Beyond Lion Rock: The Story of Cathay Pacific Airways (14 page)

A fair prediction. And Jock added an important suggestion:

A concentration by CNCo on the China–Hong Kong–Straits passenger and cargo trade – that was to be the big idea now. As if nothing much had
happened in the last five years, Chinese were once more shuttling busily between South East Asia and the Fukien coast of China. Family links, holiday visits and trade had revived immediately after the Japanese collapse. And this had a great significance for the future of Swires in the East, for it made them think seriously again of ‘going into Air’.

‘We must protect the Air over our ships’ – whoever first uttered it, that phrase began to sound round Swire boardroom meetings and in memoranda like a bugle-call to rally jaded soldiers to fresh glory and adventure. Perhaps someone had thought it up during a long night’s German Blitz during the war, and it sounded like Jock. At any rate it concentrated the Swire mind on the wonderful idea of
themselves
‘going into Air’ at last, of carrying on from the day when the shutters came down on the Imperial Airways office as the Japanese approached, and Walter Lock’s thoughts turned to a B&S air service from Hong Kong to Singapore via Manila and Borneo.

Jock returned to Hong Kong from China and on 11 May made a most significant, if laconic, entry in his diary: ‘Morton gives a very good account of Holyman of A.N.A.’

R. W. Morton, from CNCo’s agent Colyer Watson Pty Ltd of Australia, was visiting Hong Kong, and Holyman was Captain Ivan Holyman, Managing Director of Australian National Airways, a great man of Australian flying and an outstanding personality among airline pioneers. It was to be with Holyman’s expert advice and cooperation that Swires would be able to get off to a good start in Air, a new area of activity of which – canny traders and veteran shippers though they were – they knew nothing.

In June Jock and John Scott were in Melbourne dining with Ivan Holyman and discussing with rising excitement the ANA air service to Hong Kong on which Holyman had set his heart, despite strong opposition from the leader of the ruling Labour Party, Mr Ben Chifley, to the very existence of privately owned and independent airlines like ANA. Jock enthusiastically supported Holyman: ‘Agreed [he wrote] we must get HK Government to ask for Air Service at once as ANA are at present the only people who can put on a service. Holyman is obviously a fighter,’ he added approvingly. The very next day things went a stage further: ‘Spent the afternoon with Ivan Holyman fixing up [for B&S to have] the ANA agency for HK, China and Japan.’ Jock’s liking for Holyman knew no bounds, and that evening he noted, ‘This is quite the most outstanding man we have yet met.’

Ivan Holyman and ANA had been brought to Jock Swire’s attention by R. A. Colyer, who in a letter to Warren Swire the previous year had urged a getting together of B&S and ANA – ‘a dovetailing’ was the way he had put
it. Colyer pointed out that Holyman not only had experience in air transportation stretching back to the early 1930s, but he ‘was also unflinchingly straight’. ANA had initially been keen to operate a service to China on their own, but Colyer had assured Holyman that Swires’ experience of the region would serve a very useful purpose. To this Warren Swire replied that ‘we are seriously interested in these kind of projects in your direction’. He went on to visualize a possible ANA air service: ‘I should think Australia/Java/Indo-China/New Guinea/Borneo/Hong Kong.’
Furthermore
, B&S had the engineering background of the Taikoo Dockyard, which should be available to ANA. And he echoed Walter Lock: ‘Another possibility is
a Hong Kong company in which we might take an interest
.’ (My italics.)

When C. C. Roberts, Swires’ Taipan in Hong Kong, approached him, Uncle Moe Moss, the friendly Director of Air Services, was encouraging. He knew and approved of Holyman and ANA, and appreciated the desirability of setting up a cheap and unsubsidized British line between Hong Kong and Australia before any Chinese or Americans could push their way in. Aware that Holyman wanted to use Skymaster DC-4s on the proposed route, Uncle Moe confirmed that DC-4s could land at Kai Tak, although they were the largest aircraft able to do so. (Incidentally, Moss also disclosed government plans for an entirely new airport with minimum runways of 3,000 yards ‘capable of accommodating any plane at present in existence or likely to be for some years to come’. The image of this ‘entirely new airport’ will come and go like a mirage as this history progresses. It is an exciting idea and remains one to this day. In 1988, it is still the merest gleam in many an ambitious Hong Kong developer’s eye.)

