The Hongkong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company
HF: The Hongkong Canton & Macao Steamship Company was a British merchant shipping and maritime trading company founded in 1865 in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong.
The flag of the Hongkong Canton & Macao Steamboat Company
The Hongkong, Canton & Macao Steamship Company was founded on 20th October 1865 in Hong Kong by a collection of people tied to the shipping industry in order to support the market for regional ferry transport in the Canton area. The company was founded in the same year as the founding of the Companies Registry which granted it the company number 2, only behind the British Traders Insurance Company.
Source: unknown
The HCMSCo was one of the major shipping companies participating in the Pearl River and China trade together with the China Navigation Company, China Merchants Steam Navigation Company and Jardine Matheson Indo-China Steam Navigation Company since its creation in the 1860s. China Navigation Company and the HCMSCo had entered into a collaboration to jointly carry out business in the area which continued into the early 1900s.
With the opening of the West River Trade in 1987, HCMSCo together with the China Navigation Company and Jardine Matheson’s Indo-China Navigation Company, partnered together to open the new trade which became active from around 1897 to 1917 following the opening of several Treaty Ports like Wuzhou, Sanshui and Jiangmen to foreign trade in 1897. The West River trade declined with the advent of the Kowloon Canton Railway.
HCMSCo was dissolved on 28th April 1958.
Source: Wikipedia
This article was first posted on 15th October 2025.
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