few days later seven other men were arrested, and all ten eventually hanged, after a sensational attempt to break out of Hong Kong's Victoria Gaol. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company came under the control of the Chinese Government, and the Irene\n\n4 The only piracy of a Jardine ship in the modern era,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204986, "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-1965", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PIRACY ON THE CHINA COAST\n\n85\n\ncase had serious political repercussions. China considered L4's actions as flagrant aggression, and disregard for international law. Two years later they brought a suit against the commander of the L4 which was unsuccessful. This was one of the few cases in which the Navy came into actual contact with pirates, and it had several unsavoury features,\n\nPiracy was on the decline in South China at the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. As for the previous few years, the Kuomintang Government had been gaining more effective control of the southern coastal provinces. Isolated cases, however, still continued right down to the fall of Canton to the Japanese in October 1938. After that Japanese control over the coast of Mainland China curtailed the deck passenger and emigrant trade, as well as the coast trade in general. The pirates turned to smuggling arms through the Japanese blockade, assuming the guise of patriots as they had done so often in the past. When they resumed their normal profession after the war, their activities had a very short lease on life.\n\nThe last piracy involving a foreign ship on the China coast was in 1952. The victim, appropriately enough, was the Hupeh of the China Navigation Company, the company which had suffered so much from piracy in the past. The piracy followed the traditional pattern, with the Hupeh being taken to Bias Bay, where the pirates went ashore with their ill-gotten gains and some wealthy Chinese passengers to be held for ransom. Soon after this, the Communists secured complete control over the coast of Mainland China, and for the first time for centuries it became free of pirates. Unfortunately, there are now no British ships trading on the coast to enjoy this unusual immunity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205062, "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-1966", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY\n\n13\n\nHis luck ran out, however, in 1807, when he was caught in a typhoon off Luzon. Part of his fleet was destroyed and Cheng himself drowned.\n\nLeadership of the pirate fleet fell to Cheng's wife, a kind of early nineteenth-century Dragon Lady, who may have accompanied her husband on his forays. Her chief lieutenant was a young Hsin Hui buccaneer by the name of Chang Pao-tsai. Unkind rumour had it that Chang was more than the lady's \"chief lieutenant\".\n\nUnder the leadership of Chang and the wife of Cheng I, the pirate fleet expanded its activities. It was divided into three divisions, each with a commander. Raids on coastal shipping were carried out with dispatch and precision, each division having been assigned specific areas of the coast. By 1810, Chang's fleet numbered six to seven hundred vessels, manned by as many as thirty to forty thousand men.\n\nNor were they concerned with just coastal shipping. No village or town along the coast was safe. Chang was apparently able to land elements of his navy at will at any bay or harbour from Mirs Bay to Hainan and as far up the river as Whampoa. There are differing accounts as to what his methods and motives really were. Some accounts, probably somewhat romanticized, make Chang out to be a kind of Chinese nautical Robin Hood, landing his men and appearing at village gates only to replenish their supplies of food and water, treating the people with kindness and honesty and refraining from terror. On the other hand, local histories record that more than one village was left in ashes and more than a little blood was spilled.\n\nWhatever way Chang Pao-tsai carried on his raids, the fact remains that the Ch'ing government was powerless against him. Time and again units of the Imperial fleet were sent in search of Chang's navy, only to return empty-handed and usually badly mauled. Once, in 1809, the Imperial navy did succeed in trapping a portion of Chang's fleet off Lantau, but clever seamanship and greater and more efficient firepower enabled him to break through without much damage.\n\nFinally, in 1810, the authorities resorted to the old political expedient... \"if you can't beat 'em, join 'em\". Governor-General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206233, "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-1971", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "44\n\nCHIU LING-YEONG\n\nuseless against a foe unless they are worked and guarded with intelligence, precision and judgment. Fast sailing cruisers, powerful ironclads and swift torpedo-boats are excellent weapons of defence as well as offence, but they are only tools and demand much skill, bravery, knowledge and experience in their handling. In the hands of the uninitiated and ignorant, they are clumsy and expensive toys fit only to be sunk or captured by an enemy after a brief resistance. Where will China find all the hands for her navy without going abroad for them? I am aware that the present order of things is to hire foreign instructors and establish naval schools. Indeed, the Naval College at Foochow was established many years ago, and has from time to time turned out a large number of students, and, I will add, some promising ones too. But were all the students treated properly and all promises made them kept? Were their salaries liberal, and were they punctually paid; and did their salaries suffer much diminution or become beautifully less ere they reached the several recipients' pockets? When the students were qualified, did they get all they deserved, or what had been promised to them? Were they not put under the same official despotism as the other ordinary officers? Have they not been placed absolutely at the command of and obliged to take directions from ignorant officers who have never been to sea and whose only merit consists in being high mandarins or the relations of such? Have there not been cases of desertion on account of bad treatment received, and have there been no frequent and loud complaints? Here more than anywhere internal reforms are required to induce promising young men to devote their time to necessary courses of study and training, and, when qualified, to risk their lives and all in the loyal defence of their dear country upon the raging billows. Get an efficient navy by all means, but before all get reform. Take timely warning by the naval encounter at Foochow, where so many of China's ships of war, though outnumbering the French fleet and carrying heavy ordinance, were sunk within the space of barely half an hour. Such a record should make a nation weep and repent in sackcloth and ashes.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206890, "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-1973", "page_number": 167, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n161\n\nGalastauro, C. 6 Macao 4, 5, 11, 34, 36\n\nGilman & Co. 30 Macaroni 24\n\nGould, W.H. 34, 36 Mackenzie, Lieut. Comdr., U.S. Navy 35\n\nHARRY HASTINGS Heard (Augustine) & Co. 20 Mackerel 38\n\n14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 Mackillop. Stewart & Co. 24\n\nMacondray & Co. 22, 24, 25, 26, 38 Magniac & Co. 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12\n\nHemp 33\n\nHerrings 38 Matheson & Co. 34\n\nHobsons Bay (Melbourne) 17 Medicine 33\n\nHolliday, Wise & Co. Hong Kong 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 34 Meren & Co. 1\n\nMEROPE 3 Mitchinson, J. 6, 10\n\nMoore, S. 34, 35, 37, 38\n\nHooghly, River (Bombay) Morgan, Stone & Co. 26\n\ngang 9 Murray (L.M.) & Co. 1, 2, 3, 10, 13, 14, 20\n\nHookumchund, Oomedchund 13 Nankeens* 33\n\nHowes, B. P. 25 Nelson, W. H. 22\n\nHunchund, Pemabhoy 14 New York 23, 26 27, 28, 32, 35\n\nHunt (Thomas) & Co. 27 Nickerson (Jas.) & Co. 27\n\nJafferbhoy (Ameeroodeen) Oil 33\n\n& Co. 37 see also Downers oil, Turpentine\n\nJardine, Matheson & Co, 13, 34\n\nJayne 29, 33 Opium 2, 3, 10, 11, 13, 14\n\nJENNY (=JEANIE?) 16, 27, 28 Osborn, Cushing & Co. 17 35\n\nOysters 26\n\nJOSHUA BATES 17\n\nJULIA G. TYLER 19 Paddy 8\n\nJyiebhoy, Jamseljie [?] 10 PALMETTO 18\n\nParkyns, G. 3\n\nLead (metal) 17 Penang 6\n\nLIGHTNING 14 PENANG MERCHANT 6, 10\n\nLintin 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12 PENGUIN 15\n\nLondon 36 Pigs feet 38\n\nLondon & San Francisco Bank Pollard, R. 15\n\nLtd. 22 Pork 38\n\nLUBRA 25 Premjee, Mool Chund 13\n\n*See notes at end of index", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207394, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "154\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nconflict. I came to regret my thoroughness, for there was never time to use the equipment thus accumulated and this must have been splendid booty for the Japanese. There was also a full social life; many British women had enrolled for nursing and other essential duties and had not been evacuated. The Hong Kong Hotel was a gay place indeed, particularly on a Saturday night.