RAS Shanghai – Saturday June 16 – Tim Luard on The One-Legged Admiral

Posted: June 14th, 2012 | No Comments »

 

RAS WEEKENDER

Saturday 16th June 2012 at 4.00pm

The Tavern, Radisson Blu Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 Xing Guo Road, Shanghai

TIM LUARD

ON

THE ONE-LEGGED ADMIRAL’S ESCAPE FROM HONG KONG

In one of the most remarkable adventures of the Second World War, Admiral Chan Chak and more than sixty British companions broke out through the Japanese lines within hours of Hong Kong’s surrender on Christmas Day 1941.  As the rest of the colony buckled down to long years of occupation, they sped by torpedo boat through the night to Mirs Bay and marched for four days across occupied China to freedom. The one-legged admiral (the only person ever to have served as China’s official representative in the British colony) left behind his wooden leg when he had to swim for his life in a barrage of gunfire and after hiding in a cave was later carried over the hills and rivers of Guangdong in a sedan chair.

The motley escape party also included the future head of Hong Kong’s post-war civil administration (David MacDougall), bickering staff and intelligence officers carrying sensitive military information, old-school naval commanders and a raucous array of sailors.  The survivors from the Royal Navy party reached home five months later after travelling overland right across the Chinese interior (the first time the Royal Navy had been seen there since the Opium War).  The escape was hailed as an unprecedented example of Sino-British cooperation and the admiral was knighted.

Tim Luard will give an illustrated talk on the escape, focusing on who the different members of the party were and how they came to be among the lucky few who got away.  He will also be signing copies of his recently published book, Escape from Hong Kong: Admiral Chan Chak’s Christmas Day Dash, 1941.

Tim Luard graduated in Chinese at Edinburgh University in 1973 and spent the next seven years in Hong Kong, working as a freelance journalist.  Highlights of his 23-year career at the BBC included covering the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square during a two-year stint as Beijing Correspondent for the World Service and making a 6-part radio series on the history of Hong Kong to mark the handover. Tim and his wife Alison — whose father Colin McEwan was a member of Admiral Chan’s party — retraced the escapers’ 80-mile route to Huizhou on foot in 2009 and put together an exhibition on the escape which is showing till the end of 2012 at the Hong Kong Coastal Defense Museum.

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