Asiatic Petroleum Company employees, a compilation – information needed

For latest updates please see items highlighted in blue. 

HF: Joseph Mansfield left a comment attached to this article in late July 2023 saying he was researching the history of the Netherland Club of New York founded in 1903. Joseph was particularly interested in a president of the club J.A. de Lanoy who was an employee of the Asiatic Petroleum Company. I asked Joseph if he could provide some information about Mr de Lanoy and he kindly sent the following, see below. If anyone can provide further information about Mr de Lanoy or any other employees of APC please contact the website indhhk(at) gmail.com.

HF: We have been sent information about a couple of employees of the Asiatic Petroleum Company in China and one in the UK. We have also received requests for information about two more employees.

I thought it might be more useful if I gathered this information in one article, not least because it would hopefully be easier for anyone seeking information about APC employees to find online and for me to add employees as and when they pop up.

Not quite sure of the best format but will start with that below and adapt this if neccessary. All links are to Indhhk articles unless indicated otherwise.

If you wish to add a name to the list or provide details of those here please contact me, Hugh Farmer indhhk at gmail dot com

Alston, Douglas Rowland, Contributor: Marie Doughty – Between 26 September 1923 and 8 October 1927, my Grandfather, Douglas Rowland Alston, was working for APC in Nanking and Tsingtao.

Marie recently spent some time in Hong Kong researching her grandfather and then noted: As 1923-27 was a fairly turbulent time in China I suspect that many of the records were destroyed. In any event I am finding it difficult to find any contemporary information. A number of married couples and families appear to have taken him under their wing while he was in China.  In Nanking he shared a house with R.E.M Paterson and was also with APC.

Marie has kindly sent a couple of photographs of her grandfather. Marie: The one in uniform is taken just before he left for China in 1923 but is the best I have of how he looked at that time, the other is at Tsingtao beach, China. I don’t know who the lady is who is with him.  He was twenty five when he arrived in China and didn’t marry until he returned to England.

Carol knows that at the time of the 1911 UK census he was working for the Asiatic Petroleum Company as a watchman and living at 42 Victoria Square, Portishead, Somerset, England. She asks if we have any records of the APC’s employees in the UK. I am afraid we don’t nor do we of those who worked for the company in China, Hong Kong or elsewhere. Asiatic Petroleum Company was a joint venture between the Shell and Royal Dutch oil companies founded in 1903, and again I don’t know if these companies maintained and kept records of APC employees.

Carol sent this update on 19th August 2019:
My knowledge of  Walter George Babb is still rather minimal I’m afraid.
He was my Gt. Grandfather born c1863 in Taunton St. Mary, I believe.
He married  Emily Anstice in August 1886  in St. Peters church Clifton Bristol.
He was also in the Merchant [Navy] Service on a ship called the Port Morant in 1901.

Information about the Port Morant
I am not sure when he was hired by the Asiatic Petroleum Company but he was there in the 1911 census.
He and his family lived at 42 Victoria Square in Portishead.
He was buried there in Portishead on  December 20, 1928  at the cemetery, Grave # E93.Walter George Babb, Employee of the Asiatic Petroleum Co, UK, 1911 – information wanted

Bousfield, J.K., Contributor: IDJ was in touch on 2nd September 2019 – Came across this photocopy from SCMP microfilm yesterday. No idea of his job description, but as he travelling to the UK with his wife by air in 1936 he must have been high up in APC’s hierarchy.

Imperial Airways – including first scheduled flight into Hong Kong 1936 – information about the airliner, Dorado

Cossart, Louis Auguste, Contributor: Mike Adair, My grandfather Louis Cossart worked for the APC in Hong Kong and in fact died there of typhoid in 1929. He was quite an avid photographer and took a number of pictures of Hong Kong during the years that he lived there from perhaps 1915 until his death. My mother was born there in 1916 and I have done a reasonably thorough family history that includes some details of Louis. He lived in a very fancy house and I think he was probably APC’s chief accountant, but I’m not sure of his exact title.

Gammell, Edward, Contributor: Ian Brown who sent this newspaper article which mentions Edward Gammell, son of Sir Sydney Gammell. Edward it says was office manager of the Asiatic Petroleum Company in Canton around the time the article was published i.e. mid-1942.

This image of Edward Gammell accompanied the article above.

Hughes, William Elias Brian Hughes left the following information in a comment sent in October 2020: My father William Elias Hughes from the Conway Valley in North Wales was employed by APC (North) up to the War in Shanghai following his sailing from London on the ‘Nyanza’ on 28/06/1913. I believe he first worked in Customs.
My mother followed, having met him when he was home on leave, in October 1932.and they married 26/11/1932 in Tientsin, North China. My sister and brother were born in Shanghai with myself and my younger sister being born in Sydney NSW. My sister is vague about how and when they got out of china but I believe they left for Chongquing (Chungking) following the capture of Shanghai by the Japanese in 1937. Clearly, Shell must have helped with this and the subsequent escape to Brisbane .I have some photographs and 16 mm film of them in China but no detail of his career with APC.

