It is very famous by the Noel Coward song Mad Dogs and Englishmen. This gun is fired once every day at 12. The tradition is said to date back to the time a Jardine employee fired a one-gun salute when the head of the company sailed into port. A senor Royal Navy officer took offence at this practice and as a penalty, the company was ordered to fire the gun at noon every day as a time signal.
History and hearsay all mixed together, the story behind the Noon Day gun goes something like this. In the early 1900's an overenthusiastic employee of Jardine and Matheson, one of Hong Kong's most influential companies at the time, fired the gun to salute one of the companies ships as it sailed into/out of the harbour. Gun salutes were supposedly the sole privilege of the Governor, who was so outraged by this break in protocol that he ordered the gun be fired every day. More realistically, if less romantically, it's believed the gun was probably fired to help ship's set their clocks to the correct time.
Noel Coward immortalized the clock in his song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”, in the lyrics In Hong Kong/They strike a gong/And fire off a noonday gun/To reprimand each inmate/Who's in late. The song inspired the phrase “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun”.
by Carmen
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