Beyond Lion Rock

by Gavin Young

  Suddenly it was time to reflect on the nature of the man and on the meaning of Jock’s leadership. Those who worked with him speak of Jock as a great man; but that does not mean he was free of all human failing. His son Adrian points to an angry, impatient side to his father that now and again erupted with Vesuvian effect. ‘He didn’t stand fools or malingerers gladly. He could be quite frightening – he gave his senior colleagues hell from time to time. But it was never his way to bully his juniors. He was not a bully. Ever.’

  Mrs Joan Esnouf who was Jock’s personal secretary and assistant for many years, including those of the Second World War and the Blitz, says of him: ‘Terribly generous. Terribly impulsive. Terribly impatient.’

  ‘Autocratic?’

  ‘No-o-o. Not that. And not really frightening – he had this saving sense of humour, you see. He had a temper, yes, but if he was in the wrong he became very upset and would rush back into the room crying, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so terribly sorry. Oh, dear. Excuse me.” He was so human. I remember a little secretary, a new girl, said, “I’m so glad Mr Swire’s back off holiday next week. It’s like a dead office without him.” He loved the family idea of Swires. When the wartime government rationed food he used to bring a bottle of milk from one of his own Jersey cows in his old attaché case, just for him and me. I expect you’ve heard about the attaché case. Its four corners were worn away and patched with leather. He loved that little case.’

  In his time Jock was Cathay Pacific, just as Roy and Syd had been. He made Mrs Esnouf think of Mary Stuart and Calais: she almost believed they would find CPA written on his heart if the Company ever failed. A compulsive traveller on Cathay’s behalf to his dying day, Jock was a compulsive worker (and writer) as well: everything went down into memos, official letters, private letters and that personal diary. However exhausting a day had been, Jock wrote up his impressions of it.

  He’d say, ‘I like getting things off my chest.’ Striding up and down and fiddling with his watch-chain as if it were a string of worry beads, he’d dictate pages of letters to Hong Kong, sometimes long after everyone but he and Joan Esnouf had gone home. ‘It was like talking to himself. If he wasn’t satisified with the day’s long telegrams to Hong Kong, he’d back them up with letters. He liked to record everything.’

  While this book was in preparation I lost count of the number of former employees now retired in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, America or Hong Kong, who happily recalled meetings with Jock Swire in offices or on airfields, in aeroplanes or at Company parties, at which inevitably he had hailed them by name as if they had been his own nephews and nieces. The Cathay family feeling was unfailingly reinforced whenever Jock made an appearance. Of course, things have changed. Success has increased the tally of Cathay’s employees to such a number that no living soul could put a name to all of them on sight. Even by the late 1960s, Cathay’s staff totalled 1,372, of whom 109 were captains, first officers and flight engineers. Nowadays the total staff numbers some 9,000 with the cockpit crew figure getting on for 800, and still growing.

  Everything one reads or hears of Jock Swire demonstrates his two greatest virtues – an inflexible dedication to straight dealing and an extraordinary humanity. People said that his handshake was every bit as good as a signed contract (not, by the way, something that could be said of many business leaders in Hong Kong’s rough-and-tumble history). And as we have seen, his private diaries register the most homely details: that maddening stomach upset on the Yangtze River; the hat stolen in Shanghai; the crying need for some curtains and a kitchen range for the occupants of the Taikoo house in Hangkow.

  Jock Swire’s life is not the story of a superman who took a mangy little airline by the scruff of the neck and with splendid, unhesitating gestures raised it to enormous triumph. There were hesitations galore, and misjudgements, too. Adrift in the barely understood world of Air, a world composed of contending forces of terrific intensity, Jock thought quite seriously once or twice of giving up and returning to familiar earth, but he was not one to panic and he stuck it out. He too had his romantic side. In his cautious, old-fashioned English gentleman’s way, he shared the vision of Roy Farrell and Sydney de Kantzow.

  Now he was gone and a new generation came to the fore. Thirty-nine years old when he became Chairman, John took over Jock’s traditional responsibility for the Company’s staff, and the noticeably high quality of Swires’ expatriate employees in the East (it is universally remarked upon) must owe a good deal to him. Twenty-one years later he too retired to be Honorary President, and Adrian inherited the Chairmanship.

