Robert J. Newton, another native of the American Northwest, has established his own prosperous business in the colony. Born in Salem, Oregon, he worked as a construction engineer in California, Hawaii and the Philippines. He made his first Hong Kong visit in the early 1930s, found it easy to do business with the people there and was deeply impressed by the skill of its workmen. He returned to the colony often in succeeding years.
He had made the building of boats his lifetime hobby, and was frequently praised for the quality of his craftsmanship. But it was not until the 1950s that he began to consider boat construction as a possible business. His two sons, Whitney and John, became his associates, with John heading a distributorship for Bireley’s soft drinks. Whitney became the manager of American Marine, Ltd., the boat-building yard established by his father.
In 1958, the company set up operations in a tin-roofed shed that was not much larger than a two-car garage. The yard site was along the shore of an inlet on Clear Water Peninsula, nearly five miles due east of Kowloon. Well away from other industrial areas, it lay just across Junk Bay from the Chinese Nationalist refugee settlement at Rennie’s Mill Camp.
American Marine, which produces pleasure boats for the American market, outgrew its corporate cradle in a few weeks; its present shed is 500 feet long and 300 feet wide, and will be doubled in area during 1962. The company turns out 40 to 50 yachts a year, selling from $7,000 to $70,000 each. Mr. Newton and his son are the only Americans in the company; all of their 300 workmen are Chinese.
Mr. Newton’s basic assumption was that he could produce a sailboat, modified luxury junk, motor sailer, or power cruiser to the finest design specifications, ship it to the United States as deck cargo on a freighter, and still undersell American boat-builders by a fair margin. The idea appears to be sound. His yard crew is working on 30 boats at a time and expects to raise its annual output to 80 or 100 boats a year when the enlarged shed has been completed.
Wood for his boats comes from many countries—Sitka spruce, for spars, from the American Northwest; teak from Thailand; and other hardwoods from Borneo and mahogany planking from the Philippines. Engines and fittings come from the United States. The largest of his boats to date is a 59-foot motor sailer, and all are built to the specifications of American marine designers and architects such as Sparkman & Stephens, Inc. of New York, and William Lapworth of Los Angeles. It takes six to eight months to finish most boats.
One problem he has, Mr. Newton explains, is training Chinese workmen to use power tools. Ten years ago power equipment was a great rarity in the colony; now American Marine has 50 electric drills, planers, bandsaws and a bolt-threader. Some of his workmen had never seen a power tool before they were trained to use them at the boatyard. Whitney Newton’s ability to speak Cantonese is helpful, but the instructor has to proceed with the utmost caution in introducing a greenhorn to a bandsaw.
American Marine builds a few modified junks, using American equipment and finishing them like yachts. The three masts of the typical Chinese junk are retained, but the rigging is simplified and the usual ponderous rudder is greatly reduced in size. They sell for $10,000 or more. The Newtons built one for Don the Beachcomber, Hollywood restaurant owner. Americans are often infatuated with the romantic outline of a large working junk, but they would soon go aground trying to handle its complicated sails.
American Marine follows the Chinese practice of paying one month’s bonus to its workers at the New Year. Trucks carry the men to and from work. A barracks and mess hall accommodate those who live at the yard. The hamlet of Hang Hau, half-destroyed by fire years ago and still in ruins, was American Marine’s only neighbor in 1958. Now there is a mill for cold-rolled steel and a ship-breaking shop, with the light-colored buildings of Haven of Hope Sanatorium arrayed along the hills of the opposite shore.
Mandarin Textiles, Ltd., best known in the United States for its Dynasty line of high-styled women’s apparel, is also directed by an American, Linden E. Johnson. Mr. Johnson, who served with the U.S. armed forces in China during World War II, stayed on to become a Shanghai textile executive. When the Reds drove him out of China, he came to Hong Kong and founded Mandarin with a Chinese partner who was murdered by a fellow-Chinese in 1957. Mr. Johnson kept the business going, completed an eight-story plant in Kowloon, near Kai Tak, in 1958, and expanded it into one of the colony’s finest tailoring and designing houses.