The Noonday Gun Salute Is a 160-Year-Old Punishment

In the 1840s, the Scottish trading company Jardine Matheson purchased Hong Kong’s first-ever public auction land plot at East Point, now Causeway Bay. There, the firm built massive warehouses and maintained a private militia. Whenever the company head—the Tai-pan—arrived by ship, this private army fired a 21-gun military salute.

In the 1860s, a senior British Royal Navy officer took deep offence to this loud display. In the British Empire, a full gun salute was strictly reserved for royalty and high-ranking military officials. Deeming it disrespectful for civilian businessmen to mimic the authority of the Crown, the officer issued a unique punishment to humiliate them. He ordered Jardine Matheson to fire a single blank shot at exactly midday, every day, forever. The blast served a practical civic utility, allowing ships in the harbour to calibrate their navigation clocks.

The original gun vanished during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in World War II, but in 1945, the Royal Navy gifted Jardines a six-pound cannon to resume their daily obligation. However, after nearby residents complained that the deep shockwaves were shaking their apartment windows, the company swapped it in 1961 for a quieter, three-pound Hotchkiss quick-firing gun.

To this day, the 160-year-old punishment endures. Every day at precisely 12:00 PM, a uniformed Jardines security guard rings a bronze bell, steps into the waterfront enclosure on Gloucester Road, and triggers the explosive daily blast right on the dot.