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 arriving on the west coast of North America. I’ve tallied thirty three reported on from around 1900 to c.1990. In Hong Kong the story starts with the Keying in 1846 and ends – maybe – with the Taiping Princess/Taiping Gongzhu in 2008. On the way would be the ill-fated voyages of Richard Halliburton’s Sea Dragon and Aussie J. Peterson’s Pang Jin. The botanical expedition followed by the wartime service of the whopping Cheng Ho – the only junk ever to serve in the US Navy. The first solo crossing of the North Pacific under sail in the High Tea. The Rubia that sailed to Barcelona…and the Golden Lotus that made it to Auckland. The ill-fated Tai Ki. There was the 1950s Hong Kong Junk Racing Club, with more modest local ambitions. The Chuen Hing Shipyard in Shaukeiwan that built at least four modified junks for export to the USA. There was a lot of cross-cultural fertilization going on too – the junks for export were designed by Ronald Clegg, Butterfield and Swire’s Radio Supervisor!

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 have had ‘Hong Kong’ in their names (about 127 of them) offers interesting perspectives on Hong Kong’s maritime story. Who called their ships after our home city? Not the big local colonial shipowners like Jardine’s or Butterfield & Swire is one answer. The ship names with Hong Kong in them are revelatory not just of Hong Kong’s story either. Looking at the kinds of ships and when they were in business tells us a lot about the development of the technical worlds of ships and cargo carrying in general. Developments on which the fortunes of Hong Kong were built and that are still important today.

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 sports, though never up there in popularity and participation like football and cricket, was sailing. Hong Kong was a home for recreational sailing almost as soon as the British grabbed it in 1841. It also became a home of local Chinese boatbuilders who learned to build – and often improve – Western designs. Via a fellow Hong Kong sailor, a few years ago I was given access to a late 19th century yacht’s logbook from Xiamen. It opened up the world of 19th century expats in China, of the building of western style boats in 19th century Hong Kong…and revealed how Waglan lighthouse was built by a relation of Charles Rolls of Rolls Royce, who also designed a royal palace in Seoul, South Korea.