In a recent email IDJ brought up the subject of stink boats following the recent posting on the website of an article about night soil collection in Hong Kong, linked below. If you can add further information about these boats or an image of one please send it into the site. IDJ: From recollections of transportation to my workplaces via […]
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HF: Thanks to IDJ for sending the following newspaper article in. I am presuming the system never got started and it would be of interest to learn why not. The article was a little difficult to read so I have retyped it. Thanks to SCT for proofreading the retyped version. The offer to establish the chain of wireless stations was […]
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HF: While on holiday recently in Aberystwyth, Wales, UK, I came across this memorial photograph of Able Seaman, C Williams. The ‘Hongkong Dockyard’ could refer to either of the two large shipyards in 1910, Taikoo, or HK and Whampoa. However the latter was more usually known as Kowloon Docks so I am guessing AB Williams died at Taikoo on HK […]
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HF: Bill Burns runs a fascinating and detailed website about the history of submarine communication cables (linked at the end of this article). He has kindly sent four maps related to the worldwide network of such cables in 1901 and 1991. Two of the maps are centred on Hong Kong. The first is a 1901 World Map of “Grandes Communications […]
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Stephen Davies provides further information about the history of Waglan Island lighthouse, its link to another in NE China and to two European companies. And a Swede who was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics for his invention regarding the illumination of lighthouses. SD: The light was built by Paris lighthouse makers Barbier, Bénard & Turenne as one of two identical lights for the […]
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Hugh Farmer: New information in red. In 1932 Earle’s Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Hull, UK, was acquired by National Shipbuilders Security and dismantled, with the yard’s fitting-out crane being sold off to the Kowloon (HK & Whampoa) Dockyard in Hong Kong. Tymon Mellor: In November 1937, the Whampoa docks at Hung Hom were connected to the KCR by a 1.090ft siding down […]
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Thanks to IDJ for sending in this article thereby enlarging our knowledge about the collection of nightsoil in Hong Kong and hopefully making us appreciate the modern collection and treatment of sewage. Thanks also to SCT for proofreading the retyped article. New nightsoil removal methods in Hongkong Combating the Cholera Menace in the Colony Drastic changes in the present method […]
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Philip Edward Kenny: These days it’s the location of an MTR station which gets tourists to nearby Disneyland on Lantau Island, but in 1983 it was the location used for a scene in the film Project A, when Sammo Hung leads the gangsters to his cache of hidden guns only to find that Jackie Chan has beaten him to it – […]
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Thanks to IDJ for the excellent images and information. Hugh Farmer writes:- I had always imagined that the Green Island Cement Company was named after HK’s Green Island (Tsing Chau) opposite Kennedy Town. But no, the company initially started operations on the similarly named island, Ilha Verde, near Macau. The date of its establishment there is given by various sources […]
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Peter Crush has kindly sent the following article about the Hongkong Telephone Company which was first published in the Far Eastern Review of September 1933. Many thanks to SCT for proofreading the retyped article shown below. And thanks to Peter for improving the clarity of the first two images below. Please note the images do not appear in the same […]
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