Fort Tanjong Katong, which stood from 1879 to 1901, was one of the oldest military forts built by the former
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
colonial government of Singapore. The fort gave its name to today's Fort Road, and it used to stand on the grounds of the present Katong Park. Fort Tanjong Katong, the only one of its kind on the eastern side of the island,
was part of a series of defensive
batteries and
fortification
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere' ...
s along the southern coast of Singapore, that defended the eastern approaches to the
Singapore Harbour and
Singapore Town against seaborne attacks. Due to its poor structural design and remoteness, the fort was subsequently abandoned and buried until its rediscovery in 2001. Found with traces of a moat and near intact perimeter wall, the fort was considered by local archaeological experts as one of Singapore's most important archaeological finds of a "true 19-century fort" to date.
As a result, an
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
group has been lobbying for the site to be gazetted as a
National Monument. As of May 2010, the National Heritage Board has stated that it has no plans to gazette the fort for the time being.
History
Fort Tanjong Katong was designed and built in 1879 by
Henry Edward McCallum
Sir Henry Edward McCallum, GCMG (28 October 1852 – 24 November 1919) was a British colonial governor.
Biography
McCallum attended the Royal Military College in Woolwich and began his colonial service career in 1874.
He was Colonial Eng ...
, who was the Colonial Engineer and Architect of the
Singapore History Museum on
Stamford Road. The fort reflected the British concerns that other European powers such as the
Netherlands
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, established_title = Before independence
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and Russia,
might attack the strategically located colony founded by Sir
Stamford Raffles
Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (5 July 1781 – 5 July 1826) was a British statesman who served as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816, and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. He is ...
of the
British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...
in 1819. On the island of
Sentosa
Sentosa Island, known mononymously as Sentosa, and formerly ''Pulau Belakang Mati'', is an island located off the southern coast of Singapore's main island. The island is separated from the main island of Singapore by a channel of water, the K ...
,
Fort Siloso
Fort Siloso is a decommissioned coastal artillery battery in Sentosa, Singapore. It consists of 12 such batteries which made up "Fortress Singapore" at the start of World War II, and saw action during the Battle of Singapore. The fort is now a m ...
,
Fort Connaught,
Fort Serapong and
Imbiah Battery were built around the same time as Fort Tanjong Katong, to guard the western and eastern entrances to the New Harbour (now
Keppel Harbour
Keppel Harbour (; ms, Pelabuhan Keppel), also called the Keppel Channel and formerly New Harbour, is a stretch of water in Singapore between the mainland and the southern islands of Pulau Brani and Sentosa (formerly Pulau Blakang Mati). Its natur ...
).
The fort was sitting atop a wet, low-lying coconut plantation and occupied an area of approximately two hectares, and had a small elevated battery of three
rifled muzzle-loading guns facing the sea, along with bombproof shelters. The battery was surrounded by a
ditch
A ditch is a small to moderate divot created to channel water. A ditch can be used for drainage, to drain water from low-lying areas, alongside roadways or fields, or to channel water from a more distant source for plant irrigation. Ditches ar ...
measuring 100 feet wide on the flanks. A local team of contractors constructed the fort in less than 12 months.
The fort's
garrison included members of the
Singapore Volunteer Artillery (SVA) that held regular gun drills and their annual training camps at the fort. In 1885, works began on upgrading the existing gun batteries in Singapore, and the three-gun battery at Tanjong Katong was replaced with a pair of more powerful and longer range
Mark VII breech-loading guns.
"Wash-out Fort"
Beset by problems from the start, the Fort Tanjong Katong was nicknamed the "Wash-out Fort".
["Fort Tanjong Katong (1879—1901)"—Information obtained from on-site information board erected by ]National Parks Board
The National Parks Board (NParks) is a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development of the Government of Singapore.
History
In November 1989, Minister of National Development, S. Dhanabalan, presented the National Parks Bill ...
. Due to the soft ground, each time the guns were fired, the range finding equipment would shake, and would need to be recalibrated. To make matters worse, it was difficult to find the ammunition for the new guns as it was not common in Singapore. The remoteness of the site, which hindered supply and reinforcement, reduced the effectiveness of Fort Tanjong Katong as a defensive position.
Barely five years after upgrades were completed in 1888, it was suggested the fort be demolished. Debates over the fort lingered on between the Colonial Defence Committee in London, and the Local Defence Committee in Singapore for nearly a decade.