  Adrian was to have more direct dealings with Cathay Pacific than John. Born in 1932, he had joined Butterfield & Swire in the Far East at the age of twenty-four after Eton and University College, Oxford, and a spell in the Coldstream Guards. After five years learning the business in Hong Kong, Japan and Australia, he had returned to the directorship in London in 1961. Adrian Swire was well suited to aviation; he was born with a love of flying as others are born with a love of the sea. He had learned to fly as a very young man; joined the University Air Squadron at Oxford; and later enrolled in Hong Kong’s Auxiliary Air Force. In 1969 he bought a private Spitfire Mark IX, which he kept for fifteen years, managing, he says proudly, ‘to get it off the ground and down again regularly over that period without ever breaking anything.’ Apart from his directorship of Cathay Pacific, he became Chairman of the China Navigation Co. in 1967, and fifteen years later this dedicated flyer was knighted for his services to British shipping.

  The succession of Jock’s two sons ensured continuity of the family feeling. It was not difficult for those who had known Jock to feel his spirit reborn in John and Adrian. John was not unlike the old man in appearance – a towering, rather military figure with an easy laugh. Adrian, though physically less a replica of his father and certainly less intimidating, shared all Jock’s enthusiasm for travel, people and, of course, for Cathay Pacific Airways. Both brothers inherited their father’s openness and his fondness for coming straight to the point. The Swire family’s benevolently patriarchal control of its empire had been re-emphasized to the satisfaction of everyone in it.

  What the airline now amounted to was well set out in an article written in 1968 from Hong Kong by Derek Davies for the Financial Times of London.

  Size for size, the airline – Cathay Pacific Airways – must be one of the most successful commercial operations in aviation today. Yet it is a private company and has no Government subsidy. Thus, despite the decline in British influence in that area, a British airline plays a leading role throughout an area of the approximate size of North America and straddling 13 Asian countries. It is by far the largest regional carrier in the Far East….

  What is it that particularly attracts the passenger to Cathay Pacific? Partly the convenience and frequency of schedules. But in its cabin service the airline is no longer just British: it is international. About 35 per cent of the pilots are from the UK, 60 per cent from Australia and 5 per cent from New Zealand. Cabin service crews are drawn from all the main countries to which Cathay Pacific flies – Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Filipinas, Hong Kong Chinese, Thais, Indians, Malaysians, and Singaporeans. All speak excellent English (mandatory for all staff) plus their own national language. Food, too, is international – everything from Malayan satay and tempura to steaks and lamb chops prepared under the control of highly trained Swiss chefs. Economy passengers also get a pre-meal cocktail, and wine with their meal….

  Derek Davies’s article must have been a great boost to Cathay’s image. Wine, cocktails and an international cuisine controlled by Swiss chefs! It was a long way from the DC-3 world of Vera Rosario, the world of bucket seats, coffee and sandwiches, and the horrendous bumps that made you feel you were in a high-speed elevator and spilled hot tea all over poor Jo Cheng.

  Editors everywhere were suddenly paying attention to Cathay Pacific, this new-born phenomenon out of the East. ‘Most remarkable,’ an aviation correspo
ndent, John Seekings, wrote in Aeroplane, ‘Cathay’s record has been achieved in the most highly competitive area in the world. Between Tokyo and Hong Kong, for instance, there are no fewer than fifteen carriers competing for services. Between Bangkok and Hong Kong, another key route, there are twelve carriers sharing the market.’ What were the advantages, he asked, that enabled Cathay to be such a sudden success after a period of solid but unspectacular performance? He pinpointed several basic factors. First, the sheer attraction of Hong Kong as a tourist centre and as one of the few places in the world where very high-grade labour – skilled and energetic – is available relatively cheaply. Second, the region is one in which Swires have unique experience. Next, sound organization.

  Then there was HAECO, now one of the major aircraft engineering companies in the world, employing 2,000, offering high-quality engineering at low prices to Cathay and the owners of the 1,500-odd aircraft which passed through its hangars each year. And finally there was Cathay’s air catering service and Swire’s share (with Jardine Matheson) in Hong Kong Air Terminal Services (HATS) which organized all the passenger-boarding and aircraft ground-handling at Kai Tak Airport.

