RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
190 

REV. JAMES LEGGE

the excitement and activity. Then came the close of the war in America, which had produced a feverish activity in the cotton market, ultimately disastrous to many. There followed, in 1866, the commercial disasters consequent on the fall of Overend and Gurney, and the panic at home, with the crashing of banks and the downfall of Houses which had been supposed to be firm as the foundations of the mountain behind us. It was a time of trouble and darkness. Sir Hercules came to the Colony when the tide was rising, and he had it at the flood for the greater part of his time. There remains the Robinson Road to perpetuate his name. When he went away, Mr. Mercer took his place as acting governor, an able man and accomplished, who would have done better for himself had he ventured to assume more responsibility. Then came Sir Richard MacDonnell to the helm at a time of great difficulty; but here I must bring my reminiscences of Hongkong to a close. The events of Sir Richard's incumbency are fresh in the memory of most of you, fresher, indeed, than in my own, for I was absent from the Colony during his administration for three whole years. There are none of us but would rejoice to hear of the reinvigoration of his health. In these recent years the capabilities of the telegraph wire and of the Suez Canal have come fully into play. Their effects on the Colony have already been great, and they will yet be greater.

And now, as I draw to a conclusion, permit me to observe that the more than thirty years of my residence in the East have witnessed events of almost unparalleled magnitude and change all over the world. What wars and revolutions have taken place in Europe! in America! in India! in Africa! But great as they have been, they have not been greater than those which have taken place, here in the Far East. When I think of China opened as it has been, and of Japan pursuing with much more willing and rapid steps the career of progress, I can scarcely realize the contrast between the state of things in 1839 and 1872. We sometimes doubt if China be really moving, but moving it is; and if I sometimes fret at the slowness of its advance, and wish that there were more in it of the mobility of its neighbour, yet in the end that slowness tends to increase my respect for the country and its people. There must be a great future yet for the country. In Great Britain there is an area of 12,000 miles of coal fields,
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077
NOTES AND QUERIES

The purpose of the visit is to see

197

(a) the quiet residential terraces of this part of Kennedy Town, namely Tai Pak Terrace, Hee Wong Terrace, Ching Lin Terrace, To Li Terrace, and Hok Si Terrace;

(b) the Lo Pan Temple which stands at the western end of

Ching Lin Terrace.

Kennedy Town was named after an early Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Arthur Kennedy in whose term of office, April 1872 - March 1877, the district was first developed. Kennedy ‘was genial, and possessed a great sense of humour, much common sense, and a strong Irish accent'. For a short but interesting and lively account of the events of his governorship see Endacott's History of Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 1958, pp. 160-169),

Endacott gives the following reason for the development of Kennedy Town, then located on the western fringe of the city of Victoria

The telegraph and the Suez Canal had brought changes in commercial practice; large stocks used to be kept by the European firms to meet any advantageous price changes; but now shipments could be arranged far more quickly. The result was that large godowns in the eastern district were no longer necessary, and coolies moved to the western part of the city in search of employment. To meet this change a new Chinese area was laid out on partly reclaimed land, and named Kennedy Town after the Governor.

The Five Terraces

Carl Smith has very kindly provided the following information about the development of the particular section of Kennedy Town in which we are interested:

The area we are visiting today, lying between Pokfulam Road and the sea shore and from Holland Street to Sands Street, was the earliest development in what is now Kennedy Town. George Underhill Sands was granted a Crown Lease in 1873 for 330,634 square feet at Belcher's Bay. The lot was numbered Marine Lot 239. It not only had a sea frontage suitable for docks and a ship slipway, but it extended up the hillside toward Pokfulam Road. Sands died in 1877 and his executors sold the lot with its patent slips and shipways to the Hong Kong and Whampoa
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
266

DONALD C. BOWIE

where they fed us and found our guard. In the Empress of Australia, Major MacIntyre was senior medical officer and he turned out to be a fellow graduate of the University of Glasgow, a coincidence which turned out to be much to my advantage.

Apparently at this time I was making returns to some authority or other relating to money transactions while we were prisoners. In the Civil Internment Camp in Stanley, I believe that a few people who could get money sent in lent sums to others for repayment after the war at exorbitant rates of interest. This practice was frowned upon by the British leaders in the camp, and the returns I refer to undoubtedly had to do with transactions of this kind. The hospital had been free of such speculators who operated on this scale.

