ENG-1962 — Page 20

REVIEW

5

Because of the increasing number of ships calling at Hong Kong it was found essential to provide hospital facilities for European seamen, who in those days were very susceptible to local diseases. A hospital, built by public subscription, was established at Morrison Hill, Happy Valley, and received its first patient on 30th September 1844.

The first report of a typhoon affecting the Colony was made in 1841, when Captain Elliot was blown ashore on an island in the Lin Ting group during a voyage from Macau to Hong Kong in his cutter Louisa. Elliot and his crew were subsequently rescued and returned to Macau, but only after paying fishermen a con- siderable sum for their passage.

The first chart of the harbour, published in 1843, was based on a survey carried out two years earlier by Captain Sir Edward Belcher on HMS Sulphur. Many buildings are shown and the shoreline ran where Queen's Road is today. Queen's Road was, in fact, the first public road in Hong Kong and was constructed before any reclamation schemes were begun.

Hong Kong has always been a free port and the first official declaration on this subject was made in March 1842 by Sir Henry Pottinger, who later became the first Governor. He said that it was open to all ships without discrimination. During the first two years of the Colony's occupation, however, there was little organized development of the port, the reason no doubt being that continued British occupation was uncertain. Later many British and Chinese merchants began building offices and godowns on the waterfront and some also carried out private reclamation projects.

During the first few years of British tenure the naval forces were under the command of Admiral Parker, who took possession of a central location in the area now known as Victoria Barracks and used it for housing naval stores. Being of an independent turn of mind, the admiral refused to move his stores when Pottinger first attempted to lay out the town of Victoria in 1843, and this is doubtless the reason for the present location of the naval base and dockyard.

Harbour masters' annual reports for the first decade of British administration are not available, but Captain T. V. Watkin, who