Articles

The History of Victoria Harbour

Stephen Brown

The Harbour economic importance has been the bedrock of the development of Hong Kong over the last 150 years. However, the changing manner through which the harbour has reflected its economic importance to the territory has been every bit as dynamic as the changes that Hong Kong itself has witnessed and it is fair to say that the history of Hong Kong is the history of the place itself.

Ceded by treaty after the Opium War of 1840, Hong Kong became a British Colony because it provided a safe deep harbour from which British business interests could operate in the East Asia region. In 1842, Hong Kong marked a significant military and commercial coup. In particular it ensured that other western powers were denied access to one of the finest deep harbour ports in the region, cementing British power and influence.

Hong Kong, its development based on its maritime trading activity secure in its safe harbour and under the protection of the British fleet, soon became a centre for trade in the region. In 1900, an encyclopaedia described Hong Kong as follows:

"From the mainland it is separated by a narrow channel, which at Hong Kong roads, between Victoria, the island capital, and Kowloon Point, is about metre broad, and which narrows at Ly-ee-mun Pass. The southern coast in particular is deeply indented; and there two bold peninsulas, extending for several miles into the sea, form two capacious natural harbours, namely, Deep Water Bay, with the village of Stanley to the east, and Tytam Bay, which has a safe, well-protected entrance showing a depth of 10 to 16 fathoms. An in-shore island on the west coast, called Aberdeen, or Taplishan, affords protection to the Shekpywan or Aberdeen harbour, an inlet provided with a granite graving dock, the caisson gate of which is 60 ft. wide, and the Hope dock, opened in 1867, with a length of 425 ft. and a depth of 24 ft.

On the northern shore of Hong-Kong there is a patent slip at East or Matheson Point, serviceable during the north-east monsoon, when sailing vessels frequently approach Victoria through the Ly-ee-mun Pass. There is good anchorage throughout the entire channel separating the island from the mainland, except in the Ly-ee-mun Pass, where the water is deep; the best anchorage is Hong Kong roads, in front of Victoria, where, over good holding ground, the depth is 5 to 9 fathoms. The inner anchorage of Victoria Bay, about 1/2 m. off shore and out of the strength of the tide, is 6 to 7 fathoms. Victoria, the seat of government and of trade, is the chief centre of population, but a tract on the mainland is covered with public buildings and villa residences.

The island is mountainous throughout, the low granite ridges, parted by bleak, tortuous valleys, leaving in some places a narrow strip of level of land, and in others overhanging the sea in lofty precipices. From the sea, and especially from the magnificent harbour that faces the capital, the general aspect of Hong Kong is one of singular beauty. Inland the prospect is wild, dreary and monotonous.

Hong Kong or Victoria harbour constantly presents an animated appearance, as many as 240 guns having been fired as salutes in a single day. Victoria, the capital, often spoken of as Hong-Kong (population over 166,000, of whom about 6000 are European or American), stretches for about 4 m. along the north coast. The town is built in three layers:-

The first layer, the Praya or esplanade, 50 ft. wide, is given up to shipping. The Praya reclamation scheme provided for the extension of the land frontage of 250 ft. and a depth of 20 ft. at all states of the tide. A further extension of the naval dockyard was begun in 1902, and a new commercial pier was opened in 1900. The main commercial street runs inland parallel with the Praya. Beyond the commercial portion, on each side, lie the Chinese quarters, wherein there is a closely packed population. In 1888, 1600 people were living in the space of a single acre, and over 100,000 were believed to be living within an area not exceeding ~ m.; and the overcrowding does not tend to diminish, for in one district, in 1900, it was estimated that there were at the rate of 640,000 persons on the sq. m.

The second stratum of the town lies ten minutes climb up the side of the island. Government house and other public buildings are in this quarter. There abound beautifully laid out gardens, public and private, and solidly constructed roads, some of them bordered with bamboos and other delicately-fronded trees, and fringed with the luxuriant growth of semi-tropical vegetation.

Finally, the third layer, known as the Peak, and reached by a cable tramway, is dotted over with private houses and bungalows, the summer health resort of those who can afford them; here a new residence for the governor was begun in 1900. Excellent water is supplied to the town from the Pokfolum and Tytam reservoirs, the former containing 68 million gallons, the latter 390 millions gallons."

By 1922, the port had continued to grow and the official reports of the day state that 672,000 vessels entered and cleared at the port carrying over 43 million tons of cargo, with opium still being of major importance to the economy of the small town. At this time, Hong Kong had little or no manufacturing.

