HF: Producing salt from the sea is one of the oldest industries in Hong Kong. I have information, however slight, that it was produced in at least these locations. Kwun Tong Mui Wo (Lantau) San Hui (Tuen Mun) Tai O ( Lantau) Yim Lin Ha (Sha Tau Kok – NE NT) Yim Tin Tsai (Sai Kung) Wong Ka Wai (Tuen […]
» Read more
Elizabeth Ride has sent British Army Aid Group (BAAG) records of shipping movements in Hong Kong in 1944-45 during the Japanese occupation in World War Two. These provide information not only about the ships themselves but what cargo was being brought into and out of Hong Kong during the latter stages of WW2 and of godowns, docks etc that were […]
» Read more
HF: Our article, Dredging Marine Sand – Container Terminal 6, 1987, says that the dredging for that particular project was done by the Dutch company Hollandsche Aanneming Maatschappij, better known as HAM. HAM turns up again in the report Review of Dredging Practice in the Netherlands written by ST Gilbert and PWT To and published by the Geotechnical Engineering Office, Civil Engineering Department, Hong […]
» Read more
Edward Schneider (great-grandson of Carl Ingenohl): El Oriente was mostly a trade name, although it did appear in various names of companies of the group associated with Carl Ingenohl’s business group. The parent company was a Swiss partnership of which Ingenohl was the General Partner (and principal partner) and that partnership owned the Hong Kong company, the Manila company (until […]
» Read more
HF: The 1909 Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China…etc, lists AE Griffin as a “Temporary Civil Engineering and Constructional Staff member at the Taikoo Dockyard & Engineering Comapny of Hongkong Ltd.” Griffin is the first listed of 26 such staff and therefore was probably the most senior. Indeed the paragraph before the concluding one in the following paper […]
» Read more
IDJ wrote in reponse to our article, “Worst industrial jobs in UK’s history”, linked below – Hong Kong’s own list? “naturally Night Soil Collector. This task went on certainly during my time in HK primarily servicing Western District’s old properties with no drains or sewage pipe-work. I recall it was all dumped into barges at Kennedy Town and taken out to sea for dumping. […]
» Read more
Mary Anne Le Bas has sent an SCMP article, Six home-grown Hong Kong trades at risk of dying out, published on 21st June 2015. The second of these is about a Sai Kung town resident who makes and sells about 800 boxes of traditional Hakka food daily. The article begins: Hui Sai-ling makes Hakka snacks at her home in Sai Kung […]
» Read more
Stephen Davies says the basic story of ICSN is best located in the book, Beancaker to boxboat. Jardine operated ships using the Jardine Matheson house flag from pretty early on – the earliest I think I have dated seems to be from the late 1820s. From that date ships came and went, but nothing that really feels like a JM shipping line […]
» Read more
HF: The SCMP of 18th April 2016 contained an article about damage caused to the explosives storeroom at the Ma On Shan mine complex by workers from the Lands Department who mistakenly thought it was to be demolished. The article begins: The government last week almost flattened a house in a remote village proposed for grading as a historic building, in […]
» Read more
Lawrence Tsui: The dockyards that I remember reading in the BAAG papers were the Naval Dockyard, Kowloon Dockyard, Taikoo Dockyard as well as other smaller ones, the names of which I need to research my notes to identify. There were also ship repair yards mentioned in intelligence reports. These were intelligence intended to help Allied Aerial Bombings in the later half […]
» Read more