Marine name plate artefact enforces HMS Tamar find in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour

A baggage name plate that appears to have been dropped by a British marine during the first world war a century ago has recently been found at the bottom of Victoria Harbour, and may enrich the story behind Hong Kong's most famous military ship - HMS Tamar.

A copper label bearing the characters and numbers "PLY 11217 E. Goodman", measuring 24cm long, 7.9cm high and 2mm thick, was found along with the shipwreck discovered by workers dredging the harbour seabed near the old Wan Chai Pier for a reclamation project in March.

The name plate has provided the strongest evidence yet suggesting the wreck is the remains of the historic ship - once an icon of Britain's naval power in Asia but later scuttled by the Royal Navy as the empire could no longer protect her far-flung colony against Japanese invasion in 1941.

The Civil Engineering and Development Department announced on March 27 that workers found a large metal object believed to be a shipwreck during reclamation for the construction of the Central-Wan Chai Bypass and the Exhibition Station of the MTR's Sha Tin-Central line.

The discovery of the name tag was not revealed.

Investigation by marine historian Dr Stephen Davies, former director of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum and now an academic at the University of Hong Kong, ascertained the brass plate had belonged to a marine called Edgar Charles Goodman (1885-1959).