On 8 September I received a message from my wife and on 9 September we embarked in the Empress of Australia for a destination that was unknown. Next day we took on board all who were being evacuated from Stanley camp, having anchored just off the peninsula there. On 13 September we disembarked in Manila and were sent to an Australian officers camp where we were medically examined and interrogated on 15 September. While in Manila all messing arrangements were kept going throughout the whole 24 hours for the benefit of those who felt they needed much food.

On 18 September we reembarked in the Empress but our Q.A. sisters had taken the other route home via Canada. We voyaged home via Singapore, Colombo, Aden, Suez where all the troops were re-equipped with warm clothing, then after a short stop in Port Said we landed in Liverpool on 28 October having been delayed for 24 hours outside the port by storms and high winds. My thoughts went back to a similar 24-hour delay when my wife and I originally landed in Hong Kong some six and one-half years earlier.

While we were in Colombo a very interesting event occurred. Our accommodation in the Australia was on wartime standards and some of our men reacted very unfavourably to the crowded conditions. The atmosphere in the troop decks had become fiery at times. While we were anchored in Colombo, Lady Mountbatten came on board looking very smart in her Red Cross uniform. She went below to the troop decks, climbed on a mess table and spoke in simple and direct terms to the men. She drew their attention probably for the first time to the vastly different conditions in which life was being lived in ships and at home after six years at war. Her talk showed her sympathy and her understanding and I have
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
239

Boswell (1815 to 1860), a graduate of Edinburgh University, who set up in private practice (previously owned by Doctor Anderson) in Macau in 1845. He was a physician and his wife, Elizabeth (née Stedman), joined him the following year. Watson was also an amateur artist and a friendship with the famous George Chinnery lasted from 1845 to Chinnery's death in 1852.

Watson wrote to his sister in Scotland, in 1848, about Macau:

“Counting ourselves, there are just four families and one or two Americans and French. There are Portuguese of course, but I do not class them as foreigners as it is a Portuguese settlement.”

Life out East for Watson meant 14 years of hard work, ill health, and a constant struggle to make enough money for him and his family to go home. Nevertheless, in Macau he was surrounded by a happy family; he lived (as he phrased it) in a “sweet abode the prettiest spot on earth with a spacious open terrace and a wonderful view.”

Watson sold his practice to a Doctor B. Kane (it took time to dispose of it as Macau was on the decline), and he moved to Hong Kong in 1856 where he became part owner of the Hong Kong Dispensary. His rent for a house on Queen's Road then was $1,200 a year. Watson was also involved with the Victoria Dispensary but this closed in 1857 because of lack of business. It appears there were too many British doctors competing for custom. Watson was said to operate the most successful practice in the Colony.

In 1857, he was closely involved when patriots of China attempted to poison Europeans by putting arsenic in the bread at the Ah Lum Bakery. He managed to rush home to warn his family before they had eaten breakfast. Fortunately, because the amount of arsenic was excessive, it induced vomiting and nobody died. To the intense annoyance of the European community Ah Lum was acquitted for lack of evidence.

Watson sent his family back to Britain in 1857, and he himself returned to Scotland by the overland route (by ship to Port Suez,
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n
45

was selected and marked with the so-called Chinese eyes like those on a sea-going junk. It served with the 6th Battalion first as Fly-paper though subsequently it was re-named Fan-tan. The 6th Battalion later adopted the eyes as a regimental symbol. Mr David Fletcher of the Tank Museum at Bovington, in correspondence with the author, was not aware that this symbol was not generally adopted in the Great War. The 6th ultimately converted to Whippets, on which Mr Fletcher had never seen the Eyes symbol. When the 6th Battalion was disbanded after the Great War its various honours and customs were passed to the 4th Battalion which then adopted the Eyes as a Battalion symbol. The 4th Battalion used it on their vehicles from the 1920s and, when they amalgamated with the 1st Battalion RTR in 1993, it was adopted by them. In the 1930s the 6th Battalion was reconstituted and was still around to take part in the 1956 Suez action and never got back their Eyes symbol!

In the main exhibition hall of the Imperial War Museum in London there is a Mark V tank with "European" eyes. These tanks were introduced in the Spring of 1918 and first saw action at Le Hamel in France in July 1918. This tank, Devil [T9171] was believed to have served with B Company of the 4th Battalion of the Tank Corps and was still in service in 1925. This tank, belonging to the 4th Battalion, would have been entitled to the Eyes symbol.

