Wednesday, February 25, 2015

That Man Bolt - Fred Williamson (1973) - HK Macau Ferry Terminal, Sheung Wan

Seeing as we were just talking about the Ferry terminal, then why not take a quick look.The hydrofoil that we just saw leaving HK for Macau suddenly does an about turn and arrives back in HK. Amazing!


As you can see the hydrofoil goes past one of the larger slow passenger ferries, the Wah Shan, before tying up against the ferry pier. The old pier/terminal we have seen a couple of times on this blog previously (for example in The Man with the Golden Gun and Flatfoot in Hong Kong) but this film beats them by a couple of years.


I'm sure this brings back some memories for anyone who lived in or visited the place prior to the Shun Tak Centre being constructed because that's pretty much what sits on this site now.Is that larger ferry the Wah Shan? If we assume the filming of this scene was done with reasonable continuity then I guess it should be but, to be honest, these outside scenes showing the wider angle could have been filmed at anytime. Perhaps there is a HK<>Macau Ferry expert who can confirm the name of that ship?

Anyway, getting closer, we see Bolt and his RHKP escort leave the terminal building and get into a car before driving off.

4 comments:

gweilo8888 said...

I've had this one in the back of my mind to return to for a while, and I've just done so. I can definitely rule out the blue-funneled ferry being the Wah Shan, as she looked like this:

http://www.uwants.com/attachments2/day_070716/20070716_d3a25353aaf99b871c45apKwwbS2977n.jpg

You can see the little canopy at her stern in your first screenshot, so of course, the continuity guys got this one wrong. Surprise, surprise. ;-)

So which *is* she? That's a tougher call. As far as I'm aware, there are only three possibilities, all of which are *very* similar to each other: Nam Shan (南山輪), Tai Shan (泰山輪) and Lo Shan (盧山輪).

Tai Shan had a yellow/orange funnel in the only picture of her that I can find. That doesn't definitively rule her out, though, as the color could easily have been changed:

http://www.uwants.com/attachments2/day_070716/20070716_45d90fea4d0462fff5c0YcFAtSiqWp3F.jpg

Lo Shan is the least like her sisters, with completely different bridge windows. She had the right funnel color, but if you look at her foreward mast, she had two radars, one above the other. She also had a small cutout over the front two passenger windows in the row directly above the Union Jack. It looks to me like your screenshot shows a single radar and no cutout.

http://www.uwants.com/attachments2/day_070716/20070716_9b3ffa81abc6118e718cLcmzb8OzHwg8.jpg

Go back to that Tai Shan image, and she, too, has that cutout foreward of her port running light and above the windows. She also seems to lack a rotating radar in the picture we have, with something smaller in the same position.

That leaves Nam Shan, for which sadly our picture is the lowest quality of the bunch. We can see, however, that there's only one radar, and no cutout over the windows:

http://www.uwants.com/attachments2/day_070716/20070716_f6b0ca714f34e7814029frrSoJeLEjLP.jpg

That strongly suggests to me that the ferry in your photos is Nam Shan. If anybody can find a photo I couldn't and prove it either way, I'd love to hear from them, though!

And by the way, the original source for all of these images was the following blog, which has versions linked from a Google server in case the links above happen to go down:

http://oceandeeop3000.blogspot.hk/2008/05/blog-post_24.html

gweilo8888 said...

Update: Lo Shan definitely had the blue funnel instead of yellow/orange as of the 1980s. Here she is, clearly sporting her blue funnel and with the name on her stern quite readable:

http://www.hkmemory.hk/collections/hkplaces/AllItems/images/201107/t20110723_43797.html

You can still see the cutout and second radar though, so I still think it's Nam Shan.

And as an aside, you can also see two of the three Shan sisters together in this shot, showing the different funnel colors at the same time. It looks like whenever the color change happened, it didn't happen simultaneously for all three:

http://www.hkmemory.hk/collections/hkplaces/AllItems/images/201107/t20110723_43798.html

Phil said...

I'm impressed. Other than it having a slope on the funnel top, I can't really tell the difference. If it helps there is a partial front view of the Nam Shan on this previous entry (from 1975).

http://hongkongandmacaufilmstuff.blogspot.hk/2012/04/flatfoot-in-hong-kong-bud-spencer-1975_27.html

gweilo8888 said...

Hah -- yeah, I meant to mention that as I saw it while I was digging for photos of the ferries. When I came to write the post, I'd forgotten it, though...

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