(The Other Part of) Victoria Harbour

When it comes to boats I confess to being a bit of an anorak. That's why I went to Kennedy Town promenade on the seafront to photograph vessels moving between the piers of Central/Kowloon and the Western Approaches, in the western part of the harbour. I wanted to compare the numbers and types of boats that passed in a one-hour period to those I had recorded a few days earlier (Our Part of Victoria Harbour) in the eastern section of the harbour where I live.

There was almost exactly the same number of boats – 63 in one hour, or about one a minute – but the types were very different. Instead of a variety of small craft such as launches, junks and fishing boats, today's boats were generally larger, with a high proportion of ferries and working boats, mainly pilot boats.

Because Hong Kong territory comprises the mainland bit (New Territories and Kowloon) plus more than 260 islands (including Hong Kong Island and Lantau), there are quite a few ferry companies. Here are some of the typical ferries.

The ferries that commute further, to the gambling enclave of Macau (60 kilometres or 37 miles away) for example, have evolved into sleek machines.

The most impressive is the TurboJET which uses Boeing jetfoil engines to rise from the water and race along at high speeds with the hull out of the water. However, this high speed can be dangerous; just over a year ago one of these machines on its way to Macau hit something floating on the water, injuring more than 120 passengers, five critically.

The Cotai water jet is another high-speed ferry that can reach 42 knots an hour or more and gets its speed from waterjets powered by four diesel engines.

And then there are the pilot boats with their red and white pennants, guiding the large ships to their allotted anchorage or through the narrows.

Usually there are plenty of police boats buzzing around but in this one-hour session I was lucky to catch one - surely the smallest of them - in the distance!

Similarly, the fire  boats tend to lurk near the container terminal and I was also lucky to spot this one...again, at a distance, so it's rather grainy. 

The last category is the miscellaneous boats, ones I'm not quite so sure about...launches, fishing and cargo boats. The first one is a container ship, way out to sea in the Western Approaches, probably looking to anchor.

Here are four general work boats, the first one with clear junk lines, all three festooned with tyres (it used to be thought improper to have fenders out when you were underway...).

This fellow is well down at the stern.

And this one has seen better days...

Finally, I must admit this little fellow puzzled me. RHKYC presumably stands for the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club...I thought that Hong Kong institutions that carried the title 'Royal' in their names all dropped the title after 1997 and the return of the territory to China. Certainly the Royal Hong Kong Police Force did, also the Royal Observatory, similarly the Royal Hong Kong Golf Club, even the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force became the Government Flying Service...but the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club kept the name it first obtained by Royal Charter back in 1894.