\n\nIn October 1938, 35,000 Japanese troops had landed in Bias Bay on the China coast 35 miles from Hong Kong, and had then occupied Canton and had cut all communications between Hong Kong and mainland China. Patrolling Japanese ships thereafter made sailing from the Colony outside a circumscribed area very hazardous. In February 1939 the Japanese occupied the island of Hainan, 300 miles to the south of Hong Kong thus controlling the sea communications with Singapore. Curiously, after my arrival I do not remember taking part in any serious discussions with my friends about the prospects of a successful defence of Hong Kong. There were however plenty of rumours to fill the air. It was generally known that the strategic plan required Hong Kong to resist an attack for 90 days before a relief could arrive, a decision taken by the British Chiefs of Staff in 1937. In February 1940 the home authorities decided that food reserves should be accumulated for 130 days, while in August 1940 the Chiefs of Staff reached a further decision that in case of war with Japan, Hong Kong should be regarded as an outpost to be held as long as possible. After the war I learned from Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War, that in February 1940 the Chiefs of Staff concluded that the troops should be withdrawn from Hong Kong. Nothing was done to give effect to this decision. I have no doubt that the decision taken in February 1940 was the correct one which could with advantage have been taken much earlier. Ever since my arrival in Hong Kong in 1939 I believed that the Colony could not be defended successfully. The frontier, beyond which lay a strong Japanese army, was some 20 miles from Hong Kong harbour, the line to be defended, the so-called Gin Drinkers line was less than 5 miles from the harbour, the Japanese navy controlled the coast, our airport was tiny and the Air Force planes were few in number and no match in performance for their potential opponents. One and a half million Chinese civilians were crowded into Kowloon and Victoria. Roads suitable for wheeled traffic were few and open to close observation at many points. The whole picture left no doubt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208601, "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-1979", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46\n\n31\n\nthe occupying troops shoot across the bay at any moving target; so far, none of the patients has been hit but some fishermen have been hit and their wounds treated by Dr. Bagalawis.\n\nFather John Toomey, formerly a thorn in the side of the Japanese occupying forces in Kongmoon, has been named Local Superior at Stanley, to replace Father Tom Malone.\n\nJune 23rd was the 25th anniversary of Father Downs' Ordination, and the 21st of his entry to Maryknoll. The event was fittingly celebrated at Stanley, with Bishop Valtorta and a number of non-Maryknollers present at dinner.\n\nJULY\n\nJuly saw the arrival of Father John Toomey to take over as Local Superior. His departure from Sun Ooi was delayed by the Japanese, who apparently \"hated\" to see him leave for the freedom of Hong Kong, but was very much regretted by the many hundreds of starving Chinese who will no longer share in his daily issue of U.S.A.-donated cracked rice.\n\nWe learn that our old and valued friend, Capt. Joe Ryan of the President Steamship Lines, is now in the U.S. Navy. We learn that he has commissioned a friend of his to continue to bring the ship's used magazines to Stanley for our library.\n\nAUGUST\n\nAugust is usually our busiest time with the Mainland missioners taking their annual holidays and seeking medical, dental and optical attention during this steaming summer month. However, with travel so dangerous and difficult, our occupancy record is the lowest in the history of the Stanley House.\n\nOn the 16th, two officers of the Royal Engineers came for the second time to look over our property, with a view to taking over a part of it in case of emergency--such as an attack on Hong Kong! A full house might have dampened their interest but seeing so many vacant rooms couldn't help make them see the house as a perfect military hospital.\n\nSEPTEMBER\n\nDr. Wallace, an American Mission doctor, well-known to all", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208610, "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-1979", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "40 \n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS \n\nenough, but their range was inadequate and the planes flew just above their fire and dropped bombs upon targets with impunity. It was reported, however, that one plane was shot down with an anti-aircraft gun. Of course, there was not a single British fighter in the air to oppose the Japanese. The two or three antiquated crates that were seen occasionally flying around before the war were perhaps only trainers or observation planes. On the first and second nights of hostilities the drone of planes was heard around midnight, and a few planes were evidently taking off and landing at Kai Tak. Our first reaction to this was that they might be British planes arriving from Singapore, to aid in the defense of Hong Kong, but these sporadic flights soon stopped, and we learnt later that there were the ordinary CNAC or commercial planes which were being flown away to safer havens, and at the same time taking a few important people out of the Colony. The Japanese had the air entirely to themselves, and to my observation there were never more than ten to twelve planes in action at the same time. \n\nIn comparison with former days, there was comparatively little shipping in the harbor at the outbreak of hostilities. The few ocean freighters were either scuttled or set on fire in Kowloon Bay or in Lyemoon channel, by their captains. It may be that a couple were bombed, I do not know. There was a number of small river craft anchored near Kowloon, and of course the usual ferries, harbor tugs and a considerable fleet of Chinese junks huddled together in the typhoon shelters. At about the second or the third day of the war, every small ship and tug, including river passenger boats and ferries, got into motion and began moving slowly up and down the harbor fairway. Apparently this was to avoid being hit by bombs or shells. \n\nDuring this time I watched a small tug, perhaps a navy tug, calmly set out from Kowloon to cross to Hong Kong. As it pulled away from its anchorage a train of shells began falling in its wake. However, it kept on majestically and quite unconcernedly on its way, and though the shells fell closer and closer to its stern, it reached the navy yard in safety, and then as calmly turned out into the harbor again. At the same time, a small British destroyer, the Thracian backed slowly out of its berth in the Navy Yard, turned around and headed westward out of the harbor. No shells hit it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208663, "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-1979", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "THE MARYKNOLL MISSION, HONG KONG 1941-46 \n\n93 \n\narticles is opened. The display was most interesting, and American skill and ingenuity were much in evidence. Articles included various forms of clothing, shoes, slippers, clogs, chairs, stools, baby cribs, thermos bottles, a fireless cooker, clothes pins, knitting needles, scales, a vise, etc., etc. A small wood turning lathe was also shown, and hats woven of grass. The repatriates' departure has been postponed until the end of the month. \n\n11—It is reported that the recent escapees have been captured, they not having succeeded in getting out of the Colony. A large scale having been found somewhere, the Americans weigh in, with Dr. Hackett and the Maryknoll Sisters, nurses, Sisters Camillus and Dominic, assisting, the latter, by the way, having long since returned to Camp from the Civil Hospital. The following statistics will give a graphic idea of our present status: Father Toomey lost 18 lbs; Troesch, 28; Meyer, 38; Downs, 13; Keelan,?; Bauer, 50; Allie, 18; Reardon, 27; Callan, 11; O'Connor, 16; Hessler, 0; Walter, 12; Knotek, 12; Quinn, 23; Walsh, 22; Madison 36; Moore, 9; Tackney, 23; Norris, 15; Brother Anthony, 50; Brother Cornelius, 6; Father O'Connell, 0; Siebert, ?; Gaiero, 19; McKeirnan, 14; Brother William, 23. A Mr. Hill, in the Camp, lost 65 lbs. \n\n12—Masses now at 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. Today, Confirmation at the Mass, when Bishop O'Gara confirmed four children and two adults. Today, the Britishers follow suit and are weighed in. Perhaps this presages better food. Report has it that two Britishers were caught stealing sweet potatoes in Stanley village, which is out of bounds. When warned that they were in danger of being shot, they said they were so hungry that they took the chance. Then they were assured of better rations, so says the rumor. Let's hope it is more than a rumor. Speaking of rumors, they still flood the Camp, and they range from the abdication of Mussolini, to the landing of the Allies in Europe, and to the proximity of the Chinese troops ready to retake Hong Kong. According to the Japanese paper, the American Navy has been sunk several times, and they are going to crush the United States. \n\n13—Bungalow No. 7 vacated by its British occupants to give way to the segregated American repatriates, who move in after the British got out, only to find that the British had pretty well despoiled the whole building, thinking that the Japanese were moving in. It is also reported today that the American Consular officials' bag—\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208695, "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-1979", "page_number": 152, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-46\n\n125\n\nThis literally took the wind out of our sails and we were in the doldrums. Bishop Valtorta also interviewed Mr. Oda on our behalf but received the same categorical answer. However, Sister Paul made application about this time for Sisters Marie Regis and Dorothy, the former having been released from the Camp on a third national status, but the latter with us. As a result, Sister Regis was allowed to board the boat but Sister Dorothy was turned back. So we returned to Bethany, sadder but wiser.