ENG-1962 — Page 24

REVIEW

9

Southampton for a lady or gentleman travelling singly was 72 Spanish dollars.

Efficient shipbuilding and ship-repairing facilities are essential to the development of any port and Hong Kong was well provided for in this respect by early entrepreneurs. The first vessel known to have been built in Hong Kong was the Celestial, of 80 tons, which Captain Lamont constructed on his patent slip at East Point in 1843. In 1857 Mr Lapraik, the founder of the Douglas Steam and Navigation Company, purchased a marine lot of 11 acres at Aberdeen and built a drydock called the Hope Dock, which was opened in 1867 by the Governor, Sir Richard Macdonnell.

One of the pioneer merchant houses in Hong Kong was Messrs Dent and Company and in 1859 this firm built the steamship Ly-ee-mun of 762 tons. The firm was also well known for the stand it took, in conjunction with Messrs Lindsay and Company, against Government's plan to build a continuous praya wall between Murray Road and Wilmer Street. Some sections of the reclamation were completed by 1862, but because of Dent and Lindsay's objections the project was not finished until 1879-80.

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There is no record of the precise limits of the port prior to the cession of the Kowloon peninsula to Britain in 1860, but after that date survey maps show that the eastern harbour limits were from a post at North Point to the boundary of the Colony at Kowloon City. On the west the limits were from Hong Kong Island to Green Island, thence to the western end of Stonecutters Island, thence along the northern shore of the island and across to Sham Shui Po at Boundary Street.

The first Ben Line ship, belonging to William Thompson of Leith, is reported to have arrived in Hong Kong in 1861 with a cargo of patent fuel. It was the sailing ship William Mitchell of 611 tons, reputed to have had ‘a most life-like figurehead depicting one of the original shareholders of the line'. With mail steamers and other ships entering the port in increasing numbers it was necessary in 1861 to establish a signal station on Victoria Peak, so that news of a vessel's arrival could be relayed to the post office, harbour office and the ship's agent without delay.