Macau showboats: a nostalgic look back at Hollywood’s favourite steamer ferries
In the 1950s, A-list actors travelled between Hong Kong and Macau aboard now-retired steamliners, albeit some purely thanks to the magic of the movies
Macau became a popular location for Hollywood films in the 1950s, and the characters who went there arrived – like most tourists in those days – by steam ferry from Hong Kong. Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, with the help of some movie magic and commissioned location footage, “arrived” aboard the SS Takshing (above, in Macau in the 50s) in the 1952 film noir Macao.
Tony Curtis arrived a year later on the same ferry, in similar fashion, in Forbidden, and Susan Hayward likewise took the Takshing from Hong Kong to Macau in Soldier of Fortune, in 1955. Jennifer Jones actually came to Hong Kong and boarded the SS Fat Shan for Macau that same year, as Han Suyin in Love is A Many-Splendored Thing.
In 1959, James Bond creator Ian Fleming sailed to Macau aboard the Takshing, “one of the three famous ferries that do the Macao run every day. These ferries are not the broken-down, smoke-billowing rattletraps engineered by whisky-sodden Scotsmen we see on the films, but commodious three-decker steamers run with workmanlike precision”.
Hydrofoils were introduced on the route in 1964, but the old ferries steamed on. The 1969 Golden Guide to Hong Kong and Macao noted four ferries – the Chung Shan (called the Tai Loy until 1968), the Fat Shan, the Tung Shan and the Macau – were still in service.
The English poet and travel writer James Kirkup suggested in Cities of the World: Hong Kong and Macao (1970) that, although “the usual way is by Hydrofoil […] I must admit that I prefer the leisurely, rather old-fashioned ferry steamers like the M.V. Fat Shan […] They take about three hours, but they are wonderfully comfortable and spacious. They have bars and dining-rooms, as well as a few private state rooms, which are the last word in sybaritic luxury, all pink plush, mirrors and palms”.
In August 1971, the Fat Shan was sunk off Lantau Island by Typhoon Rose, with the reported loss of 88 of the 92 souls on board. The Macau was also wrecked beyond repair that day. The last steamers had been retired by the mid-80s, but a fine 1.3-metre-long model of the Tai Loy can be found in the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, in Central, while Macau’s Museu Maritimo has similar models of the Macau, the Tung Shan and several others.
Hopefully the suspended ferry route between Hong Kong and Macau – a forbidden journey that now seems unusually appealing – will open up again before long.
Follow a cyclist’s travels around the world from the comfort of your armchair
Having first appeared in 1939, Fred A. Birchmore’s captivating Around the World on a Bicycle will be published in a third edition on May 1. After studying in Germany, the American pedalled to Southeast Asia, via Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan and India, then sailed from Manila home to the United States. After much more cycling, covered in another book, Miracles in my Life (1996), he died eight years ago, at the age of 100.
This new edition comes with an introduction by David Herlihy, who wrote about the 19th century traveller Frank Lenz in The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance (2010). Lenz went missing in the 1890s – making headlines in Hong Kong newspapers – while trying to emulate the first cycling circumnavigation, made the previous decade by the Englishman Thomas Stevens.
The latter also wrote a book called Around the World on a Bicycle (1887), and both thus-titled volumes are available in Kindle editions at Amazon. The Lost Cyclist is available only in traditional form.
Changes being made to the MS Piano could be a sign of things to come
New Chinese cruise ship MS Piano Land – formerly P&O’s Oriana – was christened at her inaugural sailing last September in Xiamen, southeastern Fujian province. All voyages were cancelled in late January, just as cruise lines started to shut down worldwide. She is currently reported to be in dry-dock near Ningbo, in northeastern Zhejiang province, undergoing refurbishments that could signal things to come in the industry.
A new HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system will provide 100 per cent fresh air circulation, some suites are getting private dining areasand some cabins will reportedly be “set up for any medical situations”. Interior “staterooms” – basically cheap, windowless cabins in which nobody would want to sit out a quarantine – may be taken out of service.
