[
    {
        "id": 212385,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 327,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "304\n\nShe first arrived in Hong Kong in May 1857 under the agency of Dent & Co, one of the major trading companies in the rapidly expanding colony. For the next three years the Norna carried general cargo along the China coast between Hong Kong and the Treaty Ports.\n\nIn 1860 Dent & Co. decided to move her to the more profitable tea trade route to Australia. The Norna, under the command of Captain Wilson, received orders to make sail for Foo Chow, load her cargo of tea and proceed to Sydney. For crew, Wilson had eight Europeans and twenty lascars. As was not uncommon at the time, he also took along his wife and young son.\n\nOn the 27th September 1860 the Norna, loaded with tea chests, made her way down the Min River and headed south for Australia where she arrived two days before Christmas. Within two weeks the Norna had completed unloading and sailed in ballast the short distance up the coast to Newcastle. Here she took on coal for delivery to Hong Kong.\n\nOn the 3rd March the Norna had taken on over 400 tons of her cargo and put to sea for the return passage to Hong Kong. Lying in her path in the Western Pacific, just north of the equator, were the Caroline Islands. This group of islands stretch for about 2,000 miles east/west between Palau and Ponape (Pohnpei) and consist of about 560 coral islands, islets and atolls, the majority uninhabited.\n\nAs the evening closed in on the 31st March 1861, the wind had increased to a strong breeze and the Norna was sailing at a steady 10 knots on a west nor'west course. Unknown to Wilson, he had his bows pointed directly at the coral-rimmed Oroluk Lagoon. Somehow his precise navigation had failed him.\n\nAt 2200 hours that night, the Norna struck hard and remained held fast in the coral, her timbers splintered and beyond repair. The following morning Wilson established that the atoll was about 15 miles in diameter with the small half-square-mile island of St Augustine 12 miles to their north-west.\n\nThe crew worked feverishly around the wreck for a week to salvage what they could, and in the three ship's boats rowed across the lagoon to the uninhabited St Augustine island. After ten days",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212387,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 329,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "306\n\nthe San Bernadino Strait and searched the east coasts of Samar and Mindanao.\n\nBy the 24th December the Sphinx had arrived in Davao and made preparations for an eastward search through the Caroline Islands. Following fruitless enquiries in Palau from the local chieftains, the Sphinx churned her way further east through the myriad islets and atolls.\n\nBy the time HMS Sphinx had reached the Enderby atolls, Cmdr Brown had begun to lose hope of finding the Norna survivors. One last possibility lay ahead of him. Truk (now known as Chuuk), was the group of islands closest to St Augustine on the intended route of the Norna's castaways. In the early morning of the 3rd March 1862, HMS Sphinx eased her way through Truk's 100 mile circular coral fringe.\n\nNo sooner had they entered the lagoon than they saw an European style boat being rowed frantically towards them. The four lascar occupants scrambled up to the Sphinx's deck and explained they were from the shipwrecked barque Norna. They also told Brown that the rest of the crew were being held captive as slaves on various other islands in the group; they themselves had managed to escape.\n\nAfter a minor skirmish with the natives, HMS Sphinx rescued all the castaways from the Norna save for one who had died a few months earlier from the treatment meted out by the Trukese. It had been all but a year since the Norna was wrecked on the reefs of Oroluk Lagoon.\n\nOn the 19th March 1862, HMS Sphinx set course for Guam where they arrived six days later. After 10 days of rest and recreation, Brown set the Sphinx on course for Hong Kong and came to anchor close by the guardship, HMS Princess Charlotte, which was anchored not far from today's Kellet Island.\n\nHMS Sphinx had more than successfully acquitted herself in her endeavours. She had sailed and steamed nearly 6,000 miles through the little known waters of the Western Pacific in search of a crew who might or might not have survived. However, the naval authorities in Hong Kong firmly believed there was more than a fair chance of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]