Hong Kong became a British trading settlement because of the magnificent natural harbour that lay in the shadow of The Peak. Its deep water was protected by the high ramparts of the island, providing a safe holding ground for vessels of all types.

For more than 160 years, the world's cargoes have been loaded and unloaded on Hong Kong's shores. During that time shipping has undergone several major transformations: from sail to steam-powered ships and from steam turbines to diesel and the advent of containerised shipping in the 1960s.

Many of Hong Kong's shipping companies were set up by families that came from China in the late 1940s to escape the advancing Communists and went on to build up some of the world's largest fleets. Some of the founding fathers – the Paos, Tungs, Tsaos and Chaos – have passed on to the big blue above but the families have retained their roots in Hong Kong, become very rich and inducted the third generation of offspring to help manage them.

Here we profile four homegrown companies that put Hong Kong firmly on the world shipping map and rose to prominence in the process.

The Paos
World-Wide Shipping
The most prominent of Hong Kong’s old shipping tycoons was the legendary Sir Yue-kong Pao who set up the World-Wide Shipping Agency in July 1955, now part of Europe-based Bergesen Worldwide (BW Group), headed by his son-in-law Dr Helmut Sohmen.

Sir Pao was born in 1918 into a well-off Ningbo family. In 1931 he went to Hankou to work in his father's shoe manufacturing business whilst continuing his education at night. But he decided to choose a different career path, and started working as a trainee with a foreign insurance company and began to acquire knowledge of banking.

At age 24 he became branch manager of Chinese Industrial and Mining Bank, giving him valuable experience which helped him in the shipping business.

With the impending fall of the "Bamboo Curtain" on China, Sir Pao and his family moved to Hong Kong in 1949 and he started an import/export business. As business grew, Sir Pao looked around for new ventures and set up World-Wide after buying a 28-year-old bulk cargo carrier.

Shipowners in Hong Kong had a poor reputation with the banks then and the first vessel was purchased without financing. But the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC) extended a loan for his second ship's purchase.

Thus began a long relationship, with Sir Pao becoming the first ethnic Chinese to join the bank's board in 1971. He later became a deputy chairman.

Sir Pao built up the world's largest private shipping company by 1979 with a fleet of more than 200 tankers and bulk carriers totalling over 20 million deadweight tonnes (dwt).

In March 1976, when his fleet totalled 10 million dwt, Pao earned the title of "King of the Sea" on the cover of Newsweek magazine. Two years later, he was knighted by the Queen of England, the only Hong Kong shipowner to get that honour so far.

Sir Pao had unmatched access to leaders in commercial and political circles around the world. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wrote the foreword to his biography published in 1990. The biographer, Robin Hutcheon, gave him the accolade of "First Sea Lord" because he commanded a far larger fleet than any First Sea Lord in the history of Britain's Royal Navy.

Dr Sohmen, an Austrian, married to Anna, the eldest of Pao's four daughters, had joined the company in 1970. In 1986 Sir Pao handed over day-to-day operations to Dr Sohmen, in the absence of a male heir. He died in 1991.

Dr Sohmen's son Andreas Sohmen-Pao joined the company in 2000 after a stint with Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs in London. He holds a double first class honours degree from Oxford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Sohmen-Pao, 38, is based in Singapore.

The Tungs
Orient Overseas
Orient Overseas International Ltd (OOIL), Hong Kong's largest container shipping company, was founded by Tung Chao-yung (C.Y.), who dreamed of creating the first international Chinese merchant fleet.

Tung was born in Shanghai in 1912. His father was a small businessman from Ningbo who died when C.Y. was very young.
His first job was with the Kokusai Transport Co in Shanghai before he joined Tientsin Navigation Co (TNC) at age 18.

When he was 23, Tung was appointed vice-president of Tientsin Shipowners' Association and in 1936 was asked by the Nationalist government to prepare a rehabilitation plan for China's recession-plagued shipping industry.

In 1940, Tung bought an old bulk carrier which became the first Chinese-owned ship to sail across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of the US from the Philippines.

After the Japanese surrender, Tung set up the Chinese Maritime Trust in Shanghai in 1946 and registered his ships under the Chinese flag. Over the next three years, he acquired 15 ships and registered the trust in Hong Kong in 1947.

Tung moved his family to Hong Kong in 1948. By the mid-1950s, he had acquired a considerable reputation as a shipowner, having profited handsomely from the high freight rates prevalent during the Korean War.

By the early 1960s, he started chartering ships to Japanese companies and, with loans from the Bank of America, expanded his fleet of bulk carriers and oil tankers.

By the time his sons Tung Chee-hwa and Tung Chee-chen joined the company in the 1960s, subsidiary Orient Overseas Line (OOL) was operating transatlantic cargo and passenger services.

With the advent of containerisation, the name of OOL was changed to OOIL and the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

By the end of the 1970s Tung had become one of the world's leading independent shipowners with a fleet of more than 150 ships. He died in 1982, and elder son C. H., University of Liverpool graduate of marine engineering, took the helm.

It soon became apparent that the elder Tung had over-expanded during a shipping downturn, pushing OOIL to the brink in 1986 with US$2.7 billion of debt. A complex restructuring lasting several years saved the company.

In October 1996, when he was elected to become Hong Kong's first Chief Executive after the city reverted to China in June 2007, C. H. handed the reins to his brother.

C. C. Tung, 66, has a science degree from the University of Liverpool and a master's in mechanical engineering from MIT in the US. The company has prospered under C. C., who has continued the newbuilding programme and streamlined operations.

The third generation has come on board, with C. H. Tung's two sons, Andy and Alan (40), holding senior positions. Andy has a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a master of business administration from Stanford University and Alan is a Princeton graduate.

The Tsaos
IMC
Although he is not as high-profile as Y. K. Pao and C. Y. Tung, Frank W. K. Tsao, founder of International Maritime Carriers (IMC), is highly regarded for helping the development of Asia's shipping industry.

Mr Tsao was born into a shipping family in Shanghai in 1925 and graduated from the city's Saint John's University.

In the early 1900s, his grandfather Tsao Wa Chang had built up a transport company which operated along the Huangpu River in Shanghai.

Mr Tsao's father, Tsao Ying Yung, began his career at a chemical company in Shanghai and later set up a bank. But the family businesses had to be shut down after the Japanese took over Shanghai in the late 1930s and confiscated their vessels and vehicles.

As the civil war between the ruling Kuomintang and the Communists intensified, Mr Tsao's parents left for Hong Kong in 1948 and he followed in 1949. He was 24.

Before leaving, Frank had converted some gold and other valuables into Hong Kong dollars and managed to move the equivalent of US$100,000 to his new hometown.

Being the eldest son, Frank assumed his leadership role of providing for the family and started a trading company in 1949. The following year he bought his first ship and co-founded the Great Southern Steamship Co.

In 1966, he dissolved Great Southern Steamship and set up IMC, which was listed in Hong Kong in 1972. In 1968, he helped the Malaysian government and a group of private entrepreneurs set up Malaysian International Shipping Corp (MISC), the country's first national shipping line.

When the Japanese government offered war reparations to Malaysia and Thailand in the form of new ships, the two governments asked him to help develop their shipping industries.
In 1973 IMC set up a joint venture with MISC and Japan's Sumitomo Group to build a shipyard (now Malaysian Marine & Heavy Engineering), the country's first. The Malaysian government later sold its share to the two partners.

Also in 1973, the King of Malaysia conferred the title of "Tan Sri" on Tsao to recognise his contributions to the country and in helping set up its first seamen's training centre and reworking its maritime legal framework.

Lloyds List Maritime Asia magazine conferred the "Personality of the Year" award on him in 1999 and the Hong Kong government later gave him the Silver Bauhinia Star.

While expanding the IMC fleet, Frank diversified into textiles in Malaysia and also had business interests in Thailand.

Frank sensed the seriousness of the shipping downturn, which had started in the late 1970s, and sold most of his ships in the early 1980s to ride out the slump.

