Sailing Junks around Hong Kong
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This email arrived on Monday:
... we are looking for any arresting photo that one might want to frame and hang on a wall of a junk with or without the city in background that could be printed vertically in the size 8 x 10. If you send some examples that'd be great.
Easy, right? Junks are iconic images of Hong Kong so let me just turn to Gwulo's catalogue which ... has nothing suitable at all. Oops.
After a quick search through my collection, I've added these four photos, taken in the 1950s. First is my favourite, also the oldest:
In the background are Sheung Wan and mid-levels. You can get your bearings by looking for the tall building just peeping out from behind the left edge of the main sail. That's see the Central Fire Station, where the Hang Seng HQ building stands today.
Next is a much more peaceful scene:
Does anyone recognise the location from the skyline in the background?
These first two junks have very smart sets of sails, but often they were much more scruffy. There are plenty of holes in this one:
And the last one is in an even worse state:
When these photos were taken, sailing junks still made up the bulk of Hong Kong's fishing fleet. But the switch from sail to diesel was gathering pace.
The 1956 Annual Report says that around 15% of the fishing fleet (890 out of a fleet of over 6,000 junks) had been mechanized. By 1964 it had jumped to 65%, and by 1975 it had passed 90%.
I wonder if any readers know when the last working sailing junk (ie not a tourist boat) visited Hong Kong waters? I don't remember seeing any when I visited in 1989, but then I wasn't looking for them. What's the latest one that you remember?
Regards, David
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Also on Gwulo.com this week:
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Comments
Sailing Junks Around Hong Kong
Working sailing Junks in Hong Kong’s waters seemingly disappeared virtually overnight around 1986.
In the 1980s our apartment gave a panoramic view of the Pearl River estuary and sailing junks could continually be seen passing from upriver through to the harbour via Ma Wan and Tsing Yi Islands and on their return journeys. They sailed through the main harbour and the Lei Yu Mun Gap to and from ports further up the coast.
In the mid-eighties it was noticeable that they were stopping off in Hong Kong waters often overnight, and they sometimes moored close inshore off Cafeteria Beach or took shelter inside Tuen Mun’s typhoon shelter in bad weather. Increasingly, although carrying full sets of sails they were also powered by diesel engines which drove inboard/outboard propellers that could be raised out of the water. It had puzzled me how the Junks had made progress when there was no wind until I got close to one just offshore and could see two propellers clear of the water.
Also in later years sailing Junks were appearing with many different sail configurations and styles that were not the Bat-Wing or “Big Chicken” types normally associated with Hong Kong.
The last sailing Junks this writer saw and photographed were on the Red River Delta off Haiphong, North Vietnam in 1989. On a very cold January day we were crossing on a precarious barge-ferry heavily loaded down with trucks with the open deck floor awash, powered by two small tugs struggling against the wind and current, and scudding all around us were dozens of sailing junks and sampans.
TVB broadcast a documentary series probably in the 1980s titled I seem to recall, “The Silk Road,” one episode of which focussed on the sailing junks in the South China Sea. Much of the filming was done on board the Junks while at sea. The actual program was a major series made in conjunction with a Japanese TV company.
re: Sailing Junks Around Hong Kong
IDJ, Thanks for the extra memories about the junks. I had a few replies by email too:
Which leads nicely to your 1986 cutoff date!
Regards, David
junk photos
Here's a nice high-resolution one from 1969 in my Flickr page:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/58451159@N00/8953725217/in/album-72157633941671859/
junk pictures
Here are a few junks from the 1920s:
http://gwulo.com/node/20306