  The Aeroplane article made much of the quality of Cathay’s flight crew recruits and the generous rates of pay, then £9,500 a year for a married Senior Captain with two children. Because of this, the article said, 600 pilots had applied recently for twenty vacancies. Allied to this, small aviation companies found it difficult as a rule to attract high-calibre management recruits, but Cathay was part of the much larger Swire group of companies, with 10,000 employees in a wide range of activities (trading, shipping, shipbuilding, property) in an exotic part of the world. If you joined Cathay, you signed up for the opportunities enjoyed by the whole group. Finally, Aeroplane said, and more important than any other factor, had been Jock Swire’s early insistence on taking into management only the top class of graduates in the graduate-recruiting scheme he had set up way back in the 1920s. Aeroplane did Cathay no more than justice.

  Yet no echo of this eulogy can be found in the office records of Cathay Pacific Airways or in Jock Swire’s private diaries. There, self-congratulation is, and always has been, taboo. Even mildly hopeful predictions of the Company’s future course are packed round with cautious phrases like ‘with luck’ or ‘should things go well’. Success was never to be taken on trust, for Jock was a steadfast believer in the dangers of hubris, the overweening pride which, the Greeks thought, drew down sooner or later on human heads a terrible corrective from the gods. ‘Pride goes before a fall’ was a maxim no Swire employee needed to pin to his office wall. It was stamped on his brain from the day he joined.

  Thus, typically, John Browne at this moment of early success: ‘We have had successes. We must be wary of over-optimism for the future. Competition from the world’s major airlines is hotting up. A new spaciousness is coming into air travel with 747 Boeing aircraft able to carry from 350 to 450 passengers looming in the early 1970s. Fares are dropping and we shall undoubtedly continue to have to fight every inch of the way.’ Spoken like a true Swire man.

  What a melancholy thing it is to have to record that Cathay Pacific Airways, having cast out hubris and standing at long last on a plateau of unaccustomed success, was hit by not one but two mishaps. The second of these was as great and as unmerited a tragedy as any that has struck any airline anywhere in the world.

  CHAPTER 19

  Senior First Officer Ian Steven was in the left-hand seat. Captain Ron Jackson-Smith sat on his right-hand with the young Flight Engineer, Ken Hickey, just behind him facing the flashing lights of his switchboard. It was a fine November morning and Steven taxied Convair VR-HFX away from Kai Tak’s Terminal Building in the warm sunlight of Guy Fawkes’ Day.

  The flight was a full one: 116 passengers to Saigon, Bangkok and Calcutta, a good number of them South Korean engineers and merchant navy seamen and Vietnamese civilians. It was also a ‘check’, or monitoring, flight. That meant that the normal complement of two pilots, Steven and Jackson-Smith in this case, was increased by one, a Check Captain, Bob Howell, there to assess the performance of the other two – of the First Officer’s suitability for promotion to Captain, and the Captain’s suitability for appointment as Training Captain on the line. In these perfectly normal circumstances Steven was in control of the aircraft, Jackson-Smith occupied the co-pilot’s seat, while Bob Howell breathed down both their necks from the ‘jump seat’, the spare seat behind the pilot. It is probably worth adding that, although this was a ‘check’ flight, all three men were fully qualified to fly Convairs.

  At 10.30 a.m. the Control Tower signalled ‘cleared for take-off’. Steven called to the Flight Engineer for maximum power and away she went. Everything normal. Faster … faster…. At 122 knots, well below take-off speed, the plane began to vibrate.

  ‘This vibration increased’, Steven said later, ‘and became very severe; the whole aircraft was shaking.’

  No one on the flight deck could tell what it meant, Steven couldn’t control it and, to add to the bewilderment, Bob Howell thought he had heard a loud bang just as the vibrations started. Had a bird been sucked into an engine? The question was academic – the Convair had to attempt to rise into the air or stay on the runway and try to stop without hitting anything. The shaking was now so bad that the aircraft might not be able to fly, and Ian Steven had to make the split-second decision of a lifetime – and he made it. ‘Aborting!’ he yelled, and wrenched back the power levers and slammed on the brakes.

