Cape D’Aguilar. Every Lighthouse Has a Story to Tell
Cape d’Aguilar - Photo by @Paola Caronni
Hong Kong's southernmost area, past the refined Repulse Bay and the quaint Stanley Village, is a fascinating sequence of bays, beaches, and unspoiled nature. Heading towards Big Wave Bay, a surfing destination, there is a roundabout where a road sign points east, to “Cape d'Aguilar”.
For years, I have been charmed by this name, which made me imagine a lonely and mysterious place, even more so as it is a restricted area, accessible by taxis only or walking 4 kilometres on a pleasant road that runs alongside the sea, not particularly busy, especially on weekdays.
Each time, however, I continued on to Big Wave Bay, inevitably attracted to the village atmosphere with its typical small restaurants, surfboards, fine white sand, and long waves.
After all, what is a 'cape'? A very large piece of land that sticks out into the sea; the end of peninsulas or continents: the limit. One goes there when the right moment comes.
Major-General Sir George Charles D'Aguilar, commander of the British troops in China, was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Hong Kong from 1943 to 1948. The beautiful Flagstaff House, located inside Hong Kong Park, was built for him, and it now houses the Tea Museum. D'Aguilar is remembered in two city locations that are the antithesis of each other: D'Aguilar Street, the central and busy street leading to Lan Kwai Fong (the famous nightlife area), and the remote Cape d'Aguilar.
Finally, a couple of weeks ago, on a warm and sunny Sunday of this particularly mild subtropical winter, I decided to explore this ‘almost off-limits’ place.
The curious toponymy of the city is characterised by the use of English names, especially of Governors of the former British colony or of people who were well-known during those times. However, these names are very often translated, in Cantonese, into something that has nothing to do with the specific person, but which turns out to be very creative. Thus, Cape D'Aguilar, in Cantonese, is Hok Tsui, which means 'crane’s beak'. And indeed, the area is also populated by these birds.
As well as housing the lighthouse with the same name, Cape d'Aguilar is a Marine Reserve. Because of its interesting geology, this area has seen the development, since the 1990s, of the Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS), a division of the School of Biological Sciences of the University of Hong Kong, located not far away.
After walking along the scenic route, I made my way to the lighthouse. These structures, so often talked about in literature (think about Virginia Woolf) and in films (as in the 2016 film ‘The Light Between Oceans’, based on the novel by L.M. Stedman), have always had a great effect on people’s imagination.
Who does live in a lighthouse? Who would want to spend their lives spotting possible enemies, guiding fog-shrouded ships, listening to the eternal rage of the sea - its waves doomed to crash on the highest rock?
In the words of Mrs. Ramsey, in Virginia Woolf's The Lighthouse:
For how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask and to have no letters or newspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married, not to see your wife, not to know how your children were,—if they were ill, if they had fallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea? How would you like that?
And yet, this too was a noble profession. In the case of Hong Kong, lighthouses had a very specific purpose: to defend Victoria Harbour from pirates and invaders. However, the priority only emerged when Hong Kong went from being a barren rock, as it was called in 1841 by Lord Palmerston – Foreign Secretary of the British Empire and a key figure in the cession of Hong Kong to the British Crown at the end of the First Opium War – to a global maritime centre, thanks to the opening of the Suez Canal.
Photo by @Paola Caronni
From a distance, the Cape d'Aguilar lighthouse doesn't look like anything special, although the nearby landscape has its charm: an endless blue sea extending through an open horizon that is rarely seen in Hong Kong, surrounded by islands and islets; a sailing boat slowly approaching; nature growing wild and untamed, and this white structure standing out, shy, against the majesty of the rock that hosts it. The lighthouse, which is the oldest in Hong Kong and has been declared a 'protected monument', was in operation from 1875 to 1896, before returning to automatic lighting in 1975.
I walk along a short path and when I get there, the whiteness of the lime glowing and covering the tall granite structure, together with the scent of shrubs and trees, reminds me of my beloved Mediterranean. The base of the tower and the arched entrance feature some beige stone blocks. The wrought iron door has geometric decorations. On top of it, the number 158.
Next to the lighthouse, nestled on top of the cliff, are some small white houses with red roofs: probably the residences of the staff who manages the area.
Photo by @Paola Caronni
I head down to the sea, which splashes against the long, flat shoreline. A black heron lands between the grey polished rock and the fluorescent green sea moss: it’s a precious occasion for several photoshoots. A little further on, I venture into the Thunder Cave: a narrow crevice in the rocks that opens to the sea, sending out puffs of salty steam. This too is a destination for aspiring photographers and young people looking for the perfect Instagram shots.
From where I sit, contemplating the landscape, I can see one of the two military batteries dating back to the Second World War: the Cape D'Aguilar Battery, built in 1939 and equipped with two cannons supplied by the Royal Navy, ammunition bunkers, observation posts, and pillboxes.
As I head back towards the road, I take a last look at the lighthouse, thinking about its keepers. I remember reading that the last keeper of a Hong Kong lighthouse did not live on Cape d'Aguilar, but on Waglan Island, a real barren rock in the South China Sea. He left it on a cold November day in 1989. Since then, all the lights in the area have been automated.
One wonders what role a lighthouse can still play in an age of satellite navigation, other than to inspire nostalgic and poetic thoughts. In reality, in an emergency, the lighthouse still offers guiding assistance to sea captains.
By some strange coincidence, it seems that all lighthouse keepers in the former British colony were Eurasian, typically sons of British servicemen and local Chinese mothers, and that they proudly developed specific skills in this field. Perhaps the fact that they did not fully belong to either Western or Eastern culture made them feel in synergy with the lighthouse: a light indispensable to all, but on the edge of a territory, of space and time.
And so, as I leave Cape d'Aguilar, its waves, and the insistent wind that carries the scent of the sea elsewhere, I feel as if I were taken right there, into the infinite blue, cradled by the waves. And like the protagonist of ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel T. Coleridge, I am about to sight the coast, wondering if this, too, is now my country.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—
On me alone it blew.
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree?
Link to the article in Italian, published in ‘Ciao Magazine’ here
Photo by @Paola Caronni