\n\nOur status in Hong Kong now being determined for us, we began to think about resuming Language Classes, and looked around for some teachers. We found one for the Mandarin and one for the Cantonese, but could not easily get a suitable one for the Hakka-ites.\n\nFrom the 11th to the 15th of October we went on Retreat, it being conducted by Father McCarthy, S.J., from Wah Yan College. About this time, Father Knotek's electrical ability having been discovered, his services were much in demand, both at Carmel and at St. Paul's Hospital, Causeway Bay.\n\nIt may be of interest here to describe briefly Hong Kong, as we saw it, some eight or nine months after its capitulation. The downtown section, at least along Queens Road Central, was fairly normal, and business seemed to be going on as usual, that is, on the surface, but actually business was pretty poor. All the stores had long since reopened; the larger foreign stores, of course, being taken over by the Japanese, and prices were on the military yen basis. The Chinese department stores were likewise open, but their stock seemed to be depleted, and not only were prices high, but it was difficult and even impossible to purchase many articles, especially of clothing. In many cases, about all that was left were extra large sizes of things. Along the streets in many places, and just outside of the department stores, sat vendors of various small articles. On the streets, the crowds seemed to mill about almost as in normal times, but little money changed hands. There were only the strictly necessary purchases made. Even for the Chinese populace, rice, oil, and firewood were rationed and on certain days, the purchasers had to line up and wait their turn at depots in various parts of the city. The Gloucester Hotel is now the Matsubara Hotel, and is open for business, but of course, mostly Japanese business. The Japanese Army and Navy have taken over almost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208703, "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-1979", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "142\n\nREVS. J. SMITH AND WM. DOWNS\n\nwhatever food for the Club which could not be bought in the market.\n\nFather Meyer in October notes that the money exchange rate for the U.S. dollar was HK$7.50, although the official rate given by the banks was only HK$4.00. He opined that this difference came about because the U.S. dollar had become a sort of \"super currency\" for South China because the Chinese considered it much safer than their own.\n\nDuring the \"post occupation\" days when everyone in Hong Kong was trying to put the pieces together again, the U.S. Navy was a great help to Father Meyer, particularly Father Hargreaves who often stayed at the Maryknoll House in Stanley. Father Don Hessler, who had volunteered to remain in the Internment Camp with Father Meyer in order to care for the people not repatriated on the Gripsholm, was recalled to the U.S. after Father Tennien's arrival in Hong Kong to take over the Stanley House. Father Don had organized a school for the children of Stanley Village, and continued to work for the warders and prisoners in the jail. He and the Carmelite Sisters also took care of the Japanese internees who had been transferred to the barracks on the tip of the Stanley peninsula. They found 12-15 Catholics among them. General Festing, who was in charge of the Japanese internees, was a Catholic and very helpful to the Sisters and to Father Hessler. There were some 8,000 Japanese internees and Father Meyer had been toying with the idea of asking Maryknoll to send Japanese-speaking Maryknollers to take care of them. He himself would have done this but his time was completely taken up with the organization of the Catholic Club in town, and organizing Catholic Action Groups. The Club opened on October 19—Armistice Day. It served 1,722 meals that day. Catholics made up 20 per cent of those who patronized the Club in order to eat something other than barracks' and ships' rations.\n\nFather Tennien arrived to take over Stanley on November 26th. His first report on the House was: \"Not bad considering most of the homes and institutions in Hong Kong, although the flooring had been pulled up. Open fires for cooking in the rooms had blackened all the walls but did not damage them.\" He held off on major repairs due to the almost impossibility of getting materials, and the inflated cost of labor at the moment. Government was selling", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209271, "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-1981", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "160\n\nWEI PER-TI\n\nfew days later from his wounds. Upon being told of the news, Juan Yuan \"suspended the Company's trade and required the surrender of the man whom he termed the 'Foreign Murderers'\"*\n\n+\n\n63\n\nTo Juan Yuan, the Select Committee's reaction to his demand was in contravention to Chinese regulations. He was told by the Committee to communicate directly with Captain Richardson of the Topaze instead of going through the hong merchants and the Select Committee. Had Juan Yuan done as he was asked, he would have implicitly consented to change the Canton system. This he refused to do. He continued to hold to the principle that the supercargo of the British factory be responsible for the conduct of all British nationals in China. While the hong merchants, British traders at Canton, and Captain Richardson debated various possible courses to take, Juan Yuan suspended all British trade and held steadfast to his principles. On February 3, 1822, a Chinese official was permitted to board the Topaze and was understood to have said that he would make a report to the Governor-General. On 8 February, using as the excuse that as he had not heard from Chinese officials everything must be satisfactory, Captain Richardson took the Topaze to sea.\n\nIt was at this point the crisis really became serious. The British factory left Canton within three days. The language used by both sides in their communications was inflexible and threatening. The Committee insisted upon disclaiming responsibilities for the British navy. Another two weeks passed without any sign of solution. The Committee then explained to Juan that Captain Richardson had returned to Britain to \"report to his sovereign\" and that \"copies of all the papers would be sent to the Court of Directors [of the Company]\". Juan Yuan, noting that since the Topaze had already left Chinese waters, so that it was impossible for the supercargo to surrender the criminals even if he had been willing, and as the entire account was being sent back to both the sovereign and the Company, permitted the resumption of British trade at Canton. This compromise in order to resolve a difficult case reflected Juan Yuan's willingness to make the best of a bad situation.\n\nJuan Yuan did not negotiate with the British except through the intermediary of the hong merchants, and, it was the Company that was to be held responsible for finding the criminals to be remitted to Chinese justice, although no such promise had actually been made.55 And, most important of all, the British navy was removed from the China seas. On the surface at least, the principles of the Canton system were preserved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211428, "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-1988", "page_number": 144, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "120\n\non 23 June 1898, and was thoroughly spoiled by Aunt Yim. When George was nine years old, his mother took him to China, but after a year he returned alone to live with First Paternal Uncle in San Francisco. On his way to California, he stopped over for a night in Honolulu. A year later he went to Los Angeles to join his father, who was working for Dr. G. S. Chan in his herb business. Although inducted into the army during World War I, George never saw active duty. In 1919 when Uncle Yim died, he took his father's remains to China for burial, first stopping over at First Paternal Uncle's home in Hong Kong where his mother was waiting for him. This was during the time my father was there, ill with tuberculosis.\n\nGeorge finally gave in to Aunt Yim's continual pressure and married Sai King Auyoung of Ma Tse Village in 1919. She was a young bride (born in 1904) when I visited them that year. In 1922, after the birth of their daughter, Gladys Yung Hoy, on 8 June 1922, George left his family for Honolulu. His wife then entrusted the care of Gladys to Aunt Yim and went to work. In 1931 when Aunt Yim died, George sent for his daughter. It was not an easy adjustment for a girl of ten, but a good relationship with her stepmother developed and after some schooling, she went into restaurant work where she met her husband, Lam Kwai #, born in 1906, by whom she had a daughter and a son, Claudia Ngit Oi A and a son, Calvin Yuen Tim K.\n\nBefore Gladys joined her father, he had married Josephine Kekai Fung Kyau Liu, who was born on 30 September 1910. From this union came Kwock Wah, born on 7 January 1930. He is a pharmacologist on the staff of Purdue University. They subsequently adopted one of Josephine's nieces, Lorna Siu Lan. Josephine's father was a Chinese from See Yup and her mother was a Chinese-Hawaii-Caucasian woman. From this multi-ethnic background, she learned to speak Chinese fluently as well as to cook authentic Chinese, Hawaiian and Western dishes. These skills enabled her to work as a cook for many years before she had to retire because of a bad knee.\n\nGeorge found employment in the Navy Yard after working as an auto mechanic for several private shops. After his retirement, he made a visit to China to see his ailing first wife before her death in 1968 at the age of 64. He had a great deal of warm feelings for his Chan relatives, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211618, "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-1989", "page_number": 33, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "8\n\n00\n\n# HONG KONG, 26 JANUARY 1841: HOISTING THE FLAG REVISITED*\n\nK. J. P. Lowe\n\nThis article will attempt to investigate the circumstances surrounding the ceremony of the hoisting of the British flag on Hong Kong Island on 26 January 1841, following the cession of the island in the treaty of 20 January 1841. It will in the process shed light on some of the more immediate British reactions to the acquisition of the island. The first Opium War and the subsequent Chinese expedition of 1840-1 form the immediate background to this event, and these subjects are well covered in the contemporary China-coast English-language press, in quasi-governmental sources and in memoirs by those involved. Negotiations leading to the cession were carried out by Captain Charles Elliot1 for the British, and the Chinese commissioner Ch'i-shan. Yet the hoisting of the flag itself seems largely to have been ignored or played down at this stage, even though Hong Kong was taken by the British as a direct result of successful military action and the ceremony should have been an important gesture of victory. I wish to posit that although Elliot and J. Gordon Bremer, the naval commodore, were proud of the acquisition of Hong Kong (and steamed all round their island at the first opportunity2), most people were not, and considered it of little consequence. The downplaying of the formal possession ceremony in contemporary accounts reflects this, and it was only when the colony started to be a financial success and stable social entity in the 1870s that the ceremony of possession took on a new significance.3\n\n6\n\nReminiscences of the Chinese expedition by officers in the navy and the army are common. Good examples of this type of literature by naval officers are the books by Edward Belcher of HMS Sulphur,4 by John Elliot Bingham who had been first Lieutenant of HMS Modeste,5 and by William Bernard who had been on board the Nemesis. Of these three, unfortunately only Belcher was in Hong Kong on the requisite day to witness the ceremony because Elliot had commandeered the Nemesis to take him to the Second Bar for his meeting with Ch'i-shan (also on 26 January), and Elliot Bingham had fractured a leg during enemy action on 10 January and had been taken to Macao. Belcher\n\n* I should like to thank Jardine Matheson and Co. Ltd. for permission to use their archives, and Eugene McLaughlin for his help.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211678, "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-1989", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "68\n\nmembers of the Kiu Kiang Defence Force, a small volunteer group recruited from the foreign residents. Some of the men were veterans of the Great War, and the force had originally been armed with rifles and Lewis guns provided by the Navy; however, to avoid all possible accident, these lethal weapons had been withdrawn and replaced with truncheons. Men were despatched to close the Concession gates so as to keep out accessions to the rioters from those directions, and by the exercise of a good-humoured restraint and some sang-froid the rioters were gradually dispersed and shepherded away. By nightfall all was quiet again at the cost of a few broken heads and windows, but the atmosphere remained dangerously charged with emotion.\n\nThe Consul ruled that the women and children must be evacuated that very night in a river steamer, which he had caused to be held up for the purpose. I dashed off to our small flat overlooking the tennis courts at the back of the Concession to warn my wife. We had also our two infants, the one in arms and the other just able to walk; and their dear old amah, of course, had plenty of advice to give. During the early days, while the Revolutionary Army was still attacking the Northern troops who held the city, there was a certain amount of indiscriminate shooting and shots fell amongst the houses in the Concession. One came in through our front door and down the hall. The old amah then used carefully to drape a layer of blankets on the window side of the children's cots \"to keep out the bullets\", as she would ingenuously explain.\n\nOn a large verandah outside the flat where a good view could be obtained of the back gate, the Navy had mounted a Lewis gun and installed an inlying piquet. My wife arranged to cook meals for the sailors, and what with the assistance of an occasional bottle of beer from the Club over the road, they voted that life in Kiu Kiang was not so bad. It was a change from the routine of shipboard and had one unforeseen result; the sailors made so strong an impression on our infants that when he grew up nothing would satisfy the elder boy but that he should join the Navy.\n\nNow the sailors volunteered to assist in the packing, but time was short and there was little room on the steamer for other than the bare essentials. It was more than any Chinese coolie's life was worth to be seen carrying baggage for the foreigners, and so with naval assistance husbands and bachelors helped each other to get the boxes down to the ship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212918, "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-1992", "page_number": 227, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "212 miles of China coast to look for her. As time wore on, the distance she could travel extended until it could be anywhere from Tientsin to Hainan. The Royal Navy had an aircraft carrier in Hong Kong and this was drafted into the hunt. An aircraft from H.M.S. Hermes spotted a ship like the Tungchow anchored in Bias Bay (Days Bay) which was a well-known haunt of China coast pirates. It was indeed the Tungchow and the pirates, seeing the plane swoop over, realised that they had better decamp. Once they were away, the Captain sailed for Hong Kong where he arrived a few hours later. Although the pirates escaped, they had a frustrating piracy. They had got the wrong ship. The silver was on another ship which delivered its cargo safely. The Tungchow carried no silver but a cargo of oranges. The pirates broke open the crates in their hunt for the silver so that the ship was running with oranges which the boys gathered in quantities. The pirates did no harm to the children but at first kept them shut up in the passenger accommodation. You can imagine what tales the Shanghai party had to tell when we all got back to school.\n\nWe Leave China\n\nIn 1939 my father's tour was up and he decided, after twenty-five years, to retire from the mission field. He was in his mid-fifties and few stayed so long. Today this sounds an early retiring age, but today we have the untold advantage of constant air-conditioning to temper the severity of our summers and much greater control over diseases. The advance of the Japanese and the threatening war situation in Europe may well have influenced his decision too.\n\nIn any event, my parents and our younger sister set off from Fatshan, while my brother, other sister, and I set off from Chefoo on the last of our journeys on a B. & S. coaster for Shanghai. My parents travelled up from Hong Kong on a Canadian Pacific steamer, the Empress of Russia, which we joined in Shanghai. By this time, Shanghai had been occupied by the Japanese, though they were still at peace with Britain and America. In the occupied city, security was tight, especially round the docks, and we had to pass through several check points manned by pretty rough soldiers. Once at sea, those worries were left behind, but, as a postscript, when we sailed from Yokohama a few days later, we found ourselves in the midst of large-scale manoeuvres by the Japanese fleet and accompanying aircraft firing and bombing targets not far from us.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213500, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "64\n\nwhich this path ended was naturally called by this same name. But among the Hakkas, the Island of Hong Kong or rather this northern portion of it, is to the present day called by the same name \"Kwantailou\" (Eitel, 1895, P.134)\n\nAs early as 1841, a shoreline road was planned in the northern part of the Hong Kong Island. It was pegged out by the Chinese labourers and made to connect Sai Ying Pun to East Point, a distance of nearly four miles. It was finished in early 1842 and was named Queen's Road. The road was so cut as to leave generally enough space between it and water and at a safe height above sea-level for the erection of godowns.\n\nThe possession and occupation of the Island in the first instance was largely due to military reasons, especially as the Chinese mainland was so near at hand. There were two Chinese forts on the tip of Kowloon peninsula. Military establishments were therefore quickly set up on the northern coast in order to prevent the Chinese from recapturing Hong Kong.\n\nIn the early days of February 1841, the navy had already laid claim to Navy Bay (Belcher's Creek) lying due east of the bluff then known as Belcher's Point and was already running up store houses on the sloping foreshore.\n\nThe Army had established two camps on the northern shore, one on Cantonment Hill (later known as the Victoria Barracks and the Seven-and-six Penny Hill) and other at Sai Ying Pun, on the long slope which now carries on its shoulders the Hong Kong University and at its foot, the old Reformatory Building (Sayer, 1937, P. 99) and above the present Pokfulam Road. On the site in Third Street where the St. Louis School now stands was a small battery, called the West Point Battery or Elliot's Battery. (A similar battery, East Point Battery or Pottinger's Battery was mounted on the site of Wellington Barracks)\n\nThe barracks at that time were of a more or less makeshift nature. Owing to unstable political situation, it was said that Lord Saltoun, then Commander-in-Chief, would not take upon himself to erect permanent and suitable barracks and officer quarters for the troops. The soldiers were encamped in flimsy structures of bamboo, cane, palm leaves and canvas. The so-called barracks at Sai Ying Pun were", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213501, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "65\n\nactually a few wretched huts or matsheds built on shelves cut out on the acclivity of a ridge. They were filled with Indian sepoys, the Bengal Volunteers. A supplement of a survey of Hong Kong in the Canton Press dated February 1842 gave us information about the Sai Ying Pun Barracks in 1842.\n\n\"A half-moon battery or platform which is to mount some half-dozen heavy guns on carriages is constructing at the extreme west of the town to protect the barracks there and at which are stationed the Bengal Volunteers\" (Sayer, 1937, P. 209).\n\nThe sanitary conditions of the barracks in those days were largely neglected. The water closet system that existed in the barracks was unfortunately unsuited to a tropical climate. Epidemics of fever spread through Hong Kong every summer in those early years of British occupation. In 1842, the Indian troops, stationed in Hong Kong lost nearly half their number. The death rate for the army in Hong Kong for that year was 25%.\n\nIn 1843, the sanitary condition of Hong Kong was most alarming. In the summer of 1843 an extraordinary outbreak of malaria fever occurred which during the six months from May to October carried off by death 24% of the troops and 10% of the European civilians. It was noticed that this virulent fever ravaged chiefly the extreme west and east ends of the British settlement. (It was due to the opening up of the ground by the troops in making roads or new buildings created marshy conditions that helped to breed mosquitoes). At the West Point Barracks in Sai Ying Pun where the left wing of the 55th regiment quartered, sickness was so universal that the regiment lost 100 men between June and the middle of August. On 20 July 1843, the troops stationed there were hastily removed on board ships in the harbour and the Barracks were abandoned and ordered to be razed to the ground. At the recommendation of the Committee of Public Health and Cleanliness, the ground in the neighbourhood was ordered to be levelled and well-drained.\n\nSince Sai Ying Pun had proved to be one of the most unhealthy spots in the Island, the main forces of the army began to move out of the place. The Royal Navy also found the naval base east of Belcher's Bay unhealthy and lay fully exposed to the fury of a typhoon and moved.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214048, "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-1997", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "83\n\nShelters\n\nHong Kong has been hit by many severe typhoons causing tremendous damage to shipping, a violent one occurring in 1841 wrecking the cutter Louisa on which Captain Elliot, the British plenipotentiary in China, was travelling to Hong Kong from Macau. In order to protect the smaller-sized shipping, mainly junks and sampans, from excessive danger during storms, major typhoon anchorages protected by heavy rockfill breakwaters were constructed at Causeway Bay in 1883 (c.23ha, now Victoria Park) and another in 1915 at Mong Kok Tsui (Yau Ma Tei - 65ha which has recently been reclaimed). Meanwhile, a 4ha tidal basin and smaller boat basin with slipway were completed around 1905 at the Admiralty dockyard in Victoria (now Central) to afford protection and berthing for naval vessels.\n\nA small basin was constructed in Tsim Sha Tsui in 1885 for the Water Police and, about the same time, another larger one for the Royal Naval torpedo depot. Around the turn of this century, a further anchorage was built adjacent to the old coal briquette works lying near to the end of Austin Road (the Camber Typhoon Shelter).\n\nDocks\n\nSoon after the partial destruction in 1857 of the Couper Dock at Whampoa on the Pearl River as a result of the Arrow incident, the first granite dry dock in this region, the Lamont Dock in the 4½ ha dockyard site at Aberdeen was commissioned and was a complete success from the start; it received its first ship in 1860 and could accommodate a 50-gun steam frigate of 110m length on the blocks. Subsequently the larger and deeper Hope Dock, 125m long, 30m wide at the top and 15m wide at the bottom with an entrance width of 26 metres and 6.7m clearance at neap tides, was constructed adjacent to the Lamont Dock and completed in 1867, in its time being the best in Asia and one of the finest in the world. It could take the largest vessel visiting Hong Kong, even at low water; only one ironclad in the whole of the Royal Navy would be unable to enter without first being lightened by stripping it, for example, of its heavier armament and machinery.\n\nThe smaller 100m-long dry dock at the Hung Hom dockyard in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214049, "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-1997", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "84\n\nKowloon, mainly for ships in the coastal trade, was opened in 1868 to be followed soon afterwards by a shorter 80m-long dock. A few years later (1876) the 140m-long Cosmopolitan Dock and dockyard at Tai Kok Tsui were commissioned. Subsequently the much larger 168m-long Admiralty Dock at Hung Hom was completed in 1888 and later extended in length by some 8 metres in 1903, to be followed by further lengthenings in 1911 and 1931.\n\nIn the summer of 1907, the 170m-long Admiralty dry dock in Victoria, with an entrance width of 29 metres and 9m clearance at lowest spring tides, and Tai Koo's great ashlar-faced 238m-long 27m entrance-width graving dock (now a car park in the Tai Koo Shing development) at Quarry Bay, the latter capable of accommodating the largest ship then afloat (the liner Oceanic), were both commissioned. By laying down the former dock where it did and extending the original dockyard, with an 8ha reclamation which was started in 1900, the Navy sealed the long-held hopes of making Victoria a coherent city with a continuous commercial waterfront. Due to difficult foundation problems, including removal of a 1.2 to 1.8m layer of hard porous coral and the need to install hundreds of steam-driven hardwood piles through the underlying decomposed granite to secure the site, the naval dry dock finally took seven years to build whereas the larger commercial dock at Tai Koo was finished in five.\n\nThe whole of the Tai Koo dockyard development took seven years to completion in 1908, a remarkable achievement in so much that it not only included the large dock but also excavation of some 1.3M cubic metres of hillside to form a 21ha site, which included a 8ha marine reclamation, and the adjacent section of the 23m-wide cut for King's Road, and the building of an entire complex of slipways, workshops and all the ancillary works which are needed to make a large dockyard a world of its own. It is interesting to note that Admiralty engineers in 1908 regarded locally-made cement as unsurpassed in fineness and tensile strength (at 28-days around 750lb/sq in or 5.2MPa), and it was used exclusively when building the new naval and Tai Koo dockyards.\n\nWharfs\n\nBy 1843 there were several comparatively small piers and jetties on the Island located between East Point and Sheung Wan. Pedder's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214622, "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-1999", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "# ARTICLES\n\n# BESIDE THE YAMEN: NGA TSIN WAI VILLAGE\n\n# P.H. HASE\n\n## Topography and Early History of the Area\n\nThe north-east part of the Kowloon Peninsula was, before it became developed as part of the City, a broad flat plain, well watered by a series of streams coming down from the hills, and generally fertile. The coastline (running close to today's Prince Edward Road) was fronted by shallow water, with substantial areas of tidal marsh and mud flats offshore. The area was closed in by hills on all sides except that facing the sea: these hills were high and steep to the north and east, more broken and lower to the west and south, but everywhere formed a clear boundary to the area (see Map 1).