Cosmopolitan Dock () was one of the major

dockyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...

s in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

History

Founded in 1880 and located on the exterior of former

Tai Kok Tsui Tai Kok Tsui is an area west of Mong Kok in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The mixed land use of industrial and residential is present in the old area. The Cosmopolitan Dock and oil depots were previously located there. Blocks of high-rise residential ...

peninsula in Kowloon, the dockyard belonged to then-British owned

Hutchison Whampoa Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) was an investment holding company based in Hong Kong. It was a Fortune Global 500 company and one of the largest companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. HWL was an international corporation with a dive ...

. The dockyard was created from land reclamation in the 1870s. Amid the

Sino-French War The Sino-French War (, french: Guerre franco-chinoise, vi, Chiến tranh Pháp-Thanh), also known as the Tonkin War and Tonquin War, was a limited conflict fought from August 1884 to April 1885. There was no declaration of war. The Chinese arm ...

in 1884 over the control of

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making it ...

, Chinese workers in the dockyard refused to serve on La Galissonnière, a French warship responsible for the bombardment of

Keelung Keelung () or Jilong () (; Hokkien POJ: '), officially known as Keelung City, is a major port city situated in the northeastern part of Taiwan. The city is a part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, along with its neighbors, New T ...

and

Foochow Fuzhou (; , Fuzhounese: Hokchew, ''Hók-ciŭ''), alternately romanized as Foochow, is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian province, China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute t ...

. The crew eventually repaired the ship on their own. In 1937, a hundred Norwegian, Danish and Swedish refugees who had fled the

Japanese invasion of Shanghai The Battle of Shanghai () was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the ...

were housed at the dock while they waited to be resettled. In the same year, the shipwrecked steamer named the An Lee was towed to the dock. The facilities closed in 1972, the dockyard was transformed from 1974 to 1976 into the housing complex known as Cosmopolitan Estate (14 13 floor towers) by Hutchison Whampoa (under the direction of

Douglas Clague Sir Douglas Clague (13 June 1917 – 11 March 1981) was a British Hong Kong soldier and entrepreneur who spent most of his life in Hong Kong. Early Years Born in South Rhodesia, in 1917, Clague arrived in Hong Kong in 1940 as a lieutenant i ...

) in 1974. With the West Kowloon Reclamation Project the dockyard area is now landlocked and no evidence exists to link it to its past use. On 16 January 1945, during the

Japanese occupation of Hong Kong The Imperial Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began when the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Young, surrendered the British Crown colony of Hong Kong to the Empire of Japan on 25 December 1941. The surrender occurred after 18 days of fierce ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, the dockyard was bombed by

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines. ...

of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. Section A: ''Touch of Hong Kong''
/ref>

References

Tai Kok Tsui Dockyards in Hong Kong 1880 establishments in Hong Kong Former buildings and structures in Hong Kong Ships built in Hong Kong {{HongKong-hist-stub

History

See also

References