For the first hundred years of its history under British rule the harbour dominated all economic activity. However, the ending of the Japanese occupation brought a host of new challenges and uncertainties to the Colony.
Where an increasing awareness in the international community of the benefits of free trade was of underlying importance in the post war period, playing to Hong Kong's key maritime strength. However, of even greater significance, were the upheavals across the border culminating in the coming to power of the Communist Party.

The seismic changes that these political convulsions produced are well documented elsewhere, and whilst the influx of migrants and the retreat behind the bamboo curtain of Hong Kong's longest established trading partner, looked to be insurmountable threats, the benefit of hindsight enables us to see these events as actually being of enormous benefit to Hong Kong.

From 50's to 60's, produced the economic bedrock for modern Hong Kong. Manufacturing was decanted from the mainland along with the workforce, all aided by Hong Kong's favourable international trade status as a western outpost at a time when hysterical fears over the rise of communism were at their height.

Although it is easy to suggest that this would have been an appropriate time to embark upon a move to diversify the centre of economic activity away from the harbour area, the reality was that New Territory land issues were a thorny problem for a foreign power to take on and it was simply cheaper and quicker to develop in the sea adjacent to the existing urban hubs.

This inertia was further reinforced by the fact that there was a lot of under utilized land in the area of the harbour. This meant that residential and commercial densities could be increased with little need to look elsewhere in the territory. The docks at Taikoo Shing and at Hung Hom, the North Point power station and the wharf on the western side of Kowloon were all beckoning to be developed into higher uses.

Simultaneously, with the explosion in Hong Kong's population and the strong economic growth that the manufacturing sector was generating, the role of the harbour itself changed.

In 1969, Sealand launched its first container shipping service to Hong Kong. The old role of Victoria Harbour was finally to be undermined by modern techniques and the need for a fully-fledged deepwater container handling port. Once the port was established at Kwai Chung, the old uses of the harbour frontage on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were defunct.

However, much of the land that was being released by the change in the harbour's use was held in private hands, often under leases that required no payment to the administration before facilitating development as offices, flats of retail centres. In the absence of any centralized plan to diversify activity away from the North Shore of Kong Island, piecemeal planning and zoning decisions meant that the economic forces that were already embedded there were further accentuated.

With land resumption legislation allowing the government to get hold of large tracts of decaying urban land lagging well behind the fairly draconian measures that Singapore introduced in 1972, the administration here continued its expedient policy of reclaiming land in the harbour to accommodate the growth. It refused to tackle the politically difficult question of urban regeneration in a serious manner, as it continues to do to this day. The policy of reclamation appeared to upset nobody.

It also generated large amounts of revenue when the land was sold at auction and the process itself was cheap and quick. Developing in the areas adjacent to the urban core also leveraged the existing infrastructure, that was further strengthened with both Central and the north shore of the island became the focus for transport infrastructure in the 1980s.

As manufacturing started to shift back to the mainland twenty years ago, the economy became increasingly service oriented. The vested interest groups both within the administration and in the private sector had little reason to reverse the simple policy of continuing to reclaim land adjacent to the urban core. Such a policy merely emphasized the value of previous their sunk investments in the area ensuring good return and providing some barriers against new entrants.

However, there comes a point at which the economies of scale of any policy in both direct and indirect terms turn negative. In this case, congestion takes over, the physical environment degenerates and the cost of transporting commuters by road and rail to the core outweighs any marginal benefit to society. More importantly, a beautiful and historic landmark gets decimated.

It would appear that this point has been reached, as society now appears to place a substantial value on the amenity value of keeping the remaining remnants of the harbour. The policy of reclaiming harbour and beautifying its frontage appear to be higher priorities for the community than any supposed economic benefits from continuing to reclaim land.

Assertions by the administration that the policy of reclaiming the harbour has been a key determinant of Hong Kong's economic development are not only completely unsubstantiated, they border on the absurd.

It is quite evident that their reclamations in the past were in response to demand, as the high prices that we as a community have harvested from auctioning reclaimed land illustrate. Hong Kong's economy generated the growth, reclamations were not the driver of that growth, they were merely the easiest way for the administration to meet the demand.

Other policies did exist to meet that demand, such as abolishing lease modification premiums on a change of use that would have enabled the old industrial buildings in Kowloon to be rapidly developed to meet that demand. Similarly, a lack of any political will to tackle the politically sensitive issue of compensation for New Territories landowners meant that expediency would win.

From the perspective of the new century, and with all that we know now, the focus on developing the harbour area at the expense of other parts of Hong Kong and the New Territories looks to have been an expensive mistake. The policy has now left us isolated from our Pearl River Delta hinterland that now houses so much of our economic activity. We are now trying to recover the ground that the myopic planning decisions based on a flawed vision of Hong Kong as an isolated knoll have made us give up.