CCDO Staff Hong Kong 1940 - IMG_20211006_0001.jpg

C.C.D.O. is not an abbreviation that readily comes to mind. Is there information about "Uncle Billy'" like his full name, occupation etc ? 

Just curious why the suggestion Cheung Chau - oral history from owner of photo?

Cheung Chau District Office? 

If so, what is the organisation? A branch of the HK civil service/Government department as there is a good mixture of western and Asian personnel? 
 

Billy = William. Lots of Williams on Jurors Lists 1939/1940. And the JL is not comprehensive so a full name would be useful.

As an ex-draughtsman very many years ago, the 'D.O.' would signify to me 'Drawing Office' so perhaps they are a group of drawing office staff'.

Pre-covid I seem to recall signs on Hong Kong contruction sites relating to 'C.C.E.D', or a similar combination of letters, presumably a government civil engineering department, which might explain another letter or letters in C.C.D.O.

If I am seeing it aright, it seems to me there is a gap between CC and DO, so two abbreviations, "CC" and "DO". That doesn't add a lot, but might close off some blind alleys.

StephenD

Cheung Chau District Office also crossed my mind but in the Royal Asiatic Society  ( HK Branch) Journal of 1977 , W Schofield,  who served as Southern Islands Disrict Officer in the 1920s -1930s describes how the D.O's travelled by ferries or hired private launches from their office in the Post Office Building in Central.when required to visit Cheung Chau or the other outposts..  He wrote that the only substantial Western style  buildings were a Community Hall set among the European bungalows on the hillside and the heavily fortified police station. 

Also, in the 2011 Journal of the RAS (HK Branch)  there is a review of a book by John Strickland on Southern District Islands District Officer Reports but I do not have access to this book at hand. This book might conclusively rule out that there were District Office buildings on Cheung Chau during  1940s..  

Glancing through HKGRO, it would appear that the New Terroriies in 1940 was divided into two large districts - the Northern District and Southern District. I think that rules out Cheung Chau. The men also appear to be very well-dressed for the occasion.

In an article in the newspapers of the day of the passing of W. Redwood (Barbara's father) in 1940, the attendees at the funeral came from the Naval Dockyard. Mention is made of staff from the Drawing Office, Constructive Department and C.C. Department.

The fact that there is no obvious record or that no one seemingly knows what CCDO stands for in a group photo of well dressed gentlemen is in itself a big clue. 
As in, it's probably a mundane non-official self-titled social group photo as a memento for Uncle Billy before his return to Blighty. Something like 'Cricket Club, Drawing Office' or some other 'Club.'. 
 

On second thoughts, the fact they added the redundant word 'Staff' in the placard and they're well dressed (as opposed to casual for a social club photo) would suggest a work-related 'committee' as one of the 'C's.

A little reminder about the civilian status of naval dockyards may help here (see a Gwulo reference below to more on that topic). 

Moddsey's point is therefore the important one because that report in the newspaper directly referred to the naval yard's civilian organization and the existence of a CC Department.

What was that?

Happily I have a sticky memory (aka dustbin mind) and I recalled a previous Gwulo discussion at https://gwulo.com/node/6270. There you will note that Uwe Aranas asked a question anent a newspaper clipping from Borneo. This was answered in part with a map from David dated 1911 (see also https://images.nationalarchives.gov.uk/assetbank-nationalarchives/actio…) in which, if you zoom in, you will see on the east side of the dry dock the "Chief Constructor's Workshops".

The Chief Constructor was a title bestowed on the chaps in each dockyard, who used to be known, pre-1875, as the "Master Shipwrights" - i.e. the chaps in charge of building and fixing ships. It was also the title of one of the elements of the main, London HK organization of naval dockyards as that existed, in its varying forms, until 1969. In the wondrous manner of bureaucracies, and especially the British military's civilian elements, pretty much at the same time as Master Shipwright became Chief Constructor, the TITLE "Chief Constructor" morphed into "Manager, Constructive Department" although, as we can see from the newspaper story and the map, the use of "Chief Constructor" as the name of what should have been the "Constructive Department", endured. That's probably because "Chief Constructor" continued as a title of an office and a department in London.

If you look at the 1962 organogram of the incessantly mucked about (whoops, intelligently reorganized on sound managerial principles) RN dockyard system, you will see that the Office of the Chief Constructor had continued as part of the Director-General Dockyards and Maintenance until that post was abolished in 1964. In 1969 that whole load of historical baggage was jettisoned with the spinning off of the dockyards under a new Chief Executive, Royal Dockyards. Ah well.

So, as a hunch, what we may have here is the Chief Constructor's Department Office staff as they were in 1940.

StephenD

I realize I failed to address the suggestions that the 'D' related to the specialist occupation of draughtsman, so offering a possibility the the 'DO' was the 'Draughtsman's (or) Drawing Office".

My inclination to exclude that is that, within the complex naval dockyard administrative hierarchy of the hierarchy's Dockyard Division, there was a separate department, the Draughtsman's Department, with its gaffer, the Chief Draughtsman with his Office of the Chief Draughtsman, which had rather commandeered that use of 'D'.

Of course that doesn't definitively rule out that the CCDO in HK's naval yard in 1940 was the Chief Constructor's Draughtsman's/Drawing Office, just makes it less probable.

The Chief Constructor at the Naval Yard in 1940 was Mr G.W.R. McCammon (SCMP, 01-05-1940, p.5 - naval wedding, and SCMP, 7-6-1940, p.2, advert for caulkers). He had been Chief Constructor in HK since at least 1938 (see SCMP, 18-06-1938, p.2), before that being the Senior Constructor at the new Singapore Naval Base, (SCMP, 26-08-1936, p.21).

It turns out that G.W.R. McCammon MBE had been appointed to Hong Kong on 11th March 1938 in an acting capacity, and his deputy, a Constructor, L.T. Carter, Esq., BSc, had been appointed on 27-01-1939 (both details, The Navy List, Bi-monthly, Feb 1941, p.892). 

George William Richardson McCammon had been appointed an Assistant Constructor 1st Class at Chatham Dockyard on 27 November 1912, by which time (see below), he was 28, married and a father. He had been awarded the MBE in the 1918 King's New Year's honours list, civil division, "for services connected to the war in France, Salonika and Egypt" (Supplement to the London Gazette, 7-01-1919). His obituary appeared in the Journal of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors' Association, vo. 27, 1953.

He had been born in 1884, in Eastney, Portsmouth, UK to James McCammon and Jessie Maud Jenkins Richardson. In 1910, in Chatham, he had married Winfred Emily Rayner and in 1911 their only child, Eileen Rayner McCammon had been born. Although by inference from the obit, McCammon survived the war (how and where I don't know) the date and location of Mrs McCammon's demise I haven't traced. 

Neither McCammon's nor Carter's names are still in the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors roll in the Navy List in 1945.

For those officials to have had a department they ran, see the curious story from Singapore, SCMP, 30-01-1941, p7, of an ex-Admiral and Governor of Fiji's son, one Thurston, being done for petty theft, who worked in the  "Chief Constructor's Department" in Singapore, so by inference there was one in HK too.

William Joseph Webber (Jan 1888 (I think Stoke Damerel) -?), as far as I can work out was the youngest son of John Webber (c.1851-1927), an ex-foreman of joiners, HM Dockyard, Devonport (whose father William Treary Webber (1816-1870) had served 22 years with the RN), and Hannah (Viggers) Webber (both of Cornish origin).

William J was one of five children (1 girl, Elizabeth, b. c.1880 in 1901 working in a milliner's; 3 boys, Frederick, b.1877 (in 1901 a commercial accountant); John Francis 1885; William Joseph 1888; and the youngest Herbert James (1889-1986)). In 1911 only William J and his brother, John Francis, were still at home. Both worked at the dockyard, John Francis (1885-?) was a "Draughtsman (fitter, ship)" and William Joseph (Jan 1888-1969) a "Draughtsman (shipwright)". Not sure what the parenthetical qualifications imply. The probability is that draughtsmen specialized in the drawings for the bits and pieces of specialist parts of the ship. William J married Elizabeth Ann Lamerton (1882-1970) in Devonport in the October to December quarter, 1923.

In general I think dockyard workers were in reserved occupations during both WW1 and WW2, shipbuilding and repair being high priority needs. There is no record of a William Joseph Webber who served in the RN in WW1, and there is no army medal card in his name, so he pretty certainly didn't serve.

