Typhoon Force

What Knots, Volume 3, Issue 2, 10 December 1945, Page 6

Typhoon Force

It was 1 937 in Hong Long and Ko*- -10 Typhoon Signal had been hoisted. I stood in my. flat which had the old type of typhoon shuttersmith the flaps. -‘-Lie wind had' just broken the guages at 280 in the: Kowloon Observatory, • I: lifted up my shutters to have a look at the weather and the wind blew the roof off my house. My neighbour opened his eyes and it blew his- brains out. Tram conductors took to' rowing. boats, end Chinese girls knitted woollies for chickens who had lost their feathers in that awful storm. The Japanese liner Asaama Maru was blown .45 miles inland and won the blue riband on a Chinese paddy field but w-as brought back on the return wind and moored at anchor. .The Conti Verdi was found on’ the roof garden of the Kong Kong Hotel, her captain the worse for liquor. Dairy yam’s 700 head of cattle were so badly .shaken uo they pro — duced fresh cutter for the following week. Tai Tam Tuk, the famous Hong Kong reservoir, had been blessed by the Evil Spirits of a Chinese Scotchman and refused to part with any water, so the rain piled up above its dams and the P.W.D. urged the population to take, more •later with" everything. Woolwich Arsenal manufactured hollow shells to fit around the guns thathad bean turned inside out. The debris piled up around the Island so high that the Government took six months to decide which would be the easiest to 1 shift, the' debris or'the Island. The firemen manned their hoses and the Bpray blew in their faces, and the artillery manned the drag rones to keen the’’Colony in its place. _ _ Hitchcock^/*”.- . ‘ o q o - R.B. HiLchcock-*. * • -