HONG KONG — On a damp Monday morning in Hong Kong, Freeman Ng watched from the top deck of the Star Ferry as it approached land. A sailor threw a heavy rope at a colleague on the pier, who looped it around a bollard as the roar of waves slammed into the green-and-white vessel coming in from Victoria Harbour.
Mr Ng, 43, commutes most weekdays by ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island. The subway would be much faster, but Mr. Ng prefers to cross the harbor by boat. “The feeling is better on the ferry,” he said, taking in the salty air.
Hong Kong has suffered many victims in the past three years. Massive social unrest in 2019 scared off tourists and hit restaurateurs and hoteliers. Coronavirus restrictions have wiped out thousands of mom-and-pop stores. But the prospect of losing the Star Ferry – a 142-year-old institution – has resonated differently.
Since the pandemic began, the crowds that Mr Ng once thronged to squeeze onto the ferry’s gangway have disappeared. Passengers are now so few that the company that owns Star Ferry says the service may end soon, dimming the life of the port and the city itself.
“It has so much history,” said Chan Tsz Ho, a 24-year-old assistant helmsman. “In the minds of Hong Kong people, including me, it’s an emblem of Hong Kong.”
Like Hong Kong, the Star Ferry once served as a link between the East and the West. It was the first public ferry service in 1880 connecting Hong Kong Island to the Kowloon Peninsula and the Chinese territory beyond. The founder, a Parsi baker and businessman, arrived in the city from Mumbai decades earlier as a stowaway on a ship bound for China.
By the time of his arrival, Hong Kong, newly colonized by the British, was already turning into a boomtown with corruption, drugs and disease on land and piracy and smuggling on water. A police force made up of European, Chinese and South Asian agents tried to maintain order.
Dorabjee Naorojee Mithaiwala, the founder of the ferry, named his first four ships Morning Star, Evening Star, Rising Star and Guiding Star. The current fleet includes eight boats that have changed little in the six decades since they were built. All eight have a star in their name.
The Star Ferry became the lifeblood of Hong Kong. Residents depended on it so much that a government-approved rate hike in 1966 sparked days of protests, heralding social unrest that culminated in deadly demonstrations and riots a year later. British officials eventually responded with policy reforms.
The Star Ferry riots symbolized the power of protest in Hong Kong, but when the ferry jolted through the harbor during a recent trip, with sailors pulling on a chain to lower a red and yellow gangway, that history seemed inconspicuous to the scattered passengers that dripped. off the boat.
Issac Chan’s first memory of the Star Ferry was five decades ago, when his parents took him on an adventure as a young boy. “It was slow, but it was fun. It was not easy going out to sea in a boat,” he said. Mr Chan, 58, grew up in the New Territories, near the border with mainland China.
Today he takes the ferry every morning after his shift as a night watchman in a residential building on Old Peak Road, an affluent area where the Chinese could not own property before part of British rule. The ride gives him time to relax at the end of his workday, he said.
When the British handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997, some who had fled to Hong Kong from China during the Cultural Revolution and later the bloody Tiananmen warfare from China feared they would have to flee again. Instead, life went on and little seemed to change for decades. Hong Kong continued to thrive as a hub for international finance and a stopover for travelers in Asia.
After the city built a harbor tunnel in 1972, other forms of public transportation offered faster journeys and the ferry began to rely more on foreign visitors who jumped on the boat for an inexpensive tour of the city. Commuters and itinerant passengers with cameras around their necks sometimes sat cheek to cheek, taking in the sights of flashing neon billboards, robber boats and shard-like skyscrapers soaring toward Victoria Peak.
Still, the Star Ferry would witness uproar again.
In 2019, clashes in Hong Kong between pro-democracy protesters and riot police were broadcast around the world. Protesters wearing helmets and goggles made their way to demonstrations demanding political freedom from China. Streets once crowded with tourists were shrouded in tear gas.
The clashes sparked fierce crackdown on Beijing and marked the beginning of the Star Ferry’s recent financial troubles, with the company saying it has lost more money in the 30 months since the protests erupted than it has made in the past three decades. While the ferries can still be crowded at certain times of the day, especially when the weather is nice, the total number of passengers is well below the level of three years ago.
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“The business is bleeding hard and we absolutely have to find our way out,” said David Chow Cheuk-yin, the general manager. Chow has appealed to the public through media appearances, hoping that a cry for help will resonate with an entrenched investor in a city built by business magnates.
When he was asked to take charge of the Star Ferry late last year, things looked good, said Mr. chow. Hong Kong had declared victory over the virus. Small businesses nearly destroyed by pandemic restrictions that had largely cut off Hong Kong from the rest of the world began planning to reopen fully. Some lawmakers have even discussed easing border controls.
“We talked about recovery when I first took on this role,” said Mr. chow.
Then Omicron broke through the fortress walls of Hong Kong, forcing restaurants, bars, gyms and schools to close. “Instead of recovery, we’re talking about survival mode,” said Mr. chow. “Everything changed so quickly.”
For Mr. Chan, the assistant mate, being a seaman is a long-standing family tradition. His father, also a Star Ferry sailor, gave him tales of the sea as a young boy. His grandfather, a fisherman, also told stories. So when a vacancy opened up for an internship at Star Ferry three years ago, Mr. Chan jumped.
The baby-faced boatman, who stands out among Star Ferry’s weathered older sailors, said he would spend the rest of his life on the water if given the chance. His favorite part of the job is navigating the vagaries of the current and steering the ferries in challenging weather, plotting different paths each time, he said.
When the fog hangs over the water and obscures visibility in the busy harbor, he and the crew must use both their ears and their eyes to navigate. “You can’t even see the other end of your own ship,” he said.
Mr. Chan’s young face betrayed a hint of disappointment as he began to explain that his morning shift is now starting an hour later because the ferry has cut its hours. For most of this year, it had also stopped two hours earlier at night. The sound of passengers turning on the wooden seats of the ferry is muffled.
“Sometimes only one or two passengers cross the harbor,” Mr. Chan said, “but we are a full crew.”
Joy Dong reporting contributed.
