A British barque, the Carolina, was despatched by the East India Company in October 1682 and arrived at Taipa, Macao, in June 1683.[68] Permission to trade was denied by Qing officials and the ship was instructed to leave Macao a few days later. Strangely, while the Carolina was weighing anchor, some Chinese junks came alongside and the captain was advised that he might find clandestine trade on the island of Lantau. The Carolina went east to the Lantau, where the ship stayed for a couple of months conducting trade. Extant log books of the Carolina put her anchorage position at the “throat” of Kap Shui Mun, on the northern shore of the Lantau. It must be noted that the anchorage position was just north of Penny’s Bay, where large smuggling operations had existed just a couple of hundred years back in the Ming period. This incident should be regarded as the first taste of British interest in discovering a good anchorage position to the east of the Pearl River delta that could rival that of Macao.
In July 1689, the Madras Presidency commissioned one of their vessels, the Defence, of 730 tonnes, and the largest ship so far recorded as going to China, to load sugar at Guangdong. In September, she was reported to have anchored about 15 leagues east of Macao. The position would bring her into the region of Hong Kong, possibly to the same anchorage where the Carolina had been stationed only six years earlier.[69] It may, therefore, be of significance that the British traders were aware of the anchorage position of Kap Shui Mun and could foresee it as an alternative to Macao.
To lay the groundwork for a “second Macao” as an entrepot to China, British merchants had also tried to trade with Xiamen (廈門), Zhoushan (舟山), which was considered to have considerable potential, and Ningbo (寧波) but without much success.
In order to find out more about the eastern bank of the estuary, Alexander Dalrymple, the first hydrographer of the British Royal Navy, sailing under Captain Baker in the schooner Cuddalore, was asked to “explore” the eastern passages around Kap Shui Mun.[70] Dalrymple was originally appointed as an officer of the secret service of the East India Company, so he knew well that surveying another country’s territorial waters would perforce be a covert operation. He performed what was called a “running” hydrographic survey by using one ship, fixing its position for taking oblique bearings of shore features and at the same time taking soundings. He managed to pass through Kap Shui Mun, turned southwards and found a new route to the open seas. In the process, he passed by the harbour of Hong Kong and called the island Fang Chin Chow. Information on his chart, published in 1754, enhanced British geographical knowledge of this area. Britain was the only country in possession of valuable hydrographic data on the location of good harbours and anchorages, information unknown to her competitors. This benefited British ships enormously when China declared in 1757 that Guangzhou, Guangdong would henceforth be the only port in China open to foreign trade.[71]
Following Dalrymple’s survey, the East India Company deployed another hydrographer, James Horsburgh, to undertake a comprehensive maritime survey of the entire estuary in 1806. His report focused on the fine anchorage position of Kap Shui Mun, as well as the protected waters of Pok Liu Strait (博寮峽),[72] today’s Lamma Strait. A positive assessment was given on the desirability of the waterfront around Tsim Sha Tsui, which could take various types of vessels. The harbour could become a haven for shipping activities. The Lei Yue Mun (鲤魚門) entrance to this harbour could also be easily protected by some well-placed battery positions.
In 1816, the King of England sent Lord Amherst on another diplomatic mission to China. His flag ship, the Alceste, was escorted by several warships and survey vessels. The fleet, enroute to Tianjin, anchored off the Dangan Islands near Hong Kong, and from there small boats were sent to Aberdeen where they replenished freshwater from a waterfall. The small bay and the area were called Hong Kong, probably derived from the name of a nearby village.[73] Henceforth, the name of Hong Kong was used to denote the whole island.
Decades later, in the 1830s, British officials urged the then Foreign Minister, Earl Grey, to send warships to seize an island close to the Pearl River delta. This island was Hong Kong, an island suitable for many purposes.[74] From then on, British opium clippers started depositing their cargoes on barges anchored off Lingding Island, at Kap Shui Mun, or off Tsim Sha Tsui.
