ENG-1961 — Page 289

COMMUNICATIONS

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Three other signal stations run by the department keep a 24-hour watch, report all shipping movements to the Port Control Office, and are available for ship-shore visual signals communications at any time. Marine Officers attached to the Port Control Office can be contacted at any time out of office hours through the Marine Department Signal Tower. Navigation warnings, synoptic weather charts and information of value to shipping in the China Sea area are readily available to all vessels at the time of clearance.

Radio telephones on a common circuit are installed in the Marine Signal Tower, Port Control Office and Marine and Port Health launches, and all Police, Immigration Department and Commerce and Industry Department launches are equipped with radio telephones on their own departmental circuits. Vessels at buoys or wharves may hire radio telephones commercially which link up with the public telephone service.

The Port has, in the 'Alexander Grantham', one of the largest and most up-to-date firefloats in the world. This vessel together with other smaller firefloats is kept in a state of constant readiness by the Hong Kong Fire Services Department to combat ship fires anywhere in the Colony waters and is capable, if necessary, of proceeding beyond Colony limits. In addition, the Marine Depart- ment has established, at key points around the harbour, portable banks of carbon dioxide filled cylinders. Each of these banks can smother a fire in the largest hold of any ship visiting the Port.

The geographical location of Hong Kong, its reputation for speed and efficiency in cargo handling, the absence of unnecessary obstructions to trade and commerce and the adequacy of tranship- ment facilities combined during the year to ensure a continued high level of Port activity and there were again more than 10,000 movements of ocean-going ships in and out of the harbour. Transhipment cargo accounted for an appreciable proportion of the cargo handled in the Port. Details of the 8,165,962 deadweight tons of cargo imported or exported during the year are given at Appendix X.

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The continued development of the Colony as a centre of light industry is well supported by the shipping companies who both bring in the raw materials to the Colony and take away the finished products to destinations all over the world. Some twenty