Part of coal's centrality to the development of modern Hong Kong is how, in its way, it became a variant re-run of what gave us the Opium Wars.
It's an interesting feature of Hong Kong's maritime history how soon steam supplanted sail in the port's throughput. In much of the world the sail/steam crossover didn't take place until pretty much the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. In Hong Kong steam was outnumbering western sail by the mid-1860s. Of course, that ignores the numerically larger and always important traditional Chinese sail component that remained until the 1920s. However growing maritime trade between China and Europe, Australasians and the Americans, even with ever more efficient engines and boilers, meant steadily increasing steam tonnage, so demand for coal kept growing.
What has been intriguing me about the role of all this black stuff in Hong Kong's story have been five questions. How much coal are we talking about? How did the coal get to Hong Kong? Where was it stored, and how did the location of coal deports change over time? Where did the coal come from? How much did Hong Kong's use of coal change through time?
(Source: Extract from the contributed article of Stephen Davis on ABC Magazine)
The Speaker: Dr Stephen Davies, longtime member, supporter and Honorary Fellow of RASHK
Stephen Davies has been associated with Hong Kong for three-quarters of a century. His fascination with seafaring and its history can be traced to growing up in a Royal Naval family, service in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. and a lifetime of yachting. He has researched Hong Kong’s maritime past for nearly 40 years as an HKU teacher, a freelance journalist, a research fellow at HKU’s HK Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and a maritime museum worker.
His definitive history of the voyage of the junk Keying from Hong Kong to Britain (East Sails West: The Voyage of the Keying, 1846-1855) was published by Hong Kong University Press in 2014, and in a Chinese edition by Zhejiang University Press in 2021. His history of seafarers’ welfare in Hong Kong, Strong to Save, Maritime mission in Hong Kong from Whampoa Reach to the Mariners’ Club, was published by City University of Hong Kong Press in 2017. His most recent book, Transport to another world: HMS Tamar and the sinews of empire was published by City University of Hong Kong Press in spring 2022.
After many years of his contributions to RASHK, working as our Honorary Editor, Council member and Trustee of the Ride Fund, Stephen Davies and his partner Elaine Morgan departed Hong Kong and moved back to England in 2022.
PROGRAMME
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