HF: Can anyone supply further information about The Oriental Construction Company which the 1905 advert below says were Consulting and Supervising Engineers and Contractors with branches in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Manila. The ad says the company were specialists in railways, mines, water supplies, reinforced concrete and concrete piles. Their 1905 Hong Kong office was in the Alexandra Buildings. This […]
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According to Claire Grey’s excellent family history website, linked below, W R Loxley and Company (China) Ltd was established in Hong Kong in 1872 and… ‘…J. M. Beattie bought it possibly in 1900. Later two brothers: A. Beattie and M. P. Beattie joined the firm. The business was sold to J. A. Russell and D. O. Russell in 1919 and under the agreement A. Beattie […]
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HF: The image below shows the developing Tsuen Wan in the foreground, the Caltex oil storage depot in the background with a hill top cemetery above. JKW: I can confirm this, because I grew up here. My father worked for Caltex as a civil engineer supervising work at the oil terminal, as he called it, from 1973 to 1978. We […]
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Hong Kong has had seemingly hundreds of trading agents. They are of interest in their own right but also often offer an introduction to companies of a more directly industrial nature. This advert from 1950 is for the agent Tsang & Company with two initials. The second is C but what was the first, H,M,K or? York Lo: I believe […]
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HF: Our article, Tung Tai Tseung Kee & Company, 同泰祥記, engineers and shipbuilders, 1897 to c1945, mentions “The proprietor of the firm, Mr Lan Fat, was born in San On Province, China, received his education in Hongkong, and was afterwards apprenticed as a draughtsman to Messrs. Fenwick & Co. for nine years. He was then for nearly two years engineer […]
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HF: Waterfront Air (海翔航空) was an airline which was set up in 2008, (or possibly 2007,) with the aim of reintroducing seaplane services from Hong Kong’s harbour, initially with HK to Macau flights. Seaplanes operated in Hong Kong from the 1920s to the mid-1960s. And I believe scheduled seaplane services operated between Hong Kong and Macau between the 1930s and 1950s. With […]
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Can anyone provide further information about the GEC of China Ltd in Hong Kong? This 1924 advert has their location at Queen’s Buildings In Hong Kong. Until corrected I am presuming that the company was a subsidiary of the British General Electric Company (often abbreviated to GEC) which came into being in 1886 (1888?) when the original General Electric Apparatus […]
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Elizabeth Ride has British Army Aid Group (BAAG) records of shipping movements for 1944-45 in Hong Kong 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, passengers carried, and of godowns, docks etc that were […]
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Angus Harden read York Lo’s article, The Four Taxi Kings – Blue, Central, New and Star which includes: “The garage of Blue Taxi was initially located at the corner of Nathan Road and Market Street. In 1964, Tsan Yung built the 12 story, 72 units Tsan Yung Mansion at 70 Waterloo Road in Homantin. He and his family occupied various floors of […]
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Martyn Cornell has kindly given permission for extracts from his article, A Short History of Beer in Hong Kong, to be posted on our website. The article was published in the Journal of the Brewery History Society, Brewery History, Issue 156, 2012. Martyn has his own blog, Zythophile – Beer now and then, linked below. Despite its title the article is […]
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