HF: Here are three photographs that Brian has kindly sent.

Hutcheon, Robert Rae Robin Hutcheon sent the following information in May 2020: My father, Robert Rae Hutcheon from Aberdeen, Scotland, was employed by APC from the early 1920s until his retirement to Sydney, Australia, in 1940. Earlier he served as a ship’s engineer for Butterfield and Swire during WW1 years. He was employed by APC in Chingkiang, Hankow (where he married in 1924), Shanghai and Tientsin. He had three children, two of whom, with his wife, Ethel, were pirated when the Swire ship, ss Shuntien, on which they were travelling to Shanghai, was pirated off the Yellow River in 1934. During the Japanese invasion, the family were later evacuated from Hankow in 1937 on board HHMS Capetown with other British residents.

HF: Robin has kindly sent these photographs, the captions are his.

Kitto, John ‘Jack’,  Contributor: Hong Kong based Nicholas Kitto has a family connection to APC. On his website he writes, “my Grandfather, John ‘Jack’ Kitto, was recruited directly from school by Royal Dutch Shell in 1910. After training in their London office he travelled to Shanghai on the Trans-Siberian Railway and commenced work with The Asiatic Petroleum Company (North China) Limited on 16 September 1912. He remained with APC in various locations in China until his retirement in 1939.”
Asiatic Petroleum Company, China – family connections

Nick sent this update on 19th August 2019:
Re Grandpa Jack … I have his various postings with APC (North China) but these amount to little more than a list of five or so locations.  I’ll forward your recent post on APC to a handful of others with family connections to APC.

Lanoy J.A. de Contributor: Joseph Mansfield

The New York chapter of the Nomads [The National Oil-equipment Manufacturers And Delegates Society] honored their old friend J.A. de Lanoy, vice president and director of Asiatic Petroleum Corporation, upon his retirement after more than thirty years of service with Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij and Asiatic Petroleum Corporation.

A luncheon was held at Sherry’s in his honor which was attended by Mr de Lanoy’s associates in the Asiatic Petroleum Corporation and many of his old friends in the New York chapter of the Nomads.

Mr de Lanoy joined Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij at the beginning of the first World War and was located in their office in The Hague, Holland, and also served in England. In January 1920 he was transferred to the old firm of Richard Airey, which at that time represented the Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij in New York as buying agents. This was before Asiatic Petroleum Corporation opened their office in New York. Some of the old timers can remember the little office at 94 Fulton Street where they met Mr de Lanoy for the first time. He succeeded J.A. Schenck, who returned to The Hague, Holland, as Director of Purchases of Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij.

Mr de Lanoy has been very prominent in civic affairs for his native country, The Netherlands. He served as president pf the Netherlands Club of New York in 1928, and has contributed much to the success of that club since its inception. He was also director of the Netherlands Benevolent Society of New York. For the work he has done, Mr de Lanoy was paid a great honor by the Netherlands Government on October 30, 1936, when Her Majesty, Queen Wilhelmina, conferred upon Mr de Lanoy a Knighthood in the Order of the Orange Nassau.

In June 1947, he was made an officer in this same great Order. These honors were conferred in recognition of Mr de Lanoy’s influence in the furthering of the cooperative spirit between Holland and the United States.

In December 1943 Mr de Lanoy was elected vice president and a director of his company and conducted it through the major part of World War 11.

Mr de Lanoy is very well liked and admired by his associates and his many friends. Although he advanced to a high position, he always had time to see his old friends and was striving ever to do the best job he could for his company.

S.J. Veenstra, director of purchases in charge of Asiatic Petroleum Corporation in New York, has succeeded Mr de Lanoy. His many friends in the industry know he is deserving of this position and all wish him a great success in this new endeavor.

Mr de Lanoy has retired to his estate in northern New Jersey, named by him ”Holland Hill”, after his native land. His many friends throughout the world wish for Mrs de Lanoy and him, many healthy and happy years in his retirement at ”Holland Hill.”

Source: The Lufkin Line, June 1949. HF: The Lufkin Line was a periodical published by Lufkin Foundry & Machine Company/Lufkin Industries between 1921 and 1985 on the East Texas town of Lufkin.

MacDonald, Joe, Contributor: Ian Brown has been in touch. His father’s cousin Joe MacDonald worked for the Asiatic Petroleum Company pre WW2. Ian writes,” the Shanghai base [of APC] seems to ring a bell for me when I recall my father talking about Joe MacDonald’s time in China which I feel was not necessarily that long, curtailed by the war. I have a record of him sailing on the Corfu for Hong Kong in November 1937, he married Lizzie Smith in September 1937, he married late at the age of 43.”
HF: From the dates provided, it seems highly likely that Joe and Jack would have known each other.
Asiatic Petroleum Company, China – family connections

This undated photo, sent by Ian, shows Joe on the right and a colleague at a work site, location and date unknown.

Ian sent the following on 20th August 2019:

I’ve got an interesting article re the Macdonalds exit from China to Australia, they got quite a bit of assistance from the office manager Edward Gammell of Asiatic Petroleum.
This article appeared in the Aberdeen Weekly Journal.

Many thanks to IDJ for extracting and magnifying the individual article.

The article says that Joseph MacDonald was part of the APC’s “bunkering staff.”

Bunkering is the supplying of fuel for use by ships, and includes the shipboard logistics of loading fuel and distributing it among available bunker tanks.

The term originated in the days of steamships, when the fuel, coal, was stored in bunkers.^[1] Nowadays the term bunker is generally applied to the storage of petroleum products in tanks, and the practice and business of refueling ships. Bunkering operations are located at seaports, and they include the storage of “bunker” (ship) fuels and the provision of the fuel to vessels. (1)

Paterson R.E.M. There is this brief mention of Paterson in the section about Douglas Rowland Alston. In Nanking he, [Alston], shared a house with R.E.M Paterson and was also with APC.

Pratt, Gerald Spencer, Contributor: Gerard Molyneux: Looking for information about Gerald Spencer Pratt, who worked for this company from circa 1923, returning to England on the Empress of Scotland, arriving at Liverpool 12th February 1947 from Kure Japan.

Turner, Henry Edward Claude, Contributor: Mike Scudder of Mission, British Columbia, Canada: I believe my grandmother’s brother Henry Edward Claude TURNER (b. Ilminster Somerset) was an employee of APC c1930. His family’s passage was paid for by the “Asiatic Petroleum Company London” when he transited from England to Shanghai in March of 1930. They stopped in Canada and visited my grandparents en route. (This information is captured on a Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935 for Robert H Turner – Halifax, Nova Scotia 1930 March). His occupation is listed as “Seafarer”. Claude Turner met and married his wife Ethel in Shanghai and their son Robert was born in China about 1926.

Mike kindly also sent some images with these comments: I’ve attached a crop of Claude taken in 1930 in Canada so a period pic of his presumed time of employment with APC. Also attached a picture of his wedding in Shanghai some 8 years earlier to Ethel WALKER, the wedding also in Shanghai. I don’t know if Claude was an employee of APC at the time of his wedding, but I don’t believe the wedding party are members of Claude’s family. Possibly family of the bride but perhaps some connected to APC in some way (note the nautical uniforms). Also adding the passenger document showing Asiatic Petroleum Company London. All of this fresh in our minds sadly as we recently learned that Claude and Ethel’s son Robert TURNER passed away due to complications from Covid19 in May of this year.

Wilkinson, Edward Edelson, Contributor: Audrey Gregg The photograph below comes courtesy of the Historical Photographs of China collection, University of Bristol, UK and shows Asiatic Petroleum Company staff, at the A.P.C. depot in Shanghai in the 1930s. The image is indicated as being copyright of Audrey Gregg. Information attached to the image suggests the man marked with an x in ink is “Pop i.e. Edward Edelson Wilkinson).” The “Pop” suggests either a friendly nickname or possibly that Wilkinson was Audrey’s father.
The collection provides the following information regarding use of the images, “Our aim is to help make this virtual photographic archive of modern China publicly available, without cost, and with limited restriction on use for non-commercial purposes.” However, I will try to contact the Collection and/or Audrey Gregg.
Asiatic Petroleum Company staff photo, Shanghai 1930s

The  above image was kindly sent by Jamie Carstairs, Project Manager, Historical Photographs of China, Special Collections, University of Bristol, UK, A second version identifies two of the people shown. Fourth from right is Ethal Wilkinson and on the right, marked with an x in ink is “Pop” Edward Edelson Wilkinson, who worked for the Asiatic Petroleum Company in the 1930s. The man looking at the camera in the above photograph looks like Mr Wilkinson.

Sources:

1. Bunkering definition – wikipedia

This article was first posted on 18th August 2019.

Related Indhhk articles:

1. Asiatic Petroleum Company, China – family connections
2. Asiatic Petroleum Company staff photo, Shanghai 1930s
3. Asiatic Petroleum Company Ltd – links to Arnhold & Company
4. Walter George Babb, Employee of the Asiatic Petroleum Co, UK, 1911 – information wanted
5. BAAG records of shipping in HK during 1944-45 – the Fukuan Maru, ex-Shu Kwang operated by Asiatic Petroleum Company
6. Yung Hao tanker – requisitioned by HK Government 1951 leading to China’s requisitioning of Asiatic Petroleum Co
7. Asiatic Petroleum Company, China – requisitioned by Chou En Lai 1951
8. Joe MacDonald – Asiatic Petroleum employee, China/HK late 1930s
9. Asiatic Petroleum Company – contemporary photographs of its Shanghai building
10. Asiatic Petroleum Company – Shanghai building , further information