The long-liner ranks as the giant of the junk fleet, having an overall length between 80 and 100 feet. Junks of this class fish from 20 to 60 miles south of the colony, cruising above a vast expanse of underwater flats where depths seldom exceed 90 feet and the muddy bottom makes other kinds of fishing unfeasible.
A typical long-liner under construction at the Yee Hop Shipyard in Shau Kei Wan has a 90-foot length and the elephantine stern characteristic of its class. Its high poop carries bunks for 16 men, with additional bunks located forward and a total crew capacity of 57 men, sandwiched in with no more than a yard of clearance between upper and lower bunks. Eight sampans can be stowed along its deck and lowered over the side when the fishing grounds are reached. Despite its traditional outline, it has Diesel engines, twin-screw propellors and a 20-ton fishhold lined with modern insulation material.
Costing about $36,000 with full equipment, one long-liner, for example, was ordered by Hai Lee Chan, a Shau Kei Wan fisherman who already owned another like it, plus two smaller junks. During the two and one-half months that 35 carpenters required to complete it, Mrs. Chan and her twelve-year-old daughter remained on or around the junk to keep a watchful eye on its construction. A long-liner of this kind may put out as many as 100,000 hooks on lines attached to its bow and stern or strung out by its covey of sampans. A single trip to the fishing grounds may keep it at sea for a week or more and bring a ten-ton catch of golden thread, shark and lizard fish.
Comparable in size but differing completely in design are two deep-sea trawlers built at the Kwong Lee Cheung Shipyard in Kowloon. These are sister ships, 86 feet long, and the first ones of their size that faithfully followed the modern specifications laid down by Mr. Cheung and the Fisheries Department. They were the first big trawlers constructed according to written plans and framed around modern templates or patterns in Hong Kong.
As they neared completion late in 1961, the twin wooden trawlers of 100 tons each looked more like dismasted clipper ships than junks. The old type of high poop had been cut down and crew quarters moved forward. The fat, bulging stern had been slimmed down to improve the streamline, and the traditional rudder-slot was gone. The deck was level and uncluttered, with far more working space than older junks provided. The outline of the hull was slim and graceful, giving more longitudinal stability than the tub-bottomed junk. The free-swinging tiller and massive wooden rudder had been replaced by a ship’s wheel and a much smaller rudder of steel that turned on a metal shaft. Powered winches would be welded to their decks. Mechanized and streamlined, the new trawlers could deliver more speed than a motorized trawler of conventional shape, and require less fuel to do it.
When the two partners who had ordered the trawlers, fishermen Lee Loy Shing and Cheng Chung Kay, smilingly greeted visitors to the yard, pointing out the features of their new ships with considerable pride, it was evident that they regarded the old-style junk as an expensive antique. Mechanization has already proved itself; although mechanized boats number less than half the fishing fleet, they take 80 percent of the catch. Many fishermen are beginning to believe that modern ship design is as important to the future of Hong Kong’s fishing fleet as mechanization.
Steel-hulled trawlers of the Japanese “bull” type are already being used by the fishing companies in the colony. One dozen of them operate in the Gulf of Tong King, near Hainan Island. However, they are much too costly for most fishing families.
Colony fishing methods are as varied as the boats used. The deep-sea trawlers, generally working in pairs, drag a huge bag-shaped net along the sea bottom, gathering in horsehead and red snapper, or red goatfish and golden thread. Purse-seiners, working in pairs and fairly close to shore, stretch a big net between them at night and use a bright light to lure such smaller fish as anchovies and carangoid into the net. The Pa T’eng seiners set gill nets along the bottom for yellow croaker, and drift nets for white pomfret and mackerel. Other types include gill-netters, shrimp beam-trawlers, and three smaller classes of long-liners. About twenty kinds of fish form most of the catch, and among these are conger pike, big eyes, grouper, young barracuda and red sea bream.
The ship carpenters of Hong Kong are far above average ability, so much so that the Chinese Communists have attempted, without notable success, to induce them to build junks in China. Demand for their skills has, however, raised their wages about one-third in the last two years.