Wong Kwong chief draughtsman at Messrs. W. S. Bailey and Company’s shipyard
The following has already been posted.
HF: I asked Stephen Davies if he had any information about or an image of Wong Kwong who I had come across while researching W.S. Bailey Shipyard. Here’s his response.
Stephen Davies: Not much on Wong Kwong and no photo. He did indeed work for Bailey’s, and it was one of his designs, the Hanping, built at WSB in 1907-08 for the Hanyang Iron & Steel Works Co. and Hankow (see North China Herald, Jul 25, 1908), that caused his shift of berth, though the company he went to work for was the Hanyang Iron & Steel Works Co. based in Shanghai. When he moved to Hankow I’m not sure, though I can find a return trip by him up and down the Yangzi in early 1907, apparently explained (according to a July 1907 NCH story) by problems with the design and build of the Hanping that required him to make the trip. By Feb 1908 he was certainly in Hankow since he’s noted as travelling there with his wife (the daughter of Mrs F.T. Kong of Canton & HK) and children.
The Yangtse Engineering Works (YEW), which evidently Wong Kwong had a hand in building and starting up, was a part-subsidiary of the Hanyang Iron & Steel Works Co (HISWC). The latter was founded in 1890 and taken over by China Merchants SN Co in 1896. In 1908 the whole works was upgraded with a brand new Siemens-Martin open hearth plant brought from Britain, Germany and the USA and HISWC became part of a conglomerate known as the China Coal and Iron Trust (or Corporation). Around the same time the plans were in hand for building the YEW.
The HISWC put up half the money for YEW, with local Hankow merchants putting up the other half, the plant being on the opposite bank of the Yangtse to the HISWC and dedicated to the construction of bridges, railway points, crossing and wagons, etc., and intended to be the main consumer of the output of HISWC. It was to become fully operational (according to a story in the NCH of 25.7.1908) by the winter of 1908.
A point of interest is that the NCH reported in June 1908 that the HISWC was getting the order for all the iron rails for at least the Canton to HK section of the KCR. The new YEW was already producing all the rails and other iron work for the Szechuan-Hankow and Hankow-Canton lines.
From what I can work out the HISWC and I think probably the YEW were closed down in the mid-1920s as a result of Sino-Japanese tensions, inter alia, and don’t seem to have been re-opened by 1933. Wong Kwong was still manager in 1919 when there were some riots at the works.
There is also an indication that he had a brother called Wang Chung-yu, also an engineer but in mining (trained at Columbia) – so clearly there are two ways of spelling his name.
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This article was first posted on 14th July 2021.
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