Best,

StephenD

The location of the photo is possibly the North West corner of the North Barracks building in the Dockyard complex. This is mainly due to the set of stairs in the background with the half landing.

On the below map the North Barracks are middle left, labeled Main Offices & Residences: the stairway is an attachment on the north west corner with a 90 degree turn at the top. The tree on the right of the picture also matches to the map as well as the verandah/cut through on the left of the picture. The many building around the stairs are labeled offices, so I would assume the CCDO would be based in this area and this corner is a convenient, close to the office spot to take department photos. 

Terrific...and thank you because that also, I think, answers a question that has resulted from my work with Shun Chi-ming and Willie Yip Tsan-pong on the HK meridian marks. In that work we mention (which I've looked at in more detail elsewhere) the USS Palos Palos Pier, a masonry pier built for the transit instrument used in the establishment, by electrical signal using the submarine telegraph cable, of HK's longitude in 1881. 

I'd discovered in an SCMP op ed. piece from the 1930s (doing other work on HMS Tamar's figurehead (article forthcoming - the only RN ship ever known to have changed sex) that showed with a photo that, at least until the 1930s, the Palos Pier had been preserved.

I think your detailed 1956-57 map shows that it survived WW2 and the post-war period only to succumb, in the transformation of the closed naval yard and Wellington Barracks-become-HMS Tamar, to HK's history indifferent civil engineers, who clearly bulldozed it, probably into the old dry dock as part of the fill. 

For, if I am right, not far from where you deduce the CCDO photo to have been taken, there is an open space with, in the middle, a 'monument' marked. This seems to me (haven't done the necessary detailed work) to be pretty much where Palos Pier stood, arguing that until only 65 or so years ago a monument to a key moment in HK's surveying, mapping and time history still existed.

No one at the time cared of course (or probably would now unless caught in time). Boring old stuff. Bulldoze it.

StephenD

Thanks Andrew. It's the usual I suspect - some collateral rellie finding stuff not all of which is kosher (my source was ancestry.com), hence the confusion. The 1911 census data seems pretty solid though, since all the names and details tally. I've bumped into similar problems before, so just disregard where better data is available.

It's a bother that the juniors never have the salience in source material that their bosses have unless they do something that draws attention. Hence knowing about the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors 'officers' McCammon and Carter (even though they were civvies they appear in The Navy List), but not about the chaps who worked for them.

StephenD

I have been reading all the comments with great interest and thought I would add a bit more fuel to the fire!  A few years ago I purchased a 1937 photograph of the Naval Dockyard Staff, or at least the senior staff members, the general dockyard workers were obviously not included in this group photo. Whilst I realise that military postings are only of a few years duration and the ''CC DO Staff'' photo dates to 1940 no person in the latter photo appears in the 1937 photo. What is also noticeable in the 1937 group are the very few local chinese staff members present.

I have no idea if the ''CC DO'' 1940 photo relates to the Naval Dockyard Drawing Office or not, but I will make a few observations. The detailed plan of the dockyard indicates all the functions of the various buildings even down to the latrines, but no mention of a Drawing Office. But if you cross over Queens Road to Murray Barracks there is a Drawing Office!

As I understand it the Naval Dockyard was more of a repair facility rather than new construction of vessels. How many drawing office staff would be required just for ship repair?  What is also noticable when comparing the two photos is the lack of at least one Naval man in full uniform who is involved in the department. It would be surprising if the Navy just left it all to civilians to get on with the job.

Just for the record my late father was a civilian ships surveyor working for the British Government who spent a total of nine years in Hong Kong looking after the British Army vessels, landing craft, fast launches etc.  On many occasions as a young lad I used to go with him to the various shipyards in H.K. and witness the work of the highly skilled men involved in all aspects of this heavy engineering.

Mr William Joseph Webber departed Hong Kong in late August 1940 on board S.S. Narkunda and arrived in Liverpool, UK 29th October 1940. Given the group of men were all dressed cosily in shirts, ties, sweaters and blazers etc, it would have to be a 'cold day' in HK and not the height of summer, so likely the group photo was taken in the first few months of 1940.