In a diplomatic despatch to the British Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade, Charles Elliot, Lin Zexu’s (林則徐) deputy Deng Tingzhen (鄧廷楨) complained about the British storing, moving and smuggling contraband opium in Chinese waters:“According to reports from Macao, Dapeng and Xiangshan, there were about 25 opium barges off the Brother Islands (磨刀外洋), Nine Pin Islands (九洲), Jijing (雞頸) and Tanzai (潭仔). In the 29th, 30th of Seventh Moon, as well as the 3rd and 4th of the Eighth Moon (29 August 1837), these barges were shifted to areas off Tsim Sha Tsui: 19 barges from the Brothers, two barges from the Nine Pin Islands and one from Jijing.”[75]
This diplomatic note no doubt revealed a sign of the British intention to utilise the harbour off Tsim Sha Tsui on a long-term basis.
Opium was banned by a Chinese imperial decree as early as 1729. The decree was re-issued in 1796. China specifically prohibited the importation of opium again in 1800.[76] Yet through illicit trade and smuggling, the volume of opium handled by British traders soared from 4,244 chests in 1820-1821 to 18,956 chests in 1830-1831; and the figures shot up to over 30,000 chests a year from 1835 onwards.[77]
Lin Zexu was sent as the Imperial Commissioner to strenuously stop all opium-related activities. Upon Lin’s arrival to enforce the law, in the words of the historian Paul Van Dyke, “In response to the crackdowns, foreigners began looking for a safe harbour somewhere along the Chinese coast where they could retreat if things became too intense. After investigating many locations, it was decided that Hong Kong would be a good place to move. This harbour was not new, of course, because it was already being used for clandestine trade and well known as a safe refuge against storm.”[78]
In 1839, the British were told to leave Macao. Well prepared, they did not pack their bags to return to India, but instead moved across the estuary to stay on boats off Tsim Sha Tsui.
Soon after, there was no need to move. History had given the harbour of Hong Kong a new lease of life.
As the vestiges of the old Hung Heung Lo Maritime Checkpoint had largely disappeared, maritime affairs around Tsim Sha Tsui, and later around the Hong Kong region generally, would come under the management of the newly formed Harbour Master’s Office after about 1843. This government department of Hong Kong was later renamed the Marine Department, under whose care the magnificent harbour and its surrounding waters were nurtured industriously over more than 170 years in the past to rise to world-class status. The story of the Hong Kong Marine Department is a story of foresight, good management, excellent networking, and above all hard work, as the following pages will testify.
Notes:
- [68]H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635-1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926-1929), pp. 50-51.
- [69]Ibid., p. 78.
- [70]G. S. Ritchie, The Admiralty Chart: British Naval Hydrography in the Nineteenth Century (London: Hollis & Carter, 1967), pp. 11-12.
- [71]梁嘉彬：《廣東十三行考》（廣州：廣東人民出版社，1999），頁91-92。
- [72]G.R. Sayer, Hong Kong, 1841-1862: Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1980), pp. 23-24.
- [73]Ibid., pp. 25-29.
- [74]余繩武、劉存寬：《十九世纪的香港》（北京：中華書局，1993），頁32；Irish University Press Area Studies Series, ‘British Parliamentary Papers: China, Vol. 30’, Correspondence…relative to the Opium War in China, 1840 (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1971), pp. 265-266.
- [75]余繩武、劉存寬：《十九世纪的香港》，引用自佐佐木正哉編：《鴉片戰爭前中英交涉文書》，（台北：文海出版社，1977），頁120。
- [76]馬士著，張匯文等譯：〈大事年表 ── 一八三四至一八六零年冲突時期〉，載於《中華帝國對外關係史》，頁6-7。
- [77]Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), Appendix 1, p. 221. For figures of opium trade quoted in Chinese sources, read: 梁廷枏：《夷氛聞記》 (published 1853) which used Indian custom records as sources. Bengal area alone listed 67,033 cases of opium destined for China from the 13th to the 18th year of Daoguang (1833-1838), rising from 7,598 cases (1833) to 16,297 cases (1838). Bengal paid to England as tax for this trade in the amount of 3.15 million dollars per annum. This figure does not include other opium export regions such as Bombay, Calcutta and Benares.
- [78]Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700-1845 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), p. 139.
