British Not First To Name Hong Kong 最先命名香港的不是英國

Contrary to the popular belief, it was not the British but a man from Boston first named the island Hong Kong on record. 

In 1787, a group of wealthy Bostonian merchants, who owned the ship Columbia Rediviva and consort Lady Washington, financed an expedition for a new trading route with China through the Pacific. John Kendrick, a former privateer and revolutionary war veteran was hired as the overall commander of the expedition and captain of Columbia Rediviva, and Robert Gray as the subordinate captain of Lady Washington. The scheme was to first sail to the Northwest Coast to collect sea otter skins with metals, particularly copper which was highly valued by the native Indians, then sail through the Pacific to Canton to sell the otter skins, which were prized by wealthy Chinese, for a potential profit of several hundred times. The proceed would then be used to buy and ship back to Boston lucrative Chinese products such as tea, porcelain, silk and nankeen cloth.  On 1 October 1787, they left Boston and took almost two years to cultivate the fur trade along the Northwest Coast. The two captains exchanged vessels in Clayoquot Sound before Gray set sail with Columbia Rediviva for China. Kendrick, with Lady Washington, continued to trade for furs and did not set sail for China until two months later.  

On a returning trip in September 1792, Lady Washington met a terrifying typhoon in the South China Sea and was badly damaged with her masts cut off. With no choice but returning to Macao, which she left four days prior, Captain Kendrick led the crew limping northward. On the way, they rescued dozens of Chinese fishermen whose boats were wrecked by the typhoon. It is most likely this kind gesture saved the sailors too as the fishermen led them into a sacred fishing harbour on the south side of Hong Kong Island. There they found pine trees to fix the masts. The harbour must have left a strong impression on Kendrick; after Lady Washington was fully refitted in Macao, he stopped at the island again and spent weeks studying the harbour as well as visiting the interior of the island.  There he met again the villagers, who told him that they called the habour "Hong Kong" and the island "Kong Kong Island". In a letter to then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson dated 1 March 1793, Captain Kendrick put down his address as “Port of Independence, the Island of Heong-Kong.”  In the book “Observation on the South Coast of China and Island of Hainan” published in 1806 by A. Dalrymple, there was a detailed description of the harbour by Kendrick provided in a letter from Mr. Howel to Mr. Gordon and remarked “the above-described harbour appears to have been unknown until Captain Kendrick entered it in September 1792; he revisited it in February 1793 and named it Port Independence.”  Kendrick met his untimely death in December 1794, Lady Washington fell into British hands with navigation records, which unveiled to the British in Hong Kong not only was there a deep sea port with fresh water supply, but also “almost every kind of refreshment, especially fish, hogs, beef and poultry”. In 1806 the East India Company commissioned captain Daniel Ross of Bombay Marine for a detail survey of Cochin China islands, including Hong Kong.  Around 1810, the British changed in their published navigation guides and charts the spelling of Heong-Kong to Hongkong (and later Hong Kong).  

Over time, few paid attention to Captain Kendrick’s initial role in naming Hong Kong, but his pioneering spirit and legacy lived on.  In 1845, an American merchant proposed and arranged to ship ice from Boston to Hong Kong for the first time, a luxury for hot summers. In 1874, a young boy named Chow Cheong-Ling, direct descendant of the village clan leader who provided Kendrick crew with pine trees and fresh supplies over 80 years earlier, was sent by the Tsing Empire to study in the Boston area and attended Phillips Academy at Andover between 1875 and 1881.  Better known as Sir Shouson Chow, he later returned and became an influential politician in Hong Kong.  The government renamed an area near the village as Shouson Hill, thus completing a circle of “naming and being named” started by a man from Boston over two hundred years ago.  

Note: 

In “Observation on the South Coast of China and Island of Hainan” in 1806 A. Dalrymple also wrote: “captain Walter Alves, Ship London. 12 February 1765 East end of Lantao —> Cowhee Passage —> 5pm SW Point of Chinfalo —> Northward of the island Heong-Kong ...... on the whole, this last strait is a passage I’d not recommend, if there had not been a Pilot on board for there is a very clear open passage out to the sea, about two miles westward of this.” It is not clear whether captain Alves called the island Heong-Kong or Dalrymple changed the same, but it appears in 1765 Alves might be the first European to have sailed through the northern Victoria Harbour, and already recognised the island name as Heong-Kong. However, as he did not recommend this passage, nor did he point out any significance of the Hong Kong island or its harbours, Alves did not get any credit for naming the island. 
There was claim that by 1760s, Portugese traders, Sr. Felis Mendoca, called a place on the island Heung Kong O, but could not be independently verified.
廣州一口通商約1762年開始。