Can anyone locate this spot?
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Norman Lawson's photos, page 26
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It looks like the Kowloon
It looks like the Kowloon Wharves again. There's a tower at the far right of the photo. It doesn't look like the one in this postcard:
But it looks very similar to the tower in this later view:
This photo was unlikely to be
This photo was unlikely to be taken in Hong Kong. The " house-like" structures on the small boats are uncommon in Hong Kong then and now. I have never seen such " moving houses" in old Hong Kong pictures.
Tai Hang Wong
Kowloon Wharves
Greetings. I believe all three photos show the same wharf. In the second photo, if the left edge is showing Kowloon Peak, then the camera was aiming east. In the first photo, there are five windows to the left of the tower and the gap with the adjacent building was, I think, later closed up (see larger window in the second photo).
Re: smaller wooden vessels
Hi there,
The smaller vessels are all marked, maybe with a registered name or a number. Maybe we need some marine expert to take a look at the markings and see if they are in the older format in town?
T
flower boats?
could the boats with the huts have been flower boats?
Kowloon Wharves
Greetings. The ground and the gantry tracks appear to jet out from the (same?) wharf building at an angle but not perpendicular, so perhaps the tracks were placed on land reclamation and later removed. As these tracks served bigger vessels like those shown in the other photo, this supports the idea that the two older photos show the same place.
Barges and Lorry Cars
There is a construction to the left. It looks like a mobile band-conveyor to fill the lorry cars on the tracks with such as coal. The boats are obviously barges carrying goods as coal to the steamers anchored offshore. Bunkering the coal was a claustrophobic experience for traverllers remaining on board of a steamer during the work. Doors and windows had to be tight shut because of the heavy coal dust. So it got stiflingly hot in the cabins. The noise of the coal dumped was like thunder running through the ship.
Where there any flower boats in Hong Kong or Shanghai? I saw pictures of flower boats from Canton. The huts on the barges were the homes to the families working on a dump barge, I think.