The Clock Tower at the top end of Pedder Street was notoriously inaccurate.

"Send a Gunboat" was an all too frequent British newspaper headline during the heyday of the British Empire. The Nemesis was the prototype of the East India Company's gunboats and was Britain's secret weapon during the Opium War of 1839-42, which resulted in Hong Kong becoming a British colony.

She was the first iron war steamer to round the Cape of Good Hope and took eight months to reach Macau. The gunboat was commanded by Captain William Hall, with Lieutenant William Pedder as his First Officer and a crew of 60. It was an extremely dangerous voyage. The steamer broke a paddlewheel during a violent storm off the African coast.

The Nemesis could manoeuvre backward and forward at six knots and was armed with two 32-pounder pivot guns, 15 swivel guns and a rocket tube. The Chinese had no national navy. Their slow moving war junks were armed with muzzle-loading cannon. The gunboat was known as the "Nevermiss" by the British and the "Fire Devil" by the Chinese. She was lethal.

During the war, Hong Kong's founder, Captain Elliot, spent a lot of time aboard the Nemesis and was obviously impressed by Pedder, whom he appointed as Harbour Master and Marine Magistrate. Pedder was so popular that half a century after his death, there was a public outcry when Pedder Wharf was renamed Blake Pier after Governor Sir Henry Blake.

A clock tower stood at the top end of Pedder Street. The plan was to build it by public subscription, but not enough money had been collected. Fortunately, a wealthy ship owner called Douglas Lapraik offered to pay for it. He had begun his career working as a humble clockmaker in D'Aguilar Street and later established his own watch-making business. The clock struck for the first time at midnight on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1862. The clock was "liable to fits of indisposition" and was removed in 1916.

Next door to it, on the corner of Queen's Road Central, where the Landmark shopping centre is today, was the Hong Kong Hotel. It was here, in its magnificent bar, that an outrageous French con man who called himself the King of the Sedangs held court. He wore gorgeous uniforms of his own fantastical design. His racket was to sell land in his alleged kingdom together with fictitious titles to his victims. He aroused the anger of Murray Bain, the editor of the China Mail, after he knighted Robert Fraser-Smith, the editor of rival Hongkong Telegraph and all his staff. Bain launched a campaign in his paper against the King which destroyed any chance he had of raising money in Hong Kong or paying any of his bills when he fled the colony.

The hotel had previously been situated on the waterfront, near the site of Dent & Co who had bought it at the first land sale. Dents had been one of the two greatest merchant houses of the time. The other was Jardine, Matheson & Co, which later had premises on Pedder Street. It was known as the "Princely Hong". The word "hong" is still used to denote a foreign-owned company. While today's Jardines is a massive group of companies worldwide, Dents went bankrupt during the commercial depression that hit Hong Kong in 1867.

Most of the early historic buildings on Pedder Street have long gone. The last one to be demolished was the Old Post Office. When I attended boring meetings there in the 1970s, it still had a corrugated iron roof, which meant that when it rained hard you could not hear a word anyone said in its splendid conference room.