When Hong Kong welcomed back an old friend, P&O ocean liner RMS Canton, in 1947, and its last voyage, to a Hong Kong breaker’s yard, 15 years later
- The ship, which first plied the route in 1938, sailed into Victoria Harbour in 1947 after having called into Bombay, Colombo and Singapore
- Service continued until 1962, when the outdated RMS Canton was sent to a Hong ship-breaking yard
“The sea passenger service between Britain and the Far East, suspended throughout the war, was reopened today when the P. & O. liner Canton left [Southampton] for Hongkong with 544 passengers,” reported the Hongkong Telegraph on October 18, 1947. Having first arrived in Hong Kong in 1938, RMS Canton had been the latest in a long line of P&O ships connecting Hong Kong with Britain since 1845, and news of her post-war return – and that of P&O – was eagerly anticipated.
With her formerly black hull painted a modern white, she arrived first in Bombay and Colombo, then in Singapore, where she offloaded about 100 passengers. The disembarkation list – civil servants and socialites – was pure Somerset Maugham: The Dowager Lady Frances Hawke, Mrs A.C. Farquharson, Mr F.O. Pidduck, Mr A.R. Cheeseman, et al.
On November 17, the Canton sailed into Victoria Harbour and tied up at Kowloon Wharf, where Harbour City stands today. “Passengers began to disembark soon afterwards,” observed The China Mail, “and many were greeted by waiting friends and relatives.” Also disembarking, in custody, were “two respectable looking Chinese women” who had boarded in Singapore and were caught by Hong Kong customs agents with 24 bars of gold concealed in specially made waistcoats.
The Canton connected Britain and Hong Kong regularly until August 1962, when she was withdrawn from service, by then outdated and the last P&O ship on the Hong Kong route with no air conditioning. She was sold to the Leung Yau Shipbreaking Yard and returned to Hong Kong with a skeleton crew to meet her fate in early October. There was a public sale of her contents, with local bargain hunters and former passengers buying up fixtures and fittings from cutlery to carpets, some of which must still be scattered around Hong Kong.
As reported in the South China Morning Post on October 4, 1962, the ship’s bell was presented by her captain, “for use on important occasions”, to the principal of Ying Wa College – Hong Kong’s oldest school – where it still hangs outside the assembly hall.
The English airport where planes make their final landing
It’s not every day that a Boeing 747 lands in the English countryside, but it’s becoming a more frequent occurrence in rural Gloucestershire. Formerly known as RAF Kemble (and home to the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, or Red Arrows, from 1966 to 1983), Cotswold Airport, near the market town of Cirencester, is normally used by private pilots, flying schools, corporate jets and for flying displays.
It’s also home to airliner scrap and salvage operations, and its 2km runway makes it suitable for large planes to land for recycling and storage. Many – including Cathay Pacific aircraft – have made their final landings there in recent years. Now, with parking spots around the world at a premium, and talk of early retirement for Boeing 747s, arrivals are increasing.
So thrilling is the spectacle of these behemoths coming in to land that the airport recently had to admonish local spectators for breaking lockdown rules and parking their cars along an adjacent road to watch them.
“I know it’s really attractive to come and watch the aircraft land, but the layby on the A429 was jammed full of cars today – not exactly social distancing,” said the airport’s Facebook operator, after the arrival last month of several British Airways 747s.
Unusual and amusing anecdotes about the English Channel
Published next month, The Channel: The Remarkable Men and Women who Made it the Most Fascinating Waterway in the World, by Charlie Connelly, should appeal to those with an interest in the history of travel and tourism, or whose overseas adventures began with a ferry trip across the English Channel.
It promises a collection of unusual and amusing anecdotes, “from tailing Oscar Wilde’s shadow through the dark streets of Dieppe to unearthing Britain’s first beauty pageant at the end of Folkestone pier (it was won by a bloke called Wally)”. And with “a cast of extraordinary characters – geniuses, cheats, dreamers, charlatans, visionaries, eccentrics and at least one pair of naked, cuddling balloonists” we’ll learn that “if a man with a buttered head and pigs’ bladders attached to his trousers hadn’t fought off an attack by dogfish we might never have had a Channel Tunnel”.
Although Amazon won’t currently send a copy to Hong Kong, a Kindle edition will be available, and Amazon is offering a free audiobook version for anyone signing up for a one-month Audible trial.
