Transport to Another World: HMS Tamar and the Sinews of Empire Stephen Davies
Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2022, 530 pages with many illustrations. ISBN 978-962-937-593-5, HK$278
Reviewed by P. Kevin MacKeownTransport to Another World is a book about troopships, British troopships, and one in particular named Tamar. According to the author it is a pioneering work on the subject, and so will be of special interest to readers with such an interest. For the rest of us it’s a learning experience—but the author has a lot to teach us. Troopships were used to transport troops to and from garrison stations, and active theaters of engagement, glorified versions of ferries with a large crew. As a category they only existed in the British navy for about 32 years from 1863, it being realised that it was more economical to replace them with commercial vessels chartered for the purpose when required.
The Tamar story goes well beyond that, and in three phases; transporting troops, acting as a static nominal depot ship in Hong Kong where it replaced the Victor Emmanuel, an ancient wooden sailing ship which had been acting as the Royal Navy’s receiving ship in the colony, and as HMS Tamar, the name retained for the Royal Navy’s ‘stone frigate’ base in Hong Kong after the war. The young Stephen Davies spent a year or two on that Tamar when his father was chaplain to the ‘ship’, so any excesses in the work must allow for the fact that it is very much an account of a love affair on the part of the author. The original ship, its interior converted to offices, accommodation and workshops, was used to manage the flow of Royal Navy personnel transiting the colony and was scuttled in 1941 to deny the Japanese the opportunity of making any wartime use of her. Her remains rest at the bottom of Victoria Harbour (this latter phase, so much closer to the author’s own day, is somewhat overplayed). But the book is much more than the story of the Tamar ; it’s closer to a naval history of the expansion of the British Empire in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a phenomenon characterised at the time as being not manifestly bad, analogous to ‘asbestos, tobacco and fossil fuels’. The author is very good at freeing that century from the shackles sometimes imposed by today’s thinking.
The Tamar ’s design, construction in 1863, mishaps and refittings are described in detail. Built in an age when the sailing ship was still
predominant, and before naval architects came to terms with the new designs dictated by steam propulsion, it was neither fish nor fowl, a cross between a sailing ship and a steamer. As a result, she was extensively modified over her life. She didn’t have any of the romance or beauty of earlier sailing ships, nor, indeed, of the Chinese junk which sailed from Hong Kong to Liverpool, via New York, which the author so enjoyably brought to life in one of his earlier books. It is not housed for appreciation in any museum, rather the now rusted fragments of its riveted iron hull lie on the seabed of Hong Kong’s Victoria harbour (a fate still lamented by her lover).
Naturally, her activities are chronicled in great, sometimes slightly manic, detail. For example, we learn that in the summer of 1864 she transported a regiment from Gibraltar to Demerara, and later in the year another from Dublin to Portsmouth. It is helpful to know that in those days there were categories of ‘ladies’ for the wives of officers, ‘wives’ for those of sergeants and ‘women’ for those of soldiers, not to mention female servants when decoding the report that one evening in the summer of 1873, ‘at Greenock she loaded 32 officers, 6 ladies, 10 officers’ children, 5 female servants, 1 male servant, 701 non-commissioned officers and men, 96 women, 141 children, 7 horses, and 8 dogs for Plymouth’—this in an age before further LGBTQ distinctions needed to be made. And there’s much, much more besides—all the ship’s many journeys are tabulated in an appendix. The author, however, has a facility for diluting the text of such tedious details with very interesting vignettes; accounts of shipboard dramatics, or the misfortunes of a young Chinese sailor who was posted aboard, or, in one refitting, the sex change of the ship’s figurehead from a male with a long flowing grey beard to a nymph whose drapery revealed the shapeliness of her figure.
Also chronicled are her various Captains and their careers. On the face of it, no high-flyer might be expected to be in charge of such a ship; his main concerns would be to keep the logbook and make sure that she didn’t run aground. However, the fact that the troops on board might have a military of high rank in command meant that a lesser naval rank might feel uncomfortable and, more seriously, the grace and social etiquette at the dinner table might be threatened.
With his wide knowledge of the history of the period, the author is very good at concisely sketching historical events, such as the Ashanti wars, and at interweaving accounts of distant events. In this latter connection we note the gloating of the Japanese at the scuttled Tamar in Hong Kong harbour in 1941, seeing it as some atonement for the Royal Navy’s bombardment of Kagoshima some 78 years earlier—the Tamar was not actually involved in
that expedition. This is an occasion to comment on the many illustrations, more than fifty, most of them of ships—there are over 75 ships’ names in the index. Readers interested in ships will surely appreciate these; with interests closer to philately, what draws this writer’s attention is a coloured postcard featuring a painting by a Japanese artist of the scuttled remains peering above the sea surface, posted in December 1942.
This is a very thoroughly researched work, based on the many gigabytes of data the author waded through, with over 70 pages of notes, many in themselves of absorbing interest, and a 40-page bibliography, including many internet citations.
Anyone writing a book on troopships will immediately come up against the problem of avoiding boredom and if your passion for the subject is as intense as that of the author some thought must go into the presentation. Stephen Davies justifies his approach as a mirror of Wittgenstein’s manner of structural presentation, if failing to observe the great philosopher’s legendary succinctness. Readers who find Philosophical Investigations intimidating here have an opportunity to enjoy an alternative, an authoritative, clearly written, erudite, sometimes humourous (if not always intentionally) and beautifully produced volume with lots of pictures and an excellent index.
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