Hebe and Hiram
The naming of Sai Kung
In 1877 visiting ships sitting in the harbour were big news for the Colony and those with names like HMSS Plover, Starling, Sulphur, and Hebe made the front page.
It seems that there were many ships christened Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth and cupbearer to the gods at Olympus, but the one that is suggested as the origin of the name for what we now know as Hebe Haven was a British minesweeper of the Halcyon class – build at Devonport (UK) in 1935 and launched in October 1936. She sank off Bari on ovember 22, 1943 after a collision with a mine laid by a German submarine.
Capt. C. Potts on the other hand, never made the front page in his days in Hong Kong – he was a member of the Marine Commando unit who was ordered by the occupying Japanese forces to supervise the restoration of a track connecting Clearwater Bay Road with the fishing community of Sai Kung. Evidently, according to old war cronies, he had “gained something of a unique reputation in the mess of being highly appreciative of the somewhat unusual taste of Hiram Potts sausages – with the inevitable results that he became known to his friends as ‘Hiram’. A recent discussion forum called him “a brilliant bloke, nutter yet, but brilliant”!
Are you curious about the origins of other names in the Sai Kung District? Send us an email and we’ll do some research.