\n\nThe first settlement of Han Chinese in this plain probably dates from the early second century BC. During this period (206-111 BC), the Kwangtung area formed a separate Empire, that of the Nanyueh (南越), centred on Canton. It is known that the Nanyueh Emperors established a Salt Monopoly within their Empire, and it is very likely (although there are no contemporary written records to substantiate this) that a Salt Sub-Intendancy office was founded at Kowloon City shortly after 200 BC, to supervise salt-fields established along the shores of Kowloon Bay and in Mirs Bay, supervised by a Salt Intendant whose office was probably at Nam Tau (Nantou, 南頭), just outside the area of today's New Territories, on Deep Bay2. The Salt Intendants and their subordinates all had garrisons of soldiers, to stop salt-smuggling, and Kowloon City would have become a military post from the date that it became a Salt Monopoly centre. The great tomb at Lei Cheng Uk, which dates to the Nanyueh period, is certainly that of a senior Nanyueh official, and the only senior officials of the Nanyueh at all likely to have been stationed in the Kowloon City area at that date would have been salt officials supervising salt-fields in the Kowloon City area.\n\nWhile there is no specific documentary evidence of salt-working in the Kowloon City area as early as the Nanyueh, a record from AD 265 specifically mentions salt-officials active in the general area east", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214848, "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-1999", "page_number": 263, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "230\n\n47 United Service Journal 1841, pp.531-2. The latter could not always be guaranteed, as we have seen.\n\n48\n\nThe British navy was the major element in this technical superiority. These were still the days of sail, when its ships' commanders' chosen tactic in a fight was to force their enemy into submission. This was achieved by means of the broadside, the firing together of all guns on one side of a ship, resulting in \"the hull-and-gun-crew-smashing at which they excelled\" (Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870, Fontana Paperbacks, 1982, p.146). In China, the same \"hull-smashing\" tactics were employed by the British navy against forts and city walls, with equally devastating effects. The inclusion in the expeditionary force of war steamers like the famous Nemesis, which could sail into any bay or anchorage regardless of wind and tide, meant that the British navy's supremacy was completely overwhelming.\n\n49\n\nSome examples may suffice. Upon coming from India, leaving only six men sick at Fort William, the 26th Regiment had numbered 28 officers and 902 other ranks. By the end of 1840, only 110 were fit for duty, having lost 240 by death and hundreds of others in hospital or too weak to go on parade. Yet this was the regiment, which, thanks to the healthy regime instituted in India by Colonel Oglander, had had a remarkable record of freedom from death and sickness. Holt, p. 112. Between 21 July 1842, upon its first landing at Chin-kiang-foo up to February 1844 - a period of little more than eighteen months - the unfortunate 98th Regiment had lost by death alone 432 out of 766 non-commissioned officers and men. Shadwell, p.123.\n\n50 Cree, pp. 117-8.\n\n51 Davis, ibid.\n\n52 \"The country round Chapoo beats anything we have yet seen, indeed I defy anything hardly to equal it in beauty, one immense valley as far as the eye could reach covered with the most luxuriant vegetation, with the people going on with their employment in the fields quite unconcerned.\" Blackwood's 1964, p.157.\n\n53 Holt, pp.152-3.\n\n54 Cited by Davis, Chinese Miscellanies, p. 179.\n\nBingham, Vols. 1, pp.3 and 277, and 11, p. 156", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214849, "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-1999", "page_number": 264, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "231\n\n[Seen but citation mislaid] The origin of the term \"Fokies\" is unknown to me. However, it seems to have been in use in the British navy long before the Opium War. For instance, it appears in the Account of A Voyage to India, China, & in His Majesty's Ship Caroline, Performed in the Years 1803-4-5 By An Officer of the Caroline, published by Richard Phillips, London, in 1806. There, it is written \"Fukki,\" and is applied to a Chinese pickpocket who got the worst of an encounter with a British naval officer on the street near the British factory at Canton (pp.70-71). This book is remarkable for the unmistakable impression it creates of the high morale, national pride and spiritness of a well-led ship's company, the very same qualities which were to be again much in evidence in accounts of the Opium War; whilst the fate of the forts at the Bocca Tigris in 1841 are foreshadowed by a description of the battery at “Annanhoy\" (Anunghoy) and its accompanying dismissal, “Such is the gasconade of the Chinese about a fort, that a man of war's launch, armed with a carronade, would knock about their ears in a very short time” (p.55 with 56-7).\n\nYet it would seem that those few naval officers with earlier experience of dealing with the Chinese bad, like the officer of HMS Caroline, already taken the measure of their military and naval officials and their equipment. Critical assessments can be found in John McLeod's The Voyage of [HMS] Alceste to the Ryukyus and Southeast Asia, at pp. 125-170 of the Tuttle 1963 reprint of the First Edition published by John Murray of London in 1817; and in Captain Basil Hall's account of the same voyage, Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo-Choo Island (London, Edward Moxon, new edition, 1840) at pp.68-76, including the forcing of the Bogue. Hall commanded the Alceste's smaller consort, HMS Lyra. The animated spirit of the English officers and men, and the keen sense of the national honour, and especially of the flag, are well to the fore. This voyage was occasioned by the embassy of Lord Amherst to the Chinese Emperor, the two ships conveying its personnel to and from China,\n\nREFERENCES\n\nCommander J. Elliot Bingham, RN, Narrative of the Expedition to China From the Commencement of the War to the Present Period : With Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Singular and Hitherto Almost Unknown Country, (London, Henry Colburn, MDCCCXLII [1842].\n\nWilliam C. Milne, Life in China (London, Routledge, Warnes &", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215132, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "185\n\nTHE TWO OBELISKS AT TAI TAM\n\nDAN WATERS\n\nOn being driven around Hong Kong Island for the first time, in January 1955, the two large Obelisks on the southeastern side, one north and one south of Tai Tam Harbour, attracted my attention. Although I asked people about them at the time, as well as in succeeding years, I was able to glean little useful information.\n\nDr Solomon Bard, an historian who lived in Hong Kong for over half a century, wrote that the two Obelisks are each nearly ten metres high and that they may be mistakenly taken for commemorating an historical event (Bard, 1988:69). He continues that the Royal Navy erected them at the turn of the century (around 1900) as navigational aids. They are in line. That is they are on the same longitude, running north-south, and they are exactly one nautical mile apart.\n\nSomewhat contradictory to Bard a Hong Kong Government Marine Department manual quotes that the two Obelisks are nine metres high and three-quarters of a mile (presumably sea miles) apart, in line, bearing 358 degrees, and that they lead into the Bay. When one is standing overlooking the Harbour and gauging the distance across the water with one's eyes, Bard's figure of one nautical mile appears more accurate. In fact, if one scales the distance from a chart in my possession it does turn out to be one nautical mile, from obelisk to obelisk (Tai Tam Bay, Chart; 1894). Such obelisks are often called beacons in nautical language.\n\nThe squat, northern Obelisk stands high up on what is sometimes known as 'Obelisk Hill.' See Plate One (Mok, 1995:16). Its counterpart, the southern Obelisk, at the foot of so-called 'Red Hill,' is lower down with its seaward side painted white so it is more conspicuous. Like a sentinel it stands on the rocks with its base about 40 feet above the sea, depending on the tide, to the westward side of the entrance to Tai Tam Harbour. Made of concrete, both Obelisks are of similar size, appearance, and construction as one can see from Plates One and Two. Up until World War Two there was little scrub on the hillsides and the upper Obelisk could be seen more clearly (see Plate One). They both have bases about seven feet square, and the upper parts are each divided into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215134, "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": 230, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "187\n\nvirtually cut off the supply to the waterfall other than when they are overflowing, for instance after a heavy storm.