In 1904, aged just 21, G. Warren Swire became a director of his father’s firm, John Swire & Sons Ltd. Two years later he was sailing east to visit the company’s operations in China. Fortunately for Hong Kong’s record, he was a keen photographer.

Here’s what he saw on that first visit…

1906-7 Dockyard construction

The first project from the 2016 to-do list is finished, an upgrade to the main map we use. Enhancements include:

• 10x faster than the previous version
• Markers and all the old paper maps are now on the same page
• You can change the transparency of the old maps so it is easier to compare them with modern maps

Here's a video showing how it works (subscribers, if you can't see the video please click http://gwulo.com/node/30984 to view it on the website):

Here's a summary of my recent visit to the UK, listing some resources for anyone interested in old Hong Kong.

UK National Archive

A few interesting finds from this visit:

1850 Green Bank plans & map. UKNA ref: MPG 1/158 

This map shows the area we call Lan Kwai Fong today, but look how different it was in 1850 ...

Thank you to Martyn Gregory for sharing these old photos of Hong Kong island with us. They date back to the late 1800s.

You can click on any photo to visit its page. There you can zoom in to see more detail, read any notes about the photo, and add a comment about where and when it was taken.

The first two are from the mid-levels. I've seen this one before: