Osprey - Project A (1983)

Not a location this time but rather a small snippet of (rather sad) history surrounding a ship that was used in Jackie Chan's Project A back in 1983. You will remember the scene when a Rear Admiral and his entourage are attacked and kidnapped from their ship by pirates. Anyway, it turns out that the ship used by JC for this scene was a familiar sight around HK in the 1970s and 80's. It was called the Osprey and was (according to various comments on FLICKR) was rebuilt in the mid-70's in Denmark (from an iron 'Baltic Trader') by a chap called Arthur Erickson. It was used for various sailings before eventually ending up in Hong Kong and was obviously of the right vintage for JC and co to use it for these sea-based scenes. Here are some more screen grabs.

A beautiful looking ship, I'm sure you will agree, and if anyone is in any doubt as to its identity, here is a sneaky grab that captures the vessel's name as it passes by the pirate junk.

Sadly, and it must have been fairly soon after it was featured in this film in 1983, the 56-metre ship sank with the loss of all but 1 crew member in the late summer of 1983. September of that year saw the arrival of Typhoon Ellen which blew the hell out of the territory. The Osprey had sailed about 12 miles south of HK in order to ride out the storm but was sunk with the loss of 8(?) crew members. The survivor, Hiraoki Ogura, was picked up later by the Wanshan Islands (about 20 miles SW of HK) after seemingly floating there from the sinking site. Very lucky considering how big the waves must have been and the fact that the waters around HK were notorious (at that time) for shark attacks.