\n\nApart from pleasure boats and other small craft, Tai Tam Harbour was used more in the 19th century than it is today. During the period 1806 to 1819, long before Hong Kong was taken over by Britain, James Horsburgh, a hydrographer with the East India Company, surveyed the waters around the Island. He wrote that Tai Tam afforded shelter from almost all winds (Liu Shuyong, 1997:24). It is not of course a harbour as we sometimes know it with wharves and godowns. It is an inlet, which provides a place for ships to shelter. To illustrate again the Harbour's use as a place for protection from the elements mention is made of ‘tactical manoeuvring and target practice,' in February 1878, by the Royal Navy (White Ensign-Red Dragon, 1997; 39). It continues, 'The 20th February being very misty the fleet remained at Tytam Bay.'\n\nPeople naturally ask when exactly were the two Obelisks first erected; who erected them; and what purpose did (or do) they serve? As a start, with the aims of answering such questions, two Chief Inspectors, H J W Chetwynd-Chatwin and Keith Francis, both then serving in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, arranged an informal meeting, in 1994. The meeting took place in a bar at a police officers' mess in Wan Chai. It was followed by a curry lunch. About a dozen people were invited who, it was felt, could contribute. They included the Government Director of Marine and RASHKB member R S Hownam-Meek who spent his career in shipping with Jardine. A couple of weeks or so after the meeting the topic of the Obelisks was raised by Radio Television Hong Kong. Little of real substance emerged from the meeting or the ‘phone-in radio programme. The late Arthur May, then a retired civil servant, did however ‘phone in to say that, as a youth, he went to live at Tai Tam in 1919. He also recalled that when he sailed around the Harbour in the 1920s the two Obelisks were definitely already there.\n\nThe Hydrographic Data Centre, at Taunton in England, maintains that information was received from the Commander-in-Chief, China, that two beacons, each 30 feet high, had been erected. These were first inserted on Admiralty charts by 'Notice to Mariners 755' of 1900 (Atherton, 1996:94). I have a chart showing Tai Tam Harbour, dated 1894, which shows the Obelisks, but Atherton informs me that this is a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "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": 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": 215138, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "191\n\nBard, Solomon (1988). In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong, the Urban Council Hong Kong.\n\nEmpson, Hal (1992), Mapping Hong Kong, A Historical Atlas, Hong Kong.\n\nLack, Alan (1994 March 17), retired senior member of staff of Government Marine Department, Hong Kong. Letter to the author.\n\nHacker, Arthur, letter together with sketch to the Author dated 29 October, 2000.\n\nLiu Shuyong (1997), An Outline History of Hong Kong, Foreign Language Press, Beijing.\n\nThe Mariner's Mirror, The Journal of the Society for Nautical Research, England, vol. 81, no. 3, August 1995.\n\nOp. cit. vol. 82, no. 1, February 1996.\n\nMok, Sam (1995 February 25), 'Peaceful sea villages a Tai Tam treat', Hong Kong Standard.\n\nSinclair, Olga (2000, June), e-mail to the author.\n\nTai Tam Bay (1894), chart, surveyed by Lieut. J W Combe RN et al, published by the Admiralty, London.\n\nTrayhurn, Rob (1995, January 16), letter to author from Public Relations Officer, Clyde Submarine Base, Scotland.\n\nWhite Ensign - Red Dragon, The History of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong 1841-1997 (1997) ed. Commodore PJ Melson CBE, Royal Navy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215680, "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": 457, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "409\n\nbeginning of 1900 she was under construction at the yard of Dennys of Dumbarton. She was a side-wheeler, 180 feet long, 60 feet beam across the paddle boxes, drawing 6 feet and having a deadweight of 150 tons with accommodation for many deck passengers.\n\nHaving made all the arrangements for \"Pioneer\" to be shipped to Shanghai in pieces, Little returned to London. Whilst having lunch at the Oriental Club with some of his backers and advisors, he was introduced to Captain Samuel Cornel Plant. Captain Plant had recently returned to England having served for several years in command of steamers on the Tigris and Euphrates, rivers well known for their navigational difficulties. When Little learned of the captain's previous experience, he did his best to persuade Plant to come to China and take command of \"Pioneer.\" Plant promised to give the matter some thought. For whatever reason, he subsequently agreed to go along with Little.\n\n\"Pioneer\" was shipped to Shanghai and reassembled. Plant and his wife, Alice Sophia, took ship to China, joined \"Pioneer\" and in early June 1900 the attempt on the Three Gorges began. With Plant in command, \"Pioneer\" made the trip from Ichang to Chunking in 73 steaming hours over seven days. She was held up for three days at Hsin T'an Rapids. On arrival at Chunking she was greeted by most of the expatriates living there and it is said that the banks of the river were black with hundreds of junkmen who had crowded to see this latest barbarian wonder.\n\nThe Aftermath\n\nBad luck again struck Little. There were rumblings of trouble along the river that were to culminate in the Boxer Uprising. The British Consulate in Chunking commandeered \"Pioneer\" and used her to evacuate expatriates from the trouble spots. (It is not known whether Little was compensated for the loss of \"Pioneer\" or not. She was eventually handed over to the Royal Navy, renamed H.M.S. \"Kinshi\" and finished life as H.Q. Ship, Senior British Naval Officer on the Yangtze River.)\n\nPlant's Career\n\nPlant, having left the employ of Little, bought himself a houseboat", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215802, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "34\n\nBETWEEN THE NINE DRAGONS AND A DIVINE WIND: HOW HONG KONG'S WEATHER MIGHT HAVE AFFECTED AN ALLIED INVASION TO RETAKE THE TERRITORY*\n\nCHOHONG CHO\n\nSynopsis\n\nIn the War in the Pacific during World War II, the question of whether or not to engage Japan directly in China was a major one for Allied planners. If the Japanese weren't enough of a problem, an age-old factor - the weather - certainly would have provided the Allies with additional concerns. The Pacific and Asia are home to some of the most extreme weather in the world.\n\nHong Kong, a possible target in any Allied campaign in China, played host to some of this extreme weather. What this study attempts to do is to consider how Hong Kong's adverse weather conditions could have affected an Allied operation to recapture it from the Japanese.\n\nBackground\n\nAfter Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in December 1941 and Great Britain was expelled from the Pacific, only the U.S. was left to face Japan in this theatre. The U.S. itself was in bad shape, as most of its Pacific Fleet had been mauled at Pearl Harbor. On the Asian mainland, Japan was still busying herself with China and Britain. A stalemate had developed with the former, while the latter was being pushed out of Burma into India.\n\nHowever, the U.S. Navy's (USN) aircraft carriers were not caught in the Pearl Harbor debacle, and during much of 1942, they bore the brunt of the action against the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the Pacific. In a series of three engagements with the IJN (at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal), with inferior numbers accompanied by\n\n*The author would like to thank Mr. Ko Tim-keung for bringing a draft of this article to the attention of the Hon. Editor, and Professor Elfed Roberts for his comments on an early version of the draft.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215827, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "59\n\n11\n\n3; \"Naval Group China Papers,\" RG 38; NA, Washington, DC (hereafter referred to as \"G-2 Estimates\").\n\n(1) KWIZ 66/52, 6 Jul 44; Series 10/17, KWIZ (Kweilin Intelligence Summary) nos. 66-69, September-October 1944; Ride Papers. (2) \"Enemy Press Extracts: 17 Mar 45-14 Apr 45,\" 31 May 45, p.1, 4, 7; Series 2/37, Contains Correspondence Relating to the Closure of BAAG and Intelligence Reports, December 1942-November 1945; Ride Papers. (3) Stella L. Thrower, Hong Kong Country Parks (Hong Kong: Government Printing, 1984), p.97.\n\n12 Navy Department, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OP-30), Bureau of Yards and Docks, \"Joint Preliminary Study for Advanced Base: Hong Kong Including Port Shelter and Mirs Bay,\" Nov 44, p. 10-11, 14; Foreign Publications and Reports, 1940-50, Guatemala-Hong Kong; Office of Naval Intelligence; Records of the Chief of Naval Operations, RG 38; NA, Washington, DC (hereafter referred to as Navy Department, \"Advanced Base: Hong Kong\").\n\n13 \"G-2 Estimates,\" p.5-6.\n\n* CPS 107/1, \"Plan of Campaign Within China,\" 24 Apr 44, p.15; ABC 384 China (12-15-43), Sec. 1-A; Top Secret \"American-British-Canadian\" Correspondence (known as the \"ABC\" File) Relating to Organizational Planning and General Combat Operations During World War II and the Early Postwar Period, 1940-1948; Office of the Director of Plans & Operations; Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, RG 165; NA, Washington, DC.\n\n15\n\nis Hong Kong Royal Observatory, Tropical Cyclones and Aircraft Operations in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: the Observatory, 1976), p.2 (hereafter referred to as HKRO, Tropical Cyclones).