At the Thai government's request in 1987 IMC took over and restructured the flag carrier United Thai Shipping Corp. In 1990 he helped set up Unithai Shipyard & Engineering.

In 1989, he named his son, Frederick Chavalit Tsao, who had joined IMC in 1978 as an engineering trainee, managing director.
Born in 1957, Frederick obtained a bachelor's degree in naval architecture from Canada and a master's degree in industrial engineering from the University of Michigan in the US.

The company moved its corporate headquarters and dry bulk shipping operations to Singapore in 1991.

In 1995 Mr Tsao handed the chairmanship to Frederick, who regrouped the main business units under the IMC Pan Asia Alliance Group banner. Although a bit frail now – he is 83 – Mr Tsao still works unstintingly at IMC's Hong Kong office when he is in town.

THE CHAOS
Wah Kwong
Another prominent Hong Kong shipowner was Tsong Yea (T.Y.) Chao, who set up Wah Kwong Shipping Holdings in 1952. T. Y. graduated from Shanghai's Soochow University in 1934 with a law degree but the prevailing political situation made it difficult for him to become a lawyer. He opted to work as a comprador in a big trading company.

He ventured into shipping by acquiring, in partnership with his employer, a 50 percent stake in the 6,000-dwt Kwok Sing, which profitably transported coal between Chinese ports. The good times came to an end with the outbreak of civil war in China and in the autumn of 1948 T.Y. took his family to Hong Kong on board the Kwok Sing.

He set up a shipping company in 1949 in partnership with Mr D. L. Wu of Taiship and Mr George Cheng of Ping An Steamship. Business was good and within three years the partnership had outgrown. The partners parted amicably, enabling T. Y. to launch Wah Kwong in September 1952 with a few second-hand ships.

The company had 20 vessels in its fleet by 1966 when T.Y. decided to order its first new ship from Japan's Sanoyasu Dockyard. The venture marked the start of a long relationship with Japanese shipyards, financiers and charterers, and saw Wah Kwong build
more than 100 vessels at Japanese yards.

By this time, two of T.Y.'s his three sons - eldest Frank and youngest George - had become directors of Wah Kwong after graduating from Britain's Durham University. Their brother Cecil opted to become a property tycoon. Frank, a marine engineer, took charge of the operations and technical departments and George, a civil engineer, focused on financial and commercial aspects.

In the early 1970s the company set up Wah Kwong Shipping and Investment Company in partnership with Hong Kong's Jardine Matheson Group (now based in Singapore), which built up a fleet of 15 ships, and New Century Shipping and Investment Company with the controlling family of the local Hang Seng Bank, which amassed 10 vessels.

New Century was listed in October 1972, followed by Wah Kwong in January 1973, raising a total of HK$150 million. The two companies were merged in September 1974 to minimise duplication and maximise profits. With the cash raised from the listings Wah Kwong embarked on a 10-year newbuilding spree to replace its older ships and increased its fleet from 25 ships to about 50.

Wah Kwong had enjoyed 11 years of steady growth until 1983, but the shipping downturn gradually engulfed the companies which had chartered its ships.

As a result, Wah Kwong reported decreased profit for 1984, but the
situation worsened and the company suffered losses of about US$300 million in 1985 as four of its major charterers became insolvent.

A restructuring which ended in February 1992 helped the company implement new management and commercial strategies to take advantage of the once again lucrative shipping market and dispose of old vessels.

T.Y. stepped down in 1997, with Frank becoming chairman. T.Y. died in 1999 at age 88. Frank Chao retired in 1999 and died of a heart attack in 2001.

After the company was privatised in 2001, George became sole shareholder and chairman. He suffered a stroke in September 2004 but has recovered sufficiently to put in a full day's work these days. He is ably assisted by daughter Sabrina, who joined the company in 2002 and is chief financial officer and vice-chairman.

Sabrina graduated from Imperial College of London University, and worked briefly with Jardine Fleming and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. She passed Galbraith's Shipping Course in London in 2001 and worked with Tanker International, Britannia P&I Club and Bureau Veritas before joining Wah Kwong.