History and culture enthusiasts in Kaohsiung have petitioned to keep three tombs in Fudingjin Public Cemetery (覆鼎金), as they provide a glimpse into the history of the city’s international marine transportation industry.
The cemetery in Sanmin District (三民) has been around since the Japanese colonial era, one of many reasons local history enthusiasts protested against the city government’s plans to relocate it to make room for a park.
A group they formed, Kaohsiung’s Underworld: The Tomb Sweeping Group for Fudingjin, was notified by the city government that the tomb of a foreigner named John William Crawford was found in the area where Japanese are buried.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
While the group initially thought Crawford was the son of Reverend Hugh Ritchie, the first Presbyterian priest to arrive in Kaohsiung, an inscription was uncovered that showed he was the chief engineer on the French steamship SS Dumont d’Urville, named after French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville.
The ship’s keel was laid down at Hong Kong’s Whampoa Dock in 1918. Initially named the SS Hermelin by its British owner, the ship changed hands several times before it was sunk on July 3, 1944, by a US torpedo.
The group found that Crawford was born in Greenock, Scotland, in 1881 and died in Kaohsiung in 1935.
As the ship was sold several times — changing hands between Norwegian, Japanese and French owners, as well as its original British owner — and was built in Hong Kong, the group said it “connects” the international shipping culture of those nations and is a part of the history of World War II.
The group has contacted media in Scotland and hopes to find descendants of Crawford or others who sailed on the ship who can provide more information so that its history can be uncovered.
The group has also called on the Kaohsiung City Government to preserve Crawford’s tomb as a “testimony to the rich historical records of Kaohsiung residents.”
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS