HONG KONG - With a pith helmeted parade in a car park and a social in a warehouse, the British navy yesterday lowered; its flag in Hong Kong, leaving Chinese servants of the empire jobless and without passports.
Against the clatter of the world's busiest container port and the din of jumbo jets overhead, the "white ensign" came down 156 years after British gunboats first took Hong Kong in the name of free trade for opium.
The ceremony, attended by Britain's 28th and last governor, Mr Chris Patten, and the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jock Slater, marked the formal decommissioning of Britain's last naval establishment in the Far East, known as HMS Tamar.