from Calcutta by the name of Ibraham Mohammed. Lascars were arriving in Hong Kong before the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Since the island of Hong Kong was initially a naval base there were Indian lascars of the East Indies Fleet arriving at Hong Kong in those early colonial days. Lascars were housed at several streets in the Sheung Wan area where there are two roads called Upper Lascar Row and Lower Lascar Row. These are not far from the barracks established in 1847 at Sai Ying Pun for Indian soldiers or sepoys. Lascars in the United States Lascars were on board early British voyages to the north-west coast of North America. These sailors were among the multinational crew arriving from Asia in search of furs. Among these was the Nootka in 1786 that arrived at the Russian port of Unalaska and sailed on to Prince William Sound in Alaska. There were ten Indian and one Chinese Lascar on this vessel. Three Lascars died in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The Nootka sailed back to Asia via Hawaii, and the lascars became the first recorded Indians to sail to Alaska and Hawaii. Lascar ranks and positions These sailors served on British ships under "lascar agreements", which allowed shipowners more control than was the case in ordinary articles of agreement. The sailors could be transferred from one ship to another and retained in service for up to three years at one time. In both deck and engine room departments, the lascars were headed by a serang (equivalent to the boatswain in the deck department), assisted by one or more tindals (equivalent to boatswain's mates in the deck department). Other senior deck positions included seacunny (quartermaster), mistree (carpenter, although a European carpenter was often carried), and kussab or cassab (lamp trimmer). An apprentice in either department was known as a topas or topaz. The senior lascar steward was known as the butler (either answering to a European chief steward or in charge of the catering department himself in a small ship). A cook was known as a bhandary. Portrayal in literature and cinema Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a Lascar foil to Sherlock Holmes in "The Man with the Twisted Lip". Lascars aboard the ship Patna figure prominently in the early chapters of Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim. Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel A Little Princess features a lascar named Ram Dass. Also, Caleb Carr