01.7.14 - Guest editor from 1949: RN Telegraphist George Flanigan

This picture dropped out of a big envelope of snaps from my granddad’s time in the navy, when we were going through his and my nanny’s things earlier this month. After squinting at it a while, I realised this was no random exotic skyline. The shape of the Peak struck me first…many fewer lights than today yes, but this had to be HK.

So here was the surprise I mentioned in the last post – my granddad’s naval career at the height of post-war Empire had taken him to HK. The more photos we sifted, the more HK scenes popped out.

This was fascinating, but I thought ultimately frustrating – no labels on the pictures, so I thought we’d be doomed never to know what took him there or for how long. Or so I thought.

After more digging, we found a yellowed typewritten script which explained all. Not only had he been to HK, but he’d lived there for a year. It was very emotional to read a familiar voice talking of a place I know so well now. It was, frankly, spooky when the account showed he lived in and took pictures around HMS Tamar (now the PLA barracks) a stone’s throw from where I work, and that even his passtimes and mine - including the photos and writing - overlap entirely.

Anyway, enough of me. Let’s hear from George Flanigan, RN Telegraphist, writing about his service in HK in 1949.

The outline of Hong Kong. As we drew closer, we could discern the Lyemun Pass and the waterway which leads directly into Victoria harbour…We glided into the harbour proper, with a mighty blast of the Tairea’s siren [the ship he travelled in]. Looking from left to right was the great hill looming over the city of Victoria, crowned by the white building of the Combined HQ British Forces Hong Kong. Directly in front, junks of every size both sail and motor propelled, and ships of the Far East fleet dominated by the bulk of the cruiser Belfast.

Off watch, we soon settled into the sybaritic life of a British Serviceman on foreign service.

We had the full gamut of sporting life, but in much more exotic surroundings. As we found our feet we’d change into civvies (white shirt, grey trousers, blue socks, with sandals in summer and black leather shoes in winter) and we might go to the Fleet Club, a mini-skyscraper overlooking the harbour, for a cool “San Mig” before maybe taking a stroll down Wanchai. Little shops crowding one another out of existence each side of the street. The smells! Joss sticks, chicken being cooked, Chinese vegetable meals, musk, sweat, jasmine. The trams whizzing to and fro, bells clanging, packed out, with people hanging onto the running board and window frames. Rickshaw boys plying their trade. And as ever, little lads touting “Master! My sister, cheap…”

Or perhaps one’s feet might take you up town to the central district, much more elegant, with the business centre forming an integral part of it. The Jardine-Mathieson building, Government House, Butterfield and Swire’s office block, air conditioned cinemas.

Or another time, a trip across the harbour on the “Star” ferry to visit Kowloon on the Chinese mainland where, looking back across the harbour in the evening, Hong Kong island would be outlined against the setting sun like a great crouching lion. As darkness fell, the jewel effect would re-appear with the neon lights of every colour and hue flashing on and off.

Sporting types might visit Happy Valley, down past Wanchai. There one could indulge in the gee gees as the colony’s long-established racecourse was there, together with a large complex of sports fields.

With this Imperial backdrop, it was hard to believe that only 4.5 years separated this time-honoured scene from the closing stages of the Japanese occupation. And only a total of eight years since the time of Hong Kong’s inevitable surrender to the invading Japanese on Christmas Day 1941. However, if one took the paths of the hills overlooking the harbour, one could find rusty guns, their concrete houses just beginning to crumble. Rifle emplacements with, scattered around in the undergrowth, old cartridge cases, bits of equipment, and various other small debris which proved it happened alright.