Jock Swire and John Scott left Sydney for London in a euphoric state of mind that was undiminished by a breakdown in Darwin of the Qantas flying boat, necessitating a twenty-four-hour wait on board in acute discomfort; by a dust storm that forced them to overfly Basra; and by a starboard engine struck by lightning that forced their plane back to Marseilles and delayed their arrival at Poole seadrome by three hours. ‘Rather frightening,’ Jock admitted – but it wasn’t going to put him off Air.

*

Nevertheless, government obstruction defeated private enthusiasm.
Despite
all Holyman’s fighting qualities and Jock Swire’s support, an independent ANA Australia-Hong Kong link was not to be, thanks to the Australian Government’s opposition and the contention of the British Ministry of Civil Aviation and the government-subsidized airline BOAC
that this route should be reserved for the Australian Government-owned Qantas, with which BOAC was affiliated. Nor were the efforts of Holyman’s colleague, Ian Grabowsky, to engage CNAC in a China–Australia service any more successful. Thus it was that the aviation ball bounced back, so to speak, to the original exciting idea – that of a Hong Kong-based air company in which B&S might take a leading interest. Was there such a company in existence already, they wondered? Or would it be necessary to create one from scratch?

The following note dictated by Jock Swire in early 1947 gives the first reference to the Roy-Syd combination:

Those possibilities were considerable. Roy, Syd and CPA had come to a crossroads – perhaps the end of a line. Despite the unquestionable success of their operations, the times were changing and with them international
attitudes
to commercial aviation. Tramps were on the way out; the age of hotly competitive
scheduled
airline operations had begun. It would be an age, as we all now know, of regulation, of rigid controls, so to launch a scheduled airline meant obtaining franchises – or licences – to use certain routes on a regular basis. The power to bestow the necessary franchise to operate a Hong Kong-based air company lay exclusively in the hands of the Colony’s Government as represented by the DCA – a unique franchise for a single company. As it happened, the Colony’s officials were strongly sympathetic to CPA, yet the fact that it was partly owned by Americans told fatally against it. Furthermore, CPA (and potentially Swires) had a rival: Hong Kong Airways. HKA had been formed just after the war by Swires’ competitor, Jardine Matheson, but still lacked a single aircraft to start operations.

Hankering for its own company in Hong Kong, BOAC, backed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in London, strongly opposed the
enfranchisement
of CPA, and now persuaded Jardines to sell them HKA with which to lay claim to the coveted franchise. The Hong Kong Government, however, refused to grant any franchise until CPA had been given a chance to dispose of its American holding. Just then Skyways arrived on the Hong Kong scene. At this dramatic juncture, that company might have seized for itself a great Far Eastern future by buying CPA from Roy and Syd for a reasonable price, making of it a brand new British-owned company (newly christened Cathay Pacific Skyways, or what you will) and thus run away with the Hong Kong franchise. But it didn’t. For Mr Curtis’s ‘investigation’ led to Brigadier General Critchley’s botched bid for Roy and Syd’s pet company – a bid they both had considered outrageously stingy and which Roy had repulsed with his offer to take on the Brigadier at golf, barefoot if necessary. The way was open for Swires to move in, and the lines of destiny guiding John Swire & Sons and CPA finally came together.

Letter from B&S to John Swire & Sons Ltd, London:

To this last sentence, someone at Swires in London (possibly Jock) has added a pencilled note: ‘Let’s form a new company. ANA, Cathay Pacific, Far East Aviation and as far as necessary or advisable, B&S. Skyways?’ (Far East Aviation Co. Ltd owned the Hong Kong Flying Training School, a trio of diminutive and out-of-date aircraft and very little cash, but it was a Hong Kong company.)

‘
Let’s form a new company
’ – at last it was in writing!

