Free Beyond Lion Rock: The Story of Cathay Pacific Airways by Gavin Young Page B

China. ‘I realized then my hopes of an airline in China were non-existent,’ Farrell told me. ‘So that’s why I decided to form a Hong Kong-registered airline instead.’
    Thus Hong Kong entered the story as Cathay Pacific’s permanent home.

CHAPTER 5
     
     
    The territory of Hong Kong, which means ‘Fragrant Harbour’, looks unimpressive on a map, hanging like an insignificant pilot fish beneath the underbelly of the mainland Chinese province of Quangdong, formerly anglicized as Kwangtung. It comprises Hong Kong Island (32 square miles), the mainland peninsula of Kowloon (3.5 square miles), the mountainous New Territories and numerous islands that in 1946 amounted to 335 square miles: 370 square miles in all (later land reclamation has added quite a bit more). But this appendage to China is perfectly poised between South East Asia, the Far East and Australasia, with the Pacific on its doorstep and, beyond the Pacific – America.
    What above all else gives Hong Kong the right to the title ‘Gateway to South China’ is the broad, natural harbour between the island and the peninsula. This expanse of water is protected to the west by a number of islands big and small, and approachable from the east through the quarter-mile -wide Lei Yue Mun Gap – a gap of great importance to aviators as well as ships’ captains, as will be seen.
    To the west, the largest island of all is Lantau, more than twice the size of Hong Kong Island itself and at its highest over 3,000 feet – a dragon-like shape pointing its straggly tail towards the broad western anchorage. And your aircraft, swooping in from Bangkok or Singapore over the grey mouth of the Pearl River, cuts first across Lantau to traverse the inevitable fleet of ocean-going ships at anchor, and then across pebble-sized Stonecutters Island before skimming the fluttering tenement washing on the threshold of Kai Tak’s runway.
    What of the Colony’s air services between the wars?
    Hong Kong’s only airfield, Kai Tak was (and still is) situated in the northeast of Kowloon, its eastern edges skirting the waters of Kowloon Bay. Its name derived from the early part of the century when two prominentChinese businessmen, Sir Kai Ho-kai and Mr Au Tak, not remotely interested in flying, simply decided they liked the look of this remote piece of green, grassy land, bought it and enlarged it by reclaiming land from the Bay with the intention of making it into a 45-acre garden city development. Before that could come to anything, a group of British air enthusiasts spotted the land as ideal for the flying club the Colony lacked, and they talked the Governor, Sir Cecil Clementi, into agreeing to a compulsory purchase. Money was forthcoming to buy it and soon, in the early twenties, Sir Cecil drove out to declare the Flying Club open.
    From that moment events moved rapidly. The interest of the Colony’s ruler was now roused and thoughts of imperial defence came to mind. Sir Cecil agreed that yet more money should be put out to reclaim another 160 acres of Kowloon Bay and then, in partnership with the RAF, the government actually took charge of what was now the Colony’s new and only official aerodrome. In next to no time a few Fairey Flycatcher aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm were based there under the eye of a Director of Air Services, who was also Harbour Master. Flight training in Avro Tudors began. The Portuguese Air Force wing in Macao was allowed to park a couple of its Fairey 1110 biplanes there. This was the beginning. It was the coming of the flying boats that proved the making of Kai Tak Airport.
    Britain’s Imperial Airways Empire Mail run from the United Kingdom to the East began the influx. Aviation enthusiasts, veterans of the First World War, had promised successive Hong Kong governors: ‘We’ll be flying out from London in seven days!’ and eventually, with Imperial Airways’ luxurious twenty-four-passenger, 164mph, Short S-23 flying boats, ‘they’ managed to