Hong Moh
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The Hong Moh some sources also Kong Koh or Kong Moh was a 1881 posed in service cargo and passenger ship of the shipping company Heap Eng Moh Steamship Line in Singapore , in his downfall in 1921 more than 1,000 passengers were killed.
The ship
The combined freight and passenger steamship was on 5 September 1881 as City of Calcutta at the shipyard Charles Connell & Company in Scotstoun, Glasgow, Scotland under the hull number 125 lowered into the water . The client was the Glasgow company G. Smith & Sons, who did it for City Line Ltd. commanded . The iron-built ship had three decks and was equipped with electric lights. In addition to its two-cylinder composite steam engine from the machine manufacturer J. & J. Thomson in Glasgow, it had three masts with sails. The City of Calcutta was employed in the City Line's Asian service until 1902 before it was sold to the Heap Eng Moh Steamship Line, which belongs to the rice wholesaler and shipping company owner Oei Tiong Ham (next owner according to another source: Lim Ho Puah). This Singapore-based shipping company renamed the ship Hong Moh and manned it with European, mostly British officers and a Chinese crew, but kept it under the British flag and in the same trading area.
On October 3, 1918, the City of Calcutta collided in the Irish Sea with the British passenger ship Burutu (3,863 GRT). Both ships sailed in the dark due to the ongoing First World War. The Burutu sank as a result of the collision; 148 people were killed.
Downfall
In early March 1921, the Hong Moh was under the command of Captain Henry William Holmes on a voyage from Singapore to Swatow and Amoy . The steamer was loaded with 30,000 sacks of rice and, in addition to its crew, had about 1,100 Chinese passengers on board. Most of the passengers came from the regions around the ports of Swatow and Amoy. Even during the journey, there were repeated arguments and serious fights between the warring sections of the Chaochow Chinese from Swatow and the Hokkien Chinese from Amoy among the passengers. Although the exact reason for the dispute is unproven, it can be speculated that the obvious reason for the dispute, here as on other trips, was to be found in the highly competitive rice trade in both regions.
On reaching the roadstead of Swatow on March 3, 1921 (according to another source March 18, 1921) a port pilot was taken on board, who called for the port with the ship, which was about seven meters deep, due to the lack of water depth over the bar at the time but declined in front of the port. When the ship's command informed the Swatow Chinese that they had to continue to Amoy first, the situation on board escalated completely. An uncontrolled mass brawl broke out between the enemy groups of passengers, which would have probably already led to a larger number of deaths, as those involved attacked each other with knives, hatchets and even axes. The ship's crew , armed with rifles and hot water hoses, initially holed up in the forecastle and tried to get the situation under control from there. The driverless vehicle was meanwhile on the Lamock Island offshore White Rocks, where the hull tore open. The ship then began to sink, which exacerbated the bitter fighting on the ship, as panic broke out in the now prevailing chaos and there was a fight for the life-saving equipment on board, with no release of the lifeboats , let alone an orderly one , without the help of the crew Occupying the same was possible. The few lifeboats that were not destroyed by the fighting capsized due to the mass onslaught mostly when they were launched or shortly afterwards in the high swell that smashed the boats on the side of the sinking ship. Most of the survivors were part of the crew who eventually managed to get at least one boat safely into the water. However, Captain Holmes drowned.
literature
- Karen Farrington: Shipwrecks . Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2000, ISBN 3-89365-850-5 .
- Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1919-20, Vol. I - Steamers, Sailing Vessels and Owners., Lloyd's Register of Shipping, London, 1920
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ IDNo = 1085862 (not available online) ( Memento from September 6, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ a b Report in the New York Times of April 23, 1921
- ↑ A treatise on the connections between the rice trade in the region (pdf, English; 581 kB)