Roy Eric Xavier, Director, Portuguese and Macanese Studies Project at the University of California, Berkeley, USA has kindly granted permission to reproduce the following article. Roy also runs the absorbing website Far Eastern Currents which covers a wide range of research into the Macanese Diaspora especially in Macau and Hong Kong. Roy’s article and website are both linked below as are two of our […]
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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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A tenuous, but intriguing, connection to Hong Kong’s disposal of sewage and refuse in around the 1880s. Can anyone confirm this link and suggest which of William Warner’s methods were adopted here? “The firm of Goddard and Massey started with Henry Goddard and appears to have had its origins in Nottingham between c1844-48. In 1848 Henry Goddard is listed as an ironmonger […]
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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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Our article about the origins of the Aberdeen Gasometer led us to discover that it was originally constructed by Samuel Cutler & Sons of Millwall, London and Telford, UK. This in turn provided both Stephen Davies and IDJ with the opportunity to link this particular gasometer design to Cutler’s Patent Guide Framing which was patented in 1888. Very familiar to any UK city […]
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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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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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xxxx The prominent Towngas gasometer on the Aberdeen harbour front was erected in 1981 by Hong Kong United Engineering Ltd. though originally constructed by S Cutler & Sons of Telford, UK, on an unknown date. The Engineer 1968 Jan-Jun: Index has under Cutler & Sons Ltd., Samuel “Gasholder in steel tank ordered by Hong Kong & China Gas Co., C […]
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HF: The 1923 HK Telegraph advert shown below shows the Oil Tank Steamer Paludina one of several ships built by the Hongkong & Whampoa Dockyard for the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company. The company operated from about 1898 to 1955 when Shell acquired the company’s assets, essentially bringing its fleet of ships in-house. I don’t know whether Anglo-Saxon operated a HK office though given its size […]
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