1960 Admiralty Chart of the Eastern Portion of Hong Kong

An impressive nautical map of the waters between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, produced in 1960 by the British Admiralty's Hydrographic Office, with minor corrections in handwriting to 1963. It reflects a city in transition, moving beyond its past as a colonial trade entrepôt dominated by wharves and warehouses and instead becoming a proper city in its own right (Hong Kong's population more than tripled between 1930 and 1960, in large part due to refugees fleeing warfare and revolution in mainland China).

A Closer Look

Coverage stretches from the southern portion of the Kowloon Peninsula and the Central neighborhood of Hong Kong Island eastwards to what is now the Tseung Kwan O (here as 'Cheung Kwan O or Junk Bay') New Town, constructed on reclaimed land in the 1980s. A wealth of nautical information is marked, including soundings, detailed compasses with magnetic variations, lights, hazards, shoals, buoys, currents, and more. Handwritten annotations provide information updated since the latest printing of the chart in 1960, including an area of forbidden anchorage in Victoria Harbor.

The landward features highlight the city's changes and continuities over time. In addition to the aforementioned Tseung Kwan O New Town (which absorbed Futau Chau or Fat Tong Chau Island at right), a number of other large-scale land reclamation projects were undertaken in the years just preceding and postdating this chart. For instance, the open area to the north of the Royal Naval Recreation Grounds, at center towards bottom-left, was formerly a typhoon shelter that had been reclaimed; in 1957, it opened as Victoria Park.

The densely populated neighborhoods of Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok in Kowloon, and Central and Wan Chai (then known as Victoria) on Hong Kong Island, are immediately recognizable. Landmarks are noted, some of them as 'conspicuous' for navigational purposes, including the Kowloon-Canton Railway Tower and the Hong Kong Observatory. Prominent at top towards left is Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong's main international airport until 1998, famous for its harrowing approaches which skirted mountains and high-rise apartment blocks of Kowloon, including 'Old City Kowloon' or the Kowloon Walled City just to the west.

Publication History and Census

This chart was initially published by the Admiralty in 1903 and updated regularly thereafter, with new editions appearing to 1949, major corrections to 1960, and minor corrections (handwritten) to 1963. The 1960 printing of the chart is only known to be held by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, while the National Library of Australia holds a 1952 printing (lacking the runway built into Kowloon Bay, operational from 1958).