\n\n\"The case for the barrage balloon is made in Major Franklin J. Hillson's (USAF), \"Barrage Balloons for Low-Level Air Defense,\" Aerospace Power Journal (Summer 1989). The author said that barrage balloons were still a viable concept in 1989, by which time technology had progressed and the Cold War was winding down. (Article is available online at http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/girchronicles/api/apj89/hillson.html.)\n\n#7 The \"Climate of Hong Kong (China)\" study did not state how low humidity had to be to have an adverse effect on chemical warfare, although it seemed to imply that Hong Kong's 58-62 per cent relative humidity from October to December", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215872, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "104\n\nPottinger Battery were relocated to Bokhara Battery, Cape D'Aguilar in 1939 or 1940 (Rollo: 201). The batteries' arc of fire at Devil's Peak in 1938 reached the southwestern tip of Lamma Island and the south of the Po Toi Group of islands, whereas those at Stanley reached beyond the southwestern part of the Lema Islands (Dangan Liedao).\n\nThus, before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong on 8th December 1941, there were no guns at either the Gough or Pottinger Battery. However, the sites at Devil's Peak had become part of the Gin Drinker's Line in the 1930s. This Line runs from Gin Drinker's Bay (Kwai Chung) in the west to Port Shelter in the east. The Devil's Peak was a crucial component of the Kowloon segment of the Line. The Japanese had good maps about the location of the defences of Hong Kong. Some remarks on the defence works at Devil's Peak are registered in a map produced in 1939/1940 (Empson 1992). Defensive positions in the military sites on Devil's Peak were taken up by the 5/7 Rajputs of the Hong Kong Garrison on 12 December, after the fall of the Shing Mun Redoubt in the western part of the Line three days before.\n\nThe sites at Devil's Peak witnessed heavy defensive fighting by the 5/7 Rajputs and the First Mountain Battery of the Hong Kong and Singapore Artillery. The latter expended 400 rounds with their four 3.7 inch field guns before the evacuation of the defenders to Hong Kong Island on the morning of 13th December. The defenders destroyed all equipment before they crossed the Harbour during the night. Thereafter, the Japanese used the sites to bombard the Island and the defenders' gun returned fire.\n\nAfter the defeat of Japan, the Devil's Peak sites were abandoned by the British, although the batteries on the Island side of Lei Yue Mun Pass were reoccupied and put into active military use until the mid-1980s. Before 1997, there had been little news connected with British military activities at Devil's Peak, save for an air accident in the 1950s. In March 1956, two Royal Navy Sea Hawks struck fog-shrouded Devil's Peak, killing the pilots and an elderly lady (Eather 1996).\n\nA surviving example of the 9.2-inch guns that were deployed on the batteries at Devil's Peak can be seen at the Buyu Battery (Siu 1997: Plate 6 at p.76) that guards Humen (The Bogue). This battery was modernised in 1883 with the assistance of British and German military experts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216335, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "43\n\nThieving was common. Even the coolies who unloaded the cargoes into custom-house boats for weighing, and the boatmen who took them in covered and locked boats up to Canton, had a bad reputation, one witness even affirming that 'the Chinese exceed greatly the watermen upon the Thames in filching and chicanery,' which, Parkinson has observed, was of course saying a great deal.57\n\nNaval and military personnel of the Delta\n\nWe come now to another class of involved person, the commanders and personnel of war junks of the provincial navy, and of the many military forts and guard-posts in the Delta and up the rivers. Despite being natives of the province, they were not noted for their good behaviour towards the local land and boat populations. Indeed, the recital of exactions, inducements and \"squeezes\" that we have seen to be routine in the old China Trade is merely a reflection of what passed on the wider scene for much of the time. This culture of corrupt and bad practices is corroborated by recorded local history.\n\nOld persons in Hong Kong's outlying island communities interviewed in the 1960s recalled several instances of the petty corruption practised upon local people by soldiers from the military posts there before 1898. The Peng Chau post made an unlawful levy on boat people at their regular monthly \"burn offs\" of marine growth from the hulls of their craft, whilst their brethren on Cheung Chau extracted cash from vendors at the local market-place.5\n\nMore serious breaches against the boat people are mentioned in surviving commemorative tablets in some of the temples in the Delta area, erected for the public record by the wearied local communities with the consent of the responsible senior officials.\n\nOne such (1834) at a temple on Peng Chau near Hong Kong forbade the practice of commandeering two fishing craft each month and putting soldiers on board them, for cruises to entrap pirates whilst posing as innocuous traders, to the great inconvenience of the family members and temporary loss of their livelihood. Another (1826), placed outside a temple near the Barrier Gate at Macau, prohibited the unlawful charges and exactions being levied by the crews of salt gabelle patrol boats and the personnel of no fewer than 28 military posts along one stretch of\n\n59", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216398, "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": 157, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "107\n\nto the submarine was so great that a major salvage operation probably would be necessary.\n\nMost unfortunately too no more survivors were to come to the surface from the sunken vessel.\n\nAt 1300 hours on the 13 our ship sent her Chaplain, The Rev. F. Freeman, MA, and Royal Marine band across to MEDWAY. An hour later HERMES weighed for Wei-Hai-Wei where she anchored in Four Funnel Bay at 1643 hours. The summer base of the Royal Navy was that close to the scene of the accident.\n\nThe entire fleet mourned the very sad loss, and amongst their fellow submariners the mood was sombre.\n\nA memorial service was held on Sunday, the 14th.\n\nOn Monday, 15th June 1931 a Court of Inquiry was opened. The President was a submariner of note, and the recently appointed Flag Captain in SUFFOLK, Geoffrey Layton.\n\nIt transpired that while steaming in a south-westerly direction, course 235 degrees, at 1212 hours on Tuesday, 9th June H.M. Submarine POSEIDON had come into collision with the Chinese cargo steamer YUTA, Captain T. Iyeishi, steaming in a north-westerly direction on course 42 degrees magnetic. In other words, the two ships had been about to cross at right angles to each other. The sea was calm and visibility about six miles, position 37.49.5N 122.16E which, as suggested above, is just to the east of the easter point of the Shantung peninsula.\n\nS.S. YUTA was on passage from Shanghai to Newchwang with a cargo of 27,000 bags of flour and carrying no passengers.\n\nAt the time of the collision, several crew members in the submarine had jumped off her into the sea. One able seaman, J.E. Halsall, seeing his opportunity actually had had the presence of mind to take hold of a loose bight of cable hanging from the bow of YUTA and had climbed onboard to safety. Of the remainder, and as related, six men had escaped from the wreck of whom one died.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216411, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "120\n\nHERMES herself though always small and crowded, and below decks a very hot ship, seems to have been a happy ship and \"old hands\" with whom I have chatted refer to her with considerable affection (JP).\n\n6840 tons. On 5th May 1942, just a day before the surrender of U.S. forces, to be sunk in Manila Bay by Japanese air attack.\n\n'Public Record Office/National Archives, Kew. File PRO ADM 156/101-2. Report by Captain E.J.G. Mackinnon dated at Wei-Hai-Wei, 13 June 1931.\n\n*Built in Aberdeen in 1889 as YUEN SANG, 1,723 grt, for Indo-China S.N. Co. Ltd. (Jardine Matheson & Co.). In August 1923 sold by them to Mr. Pao Ying Lin for Yen 75,000. Registered at Newchwang, China. Newchwang is in Southern Manchuria, and in 1931 within a Japanese zone of influence. Only to be sold to the breakers in 1937, aged 48 years.\n\n'PRO ADM 116/2843. China General Letter No. 7 covering the period 1 - 30 September 1931.\n\n-\n\n\"Ewo is Jardine's Chinese name 'Happy Harmony' - I believe adopted from that of a merchant in Canton with whom they did business in very early days (JP).\n\n\"Lieut. E.H. Chavasse, Up and Down the Yangtze, printed privately.\n\n-\n\n122,595 grt. Built in Hong Kong in 1926 for Indo-China S.N. Co. Ltd (Jardine Matheson & Co.). In 1940 to be requisitioned for service as an auxiliary patrol vessel with the Royal Navy. On 13 February 1942, when carrying escaping personnel south from Singapore towards Batavia, to be bombed by Japanese aircraft. Damaged, beached and abandoned at Muntok on Banda Island.\n\n\"PRO ADM 116/2843. Report 0702/204 dated at Hankow, 6 October 1931.\n\n\"PRO ADM 53/78855. Log book, H.M.S. HERMES.\n\n15625 tons. Built in 1915. In March 1939 to be sold for scrap.\n\nAnne M. Lindbergh (1936). North to the Orient. (London: Chatto & Windus), 248. Born on 22nd June 1906 she was to die only as recently as 7th February 2001.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]