The fort was finally rendered obsolete and abandoned in 1901 when the guns were removed. Instead of destroying the fort, the British thought it simpler to bury it, which was done sometime after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
A portion of a bastion was still visible above ground well into the 1960s, when a public park was built atop the fort for the fast-growing Katong suburbs. In the late 1960s, the bastion was finally buried when land reclamation in the East Coast took place, and its memory was soon forgotten in the ensuing decades.
Rediscovery
In 2001, the outline of the top of the bastion wall became visible during a dry spell; this prompted a Katong resident,
Jack Sim
Jack Sim (, born 1957) is the founder of the Restroom Association of Singapore, the World Toilet Organization, the World Toilet Day initiative and Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) Hub. Formerly from the construction industry, he decided to devote ...
, to seek out the relevant authorities to investigate its origins.
Despite much public discussion and interest generated by the discovery, it was not until in 2004 that the
Singapore government
The Government of Singapore is defined by the Constitution of Singapore to mean the executive branch of the state, which is made up of the president and the Cabinet. Although the president acts in their personal discretion in the exercise ...
finally approached a team of
archaeologists to excavate the forgotten fort. The excavation was made possible by a community-based project named "Raising History, Planting Roots", that was initiated by the Mountbatten Citizens' Consultative Committee with local residents and schools as a community involvement program to encourage ownership of local heritage. In just four weeks, an amount of
S$200,000 (US$120,000) was raised from corporate sponsors and a fund-raising dinner, held at
Suntec City Mall
Suntec City is a major mixed-use development located in Marina Centre, a subzone of the Downtown Core in Singapore, which combines a shopping mall, office buildings, and a convention centre. Construction began on 18 January 1992 and was comple ...
on 27 September 2004.
Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong
Goh Chok Tong (; born 20 May 1941) is a Singaporean former politician who served as Prime Minister of Singapore between 1990 and 2004, and Secretary-General of the People's Action Party between 1992 and 2004. He was the Member of Parliament (M ...
, a
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
for
Marine Parade
Marine Parade is a planning area and residential estate located in the Central Region of Singapore. Straddling the tip of the southeastern coast of Pulau Ujong, Marine Parade serves as a buffer between the Central and East regions of the ci ...
Group Representation Constituency, was the guest of honour at the event.
The long-awaited excavation began on 29 September 2004, led by a handful of archaeologists and dedicated archaeology volunteers called ''Southeast Asian Archaeology''. Nearly 2 metres down, the volunteers uncovered significant remains of the fort still
in situ
''In situ'' (; often not italicized in English) is a Latin phrase that translates literally to "on site" or "in position." It can mean "locally", "on site", "on the premises", or "in place" to describe where an event takes place and is used in ...
—a pair of infantry
bastions that did not appear in the original plans, the perimeter of the
moat's inner escarpment and what appears to be the
drawbridge superstructure. Experts call it Singapore's only 'true fort'—one with protection all around—and it was considered one of Singapore's most important archaeological finds.
The archaeological dig at the former Fort Tanjong Katong site, provided a unique opportunity for many like-minded Singaporeans to participate actively in uncovering the remains of the old fort. For nearly 10 months, more than 1,000 volunteers ranging from school students to housewives, retirees, working professionals on their off-days assisted the archaeologists on site and discovering first hand on the 125-year-old military fort.
The
Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research
The Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM) ( Chinese: 李光前自然历史博物馆) is a museum of natural history at the Kent Ridge Campus of the National University of Singapore. It is named after Lee Kong Chian, a prominent Chinese ...
, a
natural history research unit of the National University of Singapore, assisted with the analysis of marine artefacts and
coral
Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...
s that were uncovered at the site, and some 36 bags of samples have been deposited with the museum for further analysis. A ''Preliminary Site Report'' (dated 7 May 2006) was later compiled and submitted to the relevant authorities which outlined the research process, preliminary findings, variety of volunteers, and a list of the archaeology research team involved.
Reburied again
To date, the excavation project at Fort Tanjong Katong has ended and only the south-eastern bastion, which was nearly fully excavated, has been cordoned off indefinitely (the south-western bastion was left untouched). Except for the cordoned off bastion, other exposed fort remains were reburied again in December 2005 by the
National Parks Board
The National Parks Board (NParks) is a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development of the Government of Singapore.
History
In November 1989, Minister of National Development, S. Dhanabalan, presented the National Parks