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Hong Kong

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Hong Kong at The Red Sea Wreck ProjectThe Hong Kong was a 3,174 GRT steam passenger cargo ship built at Caird & Company, Greenock, UK, for the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The ship was launched 15 April 1889, registered on 10 May and completed successfully completed her sea trials on 19 May with a length of 106.5 meters, beam of 12.8 meters, and draught of just over 8 meters. She was a sail and steam vessel with square-rigged sails fore and aft. Steam propulsion was provided by a 2500ihp 3-cylinder triple-expansion engine, provided by Caird & Company, and a single propeller which gave her a maximum speed of 12 knots.

The S.S. Hong Kong departed on her maiden voyage on 01 June 1889 and sailed to Shanghai via the Suez Canal, Colombo, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

In the early morning at 0510 on 05 December 1890, the S.S. Hong Kong was on the return trip from Shanghai to London. As the ship was passing through the Straits of Perim at the southern end of the Red Sea in low visibility conditions, Captain W.J.B. Watkins, attempted to alter the ship’s course to take her away from land when the ship ran aground on Azalea Rock.

The crew of the Hong Kong was rescued by other ships standing by and a large portion of the ship’s cargo was recovered by the ship’s crew using ship’s equipment, the cargo consisting of tin, gutta percha, antimony, pepper, gambier, sago and tapioca. Salvage assistance was also provided by divers from the Perim Coal Company. The P & O ship Assam arrived the following day, on the 6th of December, and stood by until the 12th. Much of the salvage cargo was taken onboard her during this time.

On 15 December the Hong Kong broke in half. Another P & O ship, the Siam stood by the remains of the ship until the 24th of December when she departed for Hong Kong, via Aden, with the ship’s crew.

A Board of Trade Enquiry was conducted, as was normal, and resulted in the following findings:

The Watkins Findings at The Red Sea Wreck Project
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Lee has been in the marketing industry for the last 15 years and now specializes in teaching marketing techniques to people in the scuba diving industry. He is founder of Dive Media Solutions which, in addition to providing complete marketing, media, communications and IT solutions exclusively for the scuba diving industry, also produces The Scuba News. You can connect with Lee via Twitter by following @DiveMedia

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Red Sea Safaris