On a bright December morning in 1922, a few days before Christmas, the good ship City of York was steaming through the China Sea as she approached Hong Kong. On deck stood two new Cadets of the government administration, Thomas Megarry and myself, eagerly watching the approach to our destination and admiring the panorama of sea and sky and land spread out before us. Now the vessel passed Lyemun, the narrow entrance to the harbour. On one side, lay the island of Hong Kong with its chain of hills culminating in Victoria Peak 1,800 feet above the city of Victoria....

Bermuda has the distinction of being mentioned by Shakespeare, when in The Tempest Ariel says to Prospero: ‘. . . thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch dew from the still vexed Bermoothes. . . ’. The islands were discovered by the Spaniard, Juan de Bermudez—hence the name—but Spain never claimed or occupied them, probably because the submerged coral reefs surrounding them made the islands exceedingly hazardous to sailing ships, and possibly because they had an evil reputation as the home of devils and spirits—one of the islands is named Devil’s Island. It was on the...

The name ‘Jamaica’ comes from the Arawak ‘Xaymaca’, meaning ‘Land of Springs’, and indeed Jamaica is a land of springs. Springs are everywhere and rivers tumble through mountain gorges or emerge swiftly from the tropical forests to plunge in waterfalls to the sea. The Arawaks, a gentle friendly people, were the original inhabitants. Alas, they proved to be too gentle to withstand the Spaniards, who in the space of one generation exterminated them. In 1655, during the time of Cromwell, General Venables and Admiral Penn, whose son founded Pennsylvania, drove out the Spaniards and Jamaica became British.

As the Ariguani...

We arrived at New York in the middle of November 1941 and at once set about getting the necessary inoculations against yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid, cholera and other tropical diseases. We also had to make arrangements for passages to Nigeria which was easier said than done in war time, but we managed to secure berths on one of the Grace Line ships going to Lagos. Unhappily, as it turned out, one of the vice-presidents of Pan American persuaded us to go by plane instead. The plane was due to leave on 9th December. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour took...

I had always hoped that one day I would be posted to Fiji and my appetite was whetted by hearing Sir Arthur Richards, who had been Governor there before going to Jamaica, talk about the islands and the people, both of whom he loved. But the prospects at the moment seemed remote. The Governor, Sir Philip Mitchell, had been in office two years only and the normal term for a governorship was five. Then the unexpected happened; the governorship of Kenya fell vacant and Mitchell was appointed to it, whilst Fiji was offered to me. Apart from the satisfaction of...

We left England for Hong Kong in July 1947, but unlike my voyage out a quarter of a century before, the ‘boat’ by which we now travelled was a flying one. The five-day journey was pleasant and uneventful, but as we neared our destination I felt an inner excitement and prayed that I should be able to cope with the many problems facing the Colony.

On my arrival in 1922, the sun had been shining, the sky blue and the sea sparkling, with the Peak and the ‘Nine Dragons’ of the Kowloon range standing out clear and sharp. On this...

On 1st October 1949, the Chinese communists declared themselves to be the lawful government of China. Why did China go communist? This is a question to which different answers are given. Some say, because China was betrayed. That answer in itself poses another question: betrayed by whom? By the Democratic administration in the United States? Others say the blame should be laid at the door of the Kuomintang. Perhaps we are too close to the event to be able to give an objective or conclusive answer. Nor is it easy to say with certitude whether the defeat of the Nationalists...

Apart from the difficulty over the closure of the Naval Dockyard, 1957 was a relatively quiet year. It was also my last in Hong Kong: a good point, therefore, from which to look back in retrospect at the ten years since I had arrived as Governor; at what had been achieved, at what had not been achieved, and at the change in our relationship with China. So far as purely internal affairs were concerned, the rehabilitation had been completed, and there had been noticeable progress beyond. We had more schools and more hospitals than ever before. Nearly finished was a...