RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 300 Recreation Certainly man cannot live by rice alone and provision had to be made for recreation and welfare. What facilities were there? One imagines in the early 20th century a limited amount. But in the years leading up to Waglan becoming automated, in the 1980s, colour television, stereo music, radio, a small library, darts, ping-pong and mah-jong, all accommodated in the air-conditioned recreation room, were available (Port Services Division; 1987). Let us now turn to the actual men who manned the lighthouses. Lighthouse personalities In 1838, Grace Horsley Darling (1815-1842) became the heroine of Britain when she and her lighthouse keeper father rescued nine of the crew of the good ship Forfarshire. It was wrecked near the Longstone Lighthouse on one of the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast, England. It is fitting that Darling's name is still recorded in English dictionaries and encyclopaedias although today people are more likely to hero-worship figures like astronauts, film stars and footballers. What about Hong Kong's keepers and others associated with lighthouses? What sort of men were they? Let us look at some of them. James Arthur William Deakin's father was a British soldier who married his Chinese wife in 1935.42 He served as a gunner on Mount Davis when the Japanese attacked in December 1941. Later, as a child, James was called upon by his mother to put food parcels through the wire fence of the Shum Shui Po Prison Camp where his father was incarcerated. When he grew up, after attending the then Government King George the Fifth Secondary School, Jimmy Deakin went into government service. In the late 1950s he was posted to the Marine Department from the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Division of the Public Works Department. Allen Lack informed the author that he had known Deakin earlier, as ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 310 31 Under such conditions temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius. 32 Gap Rock is sometimes known as Daam Gon Shan, in Cantonese, meaning "Carrying Pole Hill," 33 Besides Waglan Island, lighthouse keepers on Green Island (who were also Government Marine Department Staff) carried out weather observations and passed information on to the Royal Observatory Office at Kai Tak Airport. 34 When the author visited Waglan, in 1999, all the buildings, including keepers' and soldiers' quarters and the fog-horn building, were still there although they were generally dilapidated. 35 Author interviewed Tam Cheong-wai, then Superintendent of Aids to Navigation, Government Marine Department, 22 February 1999. Tam has since retired. 37 IX 10 B.P. stands for "Bailey Pegs" the maker's name. Fare was not spartan if compared to that given to British soldiers during World War Two when, the author recalls, on active service "iron rations" sometimes consisted of a tin of bully beef and a packet of "hard tack" (army biscuits) for each soldier. Author's interview with Lai Tak-wah, Government Marine Department, 12 February 1999. 38 Sometimes known as the "Rose of China." 39 A number of rocks in Hong Kong are imagined as resembling animals, birds and other objects. There are Lion Rock, Amah Rock and Lovers' Rock ("Marriage Fate Rock"). The last is along Bowen Path and is supposed to symbolise an erect phallus. 40 The author recalls in Britain, between the two World Wars, that there were still a number of pictures of Grace Darling hanging in homes showing her rowing a lifeboat in a storm. 42 The notification of marriage appeared in the South China Morning Post in August 1935. Page 360 Page 361 ================================================================================