SOUNDING BRASS: Sergeant Goodman, HMS Tamar, and Imperialism’s Wide-flung Embrace.

In 2015 a small brass object was found in the recently discovered remains of a wreck off the waterfront of Wan Chai. This article describes that small brass object and relates it to the highly probable identity of the wrecked vessel. The story behind the brass object is itself part of the battery of evidence supporting the identification of the wreck as the remains of the Royal Navy’s base depot ship in Hong Kong from 1897 to 1941, HMS Tamar. The object belonged to a Royal Marine Light Infantry Lance Sergeant, who passed through Hong Kong and its naval base several times in 1914. In the article the possible occasions on which the brass object and its owner may have parted company in the Tamar are identified. In telling the story of the owner, Lance Sergeant Edgar Charles Goodman, the article also sketches Hong Kong’s place in the larger web of the British Empire, and the little-known connections between Hong Kong and the fruitless carnage of the Gallipoli campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]