French navy memorial in Hong Kong for five sailors who died in great typhoon of 1906 gets overdue restoration
The eight-metre-high granite memorial in Happy Valley commemorates sailors who died on the French destroyer Fronde in the 1906 Hong Kong typhoon. But hundreds more neglected historical monuments in the city also need restoring
In a shady corner near the southern perimeter of the colonial cemetery in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley area, a team of specialists recently completed the restoration of an important historic monument.
The eight-metre-high granite memorial, erected in 1908, commemorates five sailors who lost their lives on the French torpedo destroyer Fronde, during one of the former British colony’s worst natural disasters – the great typhoon of September 18, 1906.
“This monument is an important historic symbol – the French community has always been active and dynamic in Hong Kong,” says historian François Drémeaux, who is head of Le Souvenir Français de Chine.
“It is the purpose of the Souvenir Français History Society to take care of the remains of the French presence, especially when it comes to war graves and funeral monuments,” Drémeaux explains.
It was Drémeaux who led the campaign to have the memorial restored after a local conservator noticed how badly it had fallen into disrepair while he was conducting an historical graveyard tour.
“I noticed there were trees taking root and the stones at the top of the monument could have been dislodged,” says local historian and conservator Paul Harrison of Phoenix Conservation. Harrison informed the French consulate, who contacted Drémeaux, and the restoration was commissioned just in time.