Camps and Recreation

Camps were maintained behind the Front lines, some of the larger being at Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk with the Head Quarters at Noyelles-sur-Mer. Hospitals were at Noyelles-sur-Mer, Arques, Moulle and Calais, with the Shorncliffe Military Hospital at Folkestone also being used for sick and injured Chinese. There was a prison for Chinese at Noyelles.

Labourers died as a result of disease, bombings, gassing and, after the war, when clearing the battlefields and when digging graves, by the many unexploded bombs and grenades. Many also died as a result of the post-war influenza epidemic known as the Spanish Flu. I have seen two photographs, taken of the funeral procession of the German flying ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen [the Red Baron] at Bertangles cemetery on 22nd April 1918 and amongst the crowd looking over the
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g
283

an important strategic port for merchants.

In the process of competing with Macao as the doorway to China trade, Hong Kong had its moments of hesitation. It had its own internal problems to solve during the three decades after 1841, such as building roads, houses, godowns, and having to provide an attractive and safe environment for trade. Only in 1875, after Hong Kong had developed into a port which was busy receiving Chinese junks from the north as well as Japanese vessels from the East and European steamers from the West was the first lighthouse at Cape D'Aguilar constructed to facilitate the navigation route leading to its harbour.

Ships from the West

To build lighthouses was a need formed by several elements. First, the marine navigation route from Europe to Asia used to go round the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa. In 1869, the Suez Canal was opened for navigation, shortening the distance between Europe and East Asia by 20 to 30 per cent as well as cutting the cost, facilitating more frequent sea traffic.4 Secondly, the Industrial Revolution in Europe increased drastically the supply of consumer goods which, in turn, demanded more and more large steamships with greater speed to carry them. Thirdly, shipping costs depend not only on the size and speed of the vessel or the time needed for the transportation. Part of the cost goes to the insurance against the danger of shipwrecks. The safe route with good navigation aids affected the cost of the goods directly. Because of the above elements, the demand for building lighthouses on the sea route to Hong Kong became more pressing with the increase of trade.

Old lighthouses

Before the setting up of lighthouses in Hong Kong there were already lighthouses in nearby waters. On the Eastern approaches to the Singapore Straits Horsburgh Lighthouse was established in 1851.5 Off the west coast of Taiwan located on Xi Yu Island of the Pescadores/Penghu Islands, the Fisherman Island Lighthouse (Yureng Tao Lighthouse) was set up as early as 1778.6 In Macao, the Guia lighthouse (Farol da Guia), built in 1865, claims to be the oldest on the China coast. These lighthouses, however, did not provide enough help for

7
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278
325

Peninsula and Oriental Line had four passenger ships: the Chusan, the Carthage and the Corfu. I sailed on the Royal Mail Ship Canton. As a newly joined Hong Kong government servant I went on half pay as soon as I stepped on the boat. It took 31 days from Southampton to Hong Kong.

In first class one dressed every night for dinner, except the first night and nights in port. With a long voyage some passengers were like bears with sore ears. For others there were games like deck quoits, dancing, the ceremony of "crossing the line" and shipboard romances. Others were seasick. Regarding romance the pretext for "Romeo" at night was to take a girl up to the boat deck to show her the Southern Cross. One lady boasted: 'I was taken up twice on one night and both men pointed to the wrong constellation!'

There were sea birds and flying fish to watch out for, and some wonderful sunsets in the Indian Ocean. Just as the brilliant sun dipped below the horizon you could occasionally see a green flash. Looking over the ship's rail at night one could frequently see phosphorescent, microbial animal and plant life in the tropical waters. Sometimes one could see this when one flushed the toilet in the darkness of one's cabin.

At Port Said gilly gilly men (Egyptian magicians) were allowed on board to entertain passengers. Or you could go ashore, visit the Pyramids and elsewhere, and catch the ship at the other end of the Suez Canal (that was the way people travelled on the so-called overland route, before the Suez Canal was completed in 1869.)

Aden, with low taxes, was a good place for shopping. Or one could visit the museum there to look at a stuffed Manatee with its broad, flattened tail. Fond of sitting on rocks, these sea creatures were said to have provided the substance for seamen's tales about mermaids. Other customary ports of call for British passenger ships were Bombay, Colombo, Penang and Singapore. P. & O. ships were manned partly by lascar seamen with stewards from the Portuguese Goa. There was a splendid array of cuisine with China, Indian and Ceylon teas. The Indian curry cook could serve a different curry for every lunch of the 31-day voyage.

Some Britons preferred to travel on foreign ships which were not
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