A ferry story
You would think, given the evolution of Hong Kong’s road network – slow, slow, slow – and Hong Kong’s intricate coastline and 263 islands, that ferries would have been a constant in Hong Kong’s story...
29 Jun 20241h 4min
How names tell us a story, Part 3: Ap Lei Pai is the wrong name
Bare text can only tell us so much. How many of us have ground our teeth when we’re reading a book that cries out for a map…and doesn’t have one? But, assisted by a bit of fossicking in archives, maps...
22 Jun 20241h 4min
Hardly cricket: the wreck of the Bokhara
Wrecks were pretty commonplace in 1892 and were at best usually a nine days wonder. However, the loss of the P&O Company’s SS Bokhara was something else. News stories ran all over the world for almost...
3 Jun 202457min
Junk dreams
Shanghai and Hong Kong have been the starting point for more ‘sail a Chinese built junk across the seas’ than anywhere else. Hans van Tillburg has identified sixteen 19th century junks reported arrivi...
16 Mai 20241h 5min
How names tell us a story, Part 2: Ships with Hong Kong in the name
There are various ways of choosing to look at the past. Some of them are not very intuitive and can seem almost arbitrary. You wouldn’t imagine it, for example, but looking at all the known ships that...
11 Apr 202451min
Going sailing: The crew of the Kitten
Imperialist Britain spread modern-style, rules governed, organized sport – very much the creation of a newly leisured, comparatively affluent early Victorian world – all over the world. One of those s...
2 Apr 202453min
The small details: Edgar Goodman RMLI
The English historian Edward Thomson once wrote of the “enormous condescension of posterity” towards those of us – overwhelmingly most of us – who are not movers and shakers. Yet it is those lives, hu...
25 Mar 202459min
How names can tell us a story, Part 1: Kwok Acheong
Almost wherever you are there will be streets named after town worthies, or national eminences, or significant entities and events. Sometimes, particularly in larger towns, the names can reveal additi...
18 Mar 202446min
