[ { "id": 204648, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE\n\n115\n\njourney by chair. He was the first Englishman to travel by this route, which it was hoped would develop into an important trade route from Upper Burma and West China.\n\nIn 1872 John Swire of London formed the China Navigation Company to trade on the Yangtse, and started by purchasing the two steamers of the Union Steam Navigation Company, following this up a year later with three ships of their own specially built on the Clyde. In this same year of 1873 the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company was formed, a Chinese company partly under government control and direction. This company purchased the steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company in 1877, and so became the owners of the largest river fleet. A few years later Jardine returned to the Yangtse with the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, and by the early 1880's the greater part of the Yangtse trade was shared between these three companies: the China Navigation Company, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, and the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company.\n\nThe formation of the China Navigation Company in 1872 was a logical development from that of the Blue Funnel Line by Alfred Holt in 1866. Alfred Holt and John Swire were close friends and business associates, and when the latter opened an eastern branch of his company in Shanghai he took over the agency of the Blue Funnel Line ships. One reason behind the formation of the China Navigation Company was to provide cargoes for the Blue Funnel ships to and from the Yangtse. Alfred Holt was unwilling to operate ships so far from his personal control, but was willing to support the Swire enterprise. The inauguration of the Blue Funnel Service to the Far East, the opening of a Far Eastern branch of John Swire and Company in Shanghai in the same year, and the formation of the China Navigation Company six years later, meant the introduction of a new and powerful combination to the China coast. Holt and Swire, in association with the Clyde shipbuilding family of Scott, were soon to play a very important part in the China trade, and in the shipping of the whole of the Far East. Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and Australia, were all to come within their orbit before many years had passed.\n\nIn 1881 the various shipping interests of Jardine were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, of which Jardine were made permanent managers. For a list of the main shipping companies plying on the Yangtze see Appendix on p. 130.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212309, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "By the 1970s, it was no longer such a competitive and profitable organisation and its operations were scaled down. A purpose-built factory was completed on Tsing Yi island in 1991.\n\nAlthough the Swire Group over five generations has always had its head office in England, it has interests throughout Asia and the South Pacific, as well as in North America and Australia. Its China Navigation Company began operations on the Yangtze River in 1872. In World War II, more than half of Swire's ships were lost. A dockyard (of which more later) was established in Hong Kong at the turn of the century.\n\nThe group, which adopts a relatively low profile, has about 28,000 employees in 1988, and is the second largest employer in Hong Kong after the Government. Its complement included, up to 1990, 78-year old Madame Ho Sau-King who had worked at Taikoo Sugar Limited since 1928.\n\nIn 1981 John Bremridge (later Sir John), Taipan of Swire's, became Government Financial Secretary for a term of five years. This was an unprecedented appointment as previous 'FSs' had been promoted through the ranks of the civil service. Like the son of the founder of Swire's, Sir John Bremridge writes and speaks to the point”.\n\nThe conglomeration of interests of this (still largely) family firm and private limited company includes an elite collection of Hong Kong enterprises. Swire's has a controlling interest in Cathay Pacific Airways, founded in 1948, as well as in HAECO aircraft maintenance company. Property is also big business and about 45 per cent of the group's net asset value is in bricks and mortar. Other interests include container terminals, technology, engineering, air catering, investment banking, travel and general trading. Sir Adrian and Sir John Swire have a family fortune estimated at HK$6.3 billion, and in 1989 Sir John was quoted by the Sunday Times Magazine as being Britain's 12th richest person, a position he held jointly with his brother.\n\nDodwell's\n\nW.R. Adamson and Company (later, Adamson Bell and Company), the forerunner of Dodwell's, was founded as a result of the efforts of a group of Cheshire weavers who needed to increase supplies of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212337, "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": 279, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "256\n\nThe Swire Group\n\nSwire News (various)\n\nUnion Corner, (booklet of Union Insurance Society of Canton Ltd.) Watson's Calendar 1897\n\nREPORTS, PAPERS AND FACT SHEETS\n\nBard, S.M., Foreign Trade and Traders in Early British Hong Kong (1988) Hong Kong: The Facts (various Government fact sheets)\n\nLeeds, P.F., The Development of Public Transport in Hong Kong\n\nReview (November 1974)\n\nNEWSPAPERS, SUPPLEMENTS AND PERIODICALS\n\nAn Historical\n\nArt catalogue, excerpts mentioning the Watson family (undated, details unknown) The Asia Magazine\n\nAsian Finance\n\nBuilding Journal\n\nHong Kong, Ire (no. 2 Feb. 1990)\n\nHong Kong Standard (various)\n\n*A New Era for Swire Travel, Hong Kong Standard Special Publication (31 October 1974)\n\n'New Lane Crawford House', Souvenir Magazine to Commemorate the Opening of New Lane Crawford House, Hong Kong Standard/Sing Tao Jih Pao (June 1977) Newspaper clippings, Hong Kong Public Records (various)\n\nSouth China Morning Post (various)\n\nSouth China Morning Post 75 Years (1978)\n\n'139 Years of Temptation', South China Morning Post Supplement (15 March 1989)\n\nLETTERS TO THE AUTHOR\n\nFrom: Mr Rupert S.C. Li (Swindon Book Company)\n\nThe Royal Society, London\n\nStandard Chartered Bank", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214503, "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-1998", "page_number": 361, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "330\n\nthe team that formed around me to make sure that I did not leave everything to the night before we were due to leave. The team comprised Dr Peter Barker, Sarah Parnell and Michael Broom - and of course Elace, the representative from Swire Travel who was our contact point with the local agents and guides on the ground in China. In fact, there were further significant contributions from many of the tour members. I hope to have given full credit to all of them on the text that follows.\n\nPeter's contribution was, in a way, the greatest. His heavy travel schedule meant that he could not attend any meetings that might have been called to discuss progress. However, this made him feel that he was always missing something, so every time he returned to Hong Kong he had the effect of reminding me that nothing more had been achieved since the last time he contacted me. Once real planning got under way, Mike, Sarah and I met a number of times, and we decided to take one area each for the purposes of research and itinerary setting. Mike volunteered for Tsingtao, Sarah took Chefoo and Weihaiwei, leaving me with Dalian and Port Arthur.\n\nThis arrangement worked well, and we each managed to put together some notes and extracts from various sources, which I put together as a handout for the tour members. A copy of this booklet, \"Bits of Broken China,\" is available in the RAS Library and may be a useful source of reference for people planning a similar trip.\n\nWhat now follows is a description of what we saw, from the perspective of the person fortunate enough to have been the tour leader. The notes below certainly do not pretend to be in any way a history of the places we saw; there are many far more learned and authoritative places to look and people to talk to in order to gain such information. Nevertheless, I hope this brief article shares with its readers some of the fun that was had in making the whole thing possible.\n\nGetting Settled in and Briefed\n\nThe mid-day flight from Hong Kong got us to Qingdao in the late afternoon. Why is it that all travelling that is done by \"a group\" seems to be far more complicated and time-consuming than for the same number of people travelling independently? Be that as it may, by the time", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]