Forget 2020. For Hong Kong, 1937 was the year from hell

Hong Kong appeared to many to be doomed. It could surely never recover from destruction, human casualties and economic loss on such a scale. Wave after wave of disaster had hit the city in late summer and autumn.

First came an unnamed typhoon, gusting in on September 1, 1937, with winds so strong that the Hong Kong Observatory was incapable of registering their true strength, its instruments unable to measure wind velocity beyond 200km/h. Boats upended, buildings and entire streets were destroyed, whole villages swept away by tidal waves.

Then came fire, sweeping through slums and grand shoreline districts alike, taking lives, destroying homes, shops and hotels, and leaving hospitals overwhelmed. There followed epidemics, first cholera, then typhoid and malaria. As if that were not enough, an unprecedented wave of refugees descend­ed upon the territory thanks to the earth­quake in the Philippines, war in Shanghai, and more typhoon devastation as well as severe cholera outbreaks in southern China, Macau and Taiwan.

Scores of flimsy houses and squatter shacks in the poorer parts of Hong Kong Island were destroyed with many bodies crushed beneath rubble or swept away. Untold numbers of people were killed, the colonial authorities having no accurate figures for those living in the poorer quarters. Wireless towers were torn down and the communications network was rendered inoperable, severely hampering rescue efforts.

Being close to the harbour’s edge, water was waist-high in Central’s Queen’s Road, Des Voeux Road and Pedder Street. Fallen masonry, smashed shop windows, roofs ripped clean off and wrecked and overturned cars littered the streets.

The harbour was in utter chaos. Fifty ships lay at anchor, including battle cruisers of the Royal Navy’s China Station, tramp steamers, cargo ships, passenger liners and smaller steam ferries, all having fled before the storm to seek safety in Hong Kong’s typhoon shelters. Several shiploads of evacuees from the Japanese attack on Shanghai in mid-August had arrived in port just days earlier and were waiting to disembark. The converted cargo ship Hunan alone, fortunately safely anchored, had aboard 1,200 Chinese refugees.

The 17,000-tonne Japanese passenger liner Asama Maru, recently arrived from Tokyo and moored in Kowloon Bay, broke away from its moorings and drifted out of control through Victoria Harbour, past Causeway Bay and Quarry Bay, before being swept into Chai Wan. Nearby, at Cape Collinson (Hak Kok Tau), the SS Conte Verde, a 19,000-tonne Italian passenger liner, ran aground and lost steering power. With 90 passengers aboard, it was swept round to Chai Wan and smashed into the Asama Maru. Rescue tugs were needed to save the vessels’ stranded crews.