  ‘I had my feet hard on those brakes and heard Bob Howell shouting, “Maximum brakes!”’ Steven says. ‘Trouble was the braking didn’t seem normal. The aircraft just didn’t decelerate. My God! I reached across for the reverse thrust levers, and yanked ’em right back.’

  For all the effect it had he might just as well have combed his hair. The aircraft continued to speed ahead as in a nightmare. With her brakes fully applied – doubly applied in fact, since Steven could feel Jackson-Smith also pressing on the right-hand pedals – and reverse thrust from all engines, VR-HFX began to veer to the right. The end of the runway was getting closer by that time, and Steven, having applied full left rudder to counter the slew to the right and feeling no response from the rudder or nose wheel steering, could only brace his legs against the rudder pedals and his hands against the instrument coaming as the plane roared across the grass flanking the runway towards the waters of Kowloon Bay. Like a drowning man he saw a good many of his thirty-four years flash vividly through his mind in the fleeting moments before the Convair took the sea wall like a steeplechaser rising to a hurdle. Then she put her nose down, and dived into the harbour in a spectacular cloud of spray.

  Ian Steven did not drown. Luckily for him, Ron Jackson-Smith and Ken Hickey, the fuselage cracked just behind the cockpit when it hit the water and, although the cockpit itself did submerge, the greater part of the plane’s body stayed afloat. It lay there about eighty yards from the sea wall, like a lazy silver whale with a broken nose.

  ‘The three of us in the cockpit were unhurt,’ Steven says, ‘and I saw Ken Hickey trying to open the cockpit door. The damned thing had jammed. We decided to abandon the aircraft by the sliding windows on the flight deck and they opened without any trouble. The water level was just below the left-side window and I virtually swam straight out once I’d seen the other two go out of the starboard one.’

  Bob Howell had been between the two pilots, standing behind them.

  ‘When I saw that the aircraft was unstoppable and heading across the grass strip for the Bay, I dived smartly out of the cabin and wedged myself between two seated little Chinese girls. I had no belt on of course, so I got bumped around a bit when we went over into the water. I remember one of the Chinese girls saying nervously, “I can’t swim, Captain.” At first many passengers had wanted to make for the rear door and shouted to Chief Purser Chir to let them out. Well, if he had done so he’d have let the water in and then the plane’s tail would have su
bsided and disaster would have been certain for those inside. So Chir urged them all to wait to get out the front way. He won an award for that.’

  Despite his confident smile Bob Howell could swim no better than the little Chinese girl and found himself stuck half in, half out of the front passenger door – all Ian Steven saw as he swam up was Bob’s bald head and an arm sticking out. Steven yanked the door open and ‘the next thing, Bob was floating away and the two little Chinese girls who couldn’t swim were sitting on my head’. Untangling themselves, they struggled to a rescue boat. Several were already there, thanks to an alert Traffic Control Officer who had sounded the crash alarm when he saw the plane going over the sea wall. Tugs and launches crowded round the long fuselage, and even the cross-harbour ferry boat Man Shun had swung off its course between Hong Kong Island and Yaumati to reach the port wing where many passengers were huddling, having escaped through the emergency exits. Others squeezed through cracks in the hull. Later, they all praised the cabin crew, composed on this occasion of Japanese and Thais as well as Hong Kong Chinese. One Korean seaman said the Cathay cabin girls were the heroines of the day. ‘Most of the women passengers lost their heads and began shouting. The stewardesses did everything to bring order. If not, I don’t think I’d be here.’

  An American lady, Mrs Barrett, said that the plane was rushing along the runway at high speed when suddenly she felt a sharp braking that jolted the entire aircraft; then came a bump. ‘We shot into the water. My husband quickly helped me unfasten my seat belt’ and she followed fellow-passengers through the emergency exit onto the wing. A pretty Korean crooner on her way to entertain Allied troops in Vietnam wept for her missing passport. ‘I hope this accident will not prevent me from doing my duty to the boys in Vietnam,’ she moaned seductively. The press cameras flashed and she was soon comforted by reporters and discharged her duty in due course. As Duncan Bluck remembers it, an Indian passenger claimed that he had lost a bag crammed with thousands of dollars, his life savings, and demanded compensation double quick. Bluck arranged for divers to make a special search; but when they brought up the bag it contained nothing but a bundle of well-worn dhotis.