We make a stab at answering ‘how come Hong Kong’, paying close if occasionally erratic attention to modern Hong Kong’s origins in British trade with China, a chance discovery of a good haven by an American sea otter fur and sandalwood trading ship’s captain, the secret machinations of the hydrographic surveyors of the Bombay Marine, and the need for any port in a storm when the anti-opium trade hurricane of Lin Zexu blew in.