Syd de Kantzow was all for a new company. He wrote to his friend Ivan Holyman that CPA was quite prepared to discuss how ANA, B&S and CPA might merge to ‘undertake and operate an airline service and maintenance overhaul factory in the Far East initially and possibly later elsewhere’. CPA, he added proudly, had by far the largest airline maintenance and overhaul organization, had its own Board of Directors and was subject to direction by its parent organizations on broad policy only. For himself, he wanted membership of that Board and a senior executive or managerial position. And to retain his financial holding in the new company. Jock read his copy of Syd’s letter and scribbled on it, ‘So far so good.’

Indeed, CPA represented Swires’ only immediate hope of getting into the air: it already had the right to operate a Hong Kong–Singapore service, and its airline maintenance station at Kai Tak could become the new Air Repair Depot B&S envisaged. FEA’s main appeal as a partner was that it would bring a little extra local standing in the eyes of the Hong Kong Government; as for ANA, it was Swires’ ‘first love’. Holyman as a character had really bowled Jock over, and more practically speaking could provide all the flying and technical experience that Swires lacked. Apart from that, Holyman thought the world of Syd and could handle him – a most important point, for handling Syd, Jock thought, might well be a knotty problem. Syd was proud; Syd was touchy. B&S must show him no condescension – indeed should
feel
none. True, a potential part of that problem was soon resolved. Syd and Roy and everybody else had agreed to accept Ian Grabowsky’s expert evaluation of CPA. There was no ill-natured haggling as with Critchley, so that was one major hurdle virtually overcome.

Yet there was an obvious problem to be faced: just how independent was the new CPA flying or operating company to be from the parent companies Taikoo and ANA? Holyman and Grabowsky seemed to think that the new flying company should maintain a wholly separate identity: an independent organization, they argued, has more drive and energy than one that is ‘lost’ in a large concern. Swires for their part fought shy of giving unfettered control of ‘their’ CPA to de Kantzow. They were an old, successful and experienced firm, extremely cautious and generally conservative, and with
Air they felt they were moving into a strange and possibly treacherous world. They did not want to have to rely on de Kantzow’s judgement on all matters of policy that might arise. They wanted a hand on the brake. Furthermore, Taikoo’s object in ‘going into Air’ was to complement its shipping activities, and from this didn’t it follow that both Shipping and Air should both be under Taikoo management? Of course, on the other hand Swires recognized that without CPA they would have no airline to operate and no prospect of getting one; they would have no ground at Kai Tak except the Flying School’s patch, and they would have no equipment. Worse still: if Swires declined to play, CPA could perfectly well turn round and sell out the whole caboodle to the opposition, Jardines, who would no doubt snap it up greedily.

The truth was that the B&S people could not suppress a lurking unease for what one might call ‘the Syd’s Pirates factor’. For instance, it had been alleged (particularly by Skyways) that Syd had allowed CPA to operate without much regard for Certificates of Airworthiness, loadsheets, and such like. Was this true? According to Chic Eather: ‘It was a justifiable criticism. Don’t forget the CPA lot had come up in a hard school. They’d been fighting a war. We were all a bit too young and foolish.’ One can see that, and yet still agree with Swires that any future accident which inquiry showed to be the result of slackness of any kind would have a disastrous effect on the good name of the new operators, with repercussions for Swires. One couldn’t ignore that. Hence the insistence at Taikoo on keeping an eye, though a comradely one, on all flying operations managed by de Kantzow.

At this point Skyways reappeared. Since Skyways had recently
abandoned
their agents, Jardine Matheson, and moved to B&S, Jock urged Critchley to forget their falling out with Syd and Roy and join the new CPA: perhaps Roy had ‘opened his mouth too wide’ with him. This was not (nor is it now) Farrell’s view. He considered he had opened his mouth just wide enough, considering he ‘hadn’t cared a rat’s ass’ [one of his favourite expressions] whether the Skyways–CPA deal fell through or not. It was no doubt easy for people from London to underestimate the immense pride he and Syd took in the airline they had built up from nothing, and to fail to appreciate how little these tough-minded war veterans were prepared to put up with patronizing attitudes from anyone, particularly ‘Pommie bastards’. It was as simple as that.

