A BOTTOMLESS DOCK

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10972, 11 June 1903, Page 2

A BOTTOMLESS DOCK

A curious fatality seems to hang over all Far Eastern schemes of the British naval authorities. -- The money spent on Wei-hai-wei.- -we know now, was wasted, and the idea of establishing a naval depot in the bay had to be abandoned. This was not the first blunder perpetrated in Chinese, waters; the latest t ailurc ' concorns the Hong Kong dock scheme. For over two years the naval dockyard extension works have been in progress in Hong Kong harbour, and now that ,£250,000 or .£300,000 out of the estimated million and a quarter sterling have been spent, it is alleged that "the contractors have found, in their submarine workings, that the proposed dock has no proper foundations, and that the sea bottom consists of a sort of quagmire which defies the dredger and cannot be built upon.' ' The British residents ar» not altogether dissatisfied with the prospect. For years, it seems, they have aimed at the construction of a splendid uninterrupted sea frontage. But the naval yard made a huge gap, and the de- ; cision to build a new dock at great expense appeared to sweep away for ever any chance -of realising this ambition. Apart from this, objections were raieed that the dockyard would be an obstacle to the growth of the colony, and an' inconvenience to the community, because it would mean a peculiarly noisy establishment wedged in the heart of the business quarter. But the Admiralty would not consent to have the dock at Kowloon or any other spot that was suggested, and. when the matter was raised in Parliament eighteen months ago, refused to suspend the work in order to reconsider the whole question as to the suitability of the site. The colony has ' now sent a petition to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, with the object of having the scheme reconsidered, and a local deputation which waited on the Governor in connection with the matter has received a sympathetic reply. It has been suggested that if the Admiralty' would now consent to abandon the site, the colonists might We- inclined to offer it some compensation. The Admiralty Certainly has an opportunity to "save its face," as they say in China, by , a graceful concession to local opinion, but the matter has yet to come under the consideration of the Imperial Parliament. The authorities, we should imagine, will have some difficulty in satisfying inquisitive critics who want to know how a quarter of a milliqn sterling came to be sunk in this bottomless dock.