Nevertheless the fact was that those talks with Critchley had inflamed Skyways against the character of our heroes. Neither Maurice Curtis nor Captain Ashley, Critchley’s Managing Director, made any bones about their belief that the Cathay Pacific people were a bunch of adventurers living
to a large extent on what they earned from carrying gold to Macao, an operation they had started up some time previously. Ashley said quite bluntly that he had no opinion at all of de Kantzow, whose sole value, as he saw it, lay in his influence with Moss, the DCA. Ashley evidently was also deeply jealous of ANA, claiming to believe that the Australian Government would soon ‘see them off’.

How could Skyways possibly become a partner in the merger if that was their attitude? Ashley indeed sounds like a very embittered man, and he cut no ice with Jock Swire, who shrewdly regarded his attempts to belittle de Kantzow as a deliberate effort to wreck the whole merger. For this part, in continuing dealings with Syd, Jock found him quite prepared to cooperate. ‘De Κ.,’ he wrote, ‘is very amenable to advice from ANA and ourselves and regards us as his friends. He cannot see why Skyways should be in the thing at all and is still very sore at the way Critchley treated him last year.’ And to his directors in London Jock repeated a final warning: ‘De Kantzow is no rabbit. He has other buyers waiting at the door and will not hesitate for one moment to tell us to go to hell if he thinks we are treating him unfairly. He has implicit faith in ANA, and the freemasonry of these Australians is extraordinary. David and Jonathan are as nothing compared to Grabowsky and de Κ.’ Of course, Jock admitted, Syd was such an individualist that he
might
suddenly tire of working in a team and go off on some adventure in some other part of the world. He would be less likely to do so if Swires gave him his head to a reasonable extent on the operating side and made a success of Cathay. Of course, only time would tell: ‘Personally, I’m hopeful.’

Jock found two other sources of hope. The first was a visit to Kai Tak, where CPA had just bought five huts in the centre of the airfield to serve as a repair depot and where he talked with Bill ‘Hokum’ Harris, the No. 1 there, whom he liked enormously. And second, Swires’ people at CNCo were delighted to take Air under their wing, and everyone agreed that Swires’ shipping staff, with their commercial experience and local knowledge, could take care of CPA’s business management side.

The negotiations that led to the new ownership of Cathay Pacific took a long time; letters, cables and memoranda flew back and forth between the interested parties in London, Hong Kong and Melbourne through the early months of 1948, filling a number of fat files. Bridget Swire, Jock’s daughter, was acting as his travelling secretary at this point and still remembers the drama of it all. ‘I remember Grab arriving in Hong Kong with a few dozen Australian oysters for my father. We all had them for lunch out at Shek’O [the Swire Taipan’s house near the south-eastern point of the island]. The long talks afterwards were clearly a success and I was told that the matter
was very hush-hush. The whole atmosphere at the time was one of secrecy and suppressed excitement that B&S were “going into Air”.’ There was even a proposal (from someone in London) that the airline should change the wonderful name Roy and his partner had chosen for it:

Luckily B&S in Hong Kong spiked this uninspired idea.

*

From time to time Jock escaped from this flurry of paper and resumed his travels. His genial, bear-like figure, greying moustache and soft hat were to be seen moving indefatigably about the East – taking ship (and his delicate stomach) once more up to the China coast and to Japan, flying back to Hong Kong, down to Sydney and Melbourne, back again to Hong Kong. Dutifully he filled his diary with the multitudinous problems that he, as Chairman of John Swire & Sons, was required to handle with the aplomb of an expert juggler.

Shipping:

Politics:

His own health:

Another aspect of Air: 

Air again:

At one point Jock sighed to himself, ‘This air business is certainly terrifying and they talk the most fantastic figures.’ But after another visit to Melbourne he was more satisfied than ever that ‘ANA are really good people’ – it was a point he had to hammer home again and again to his
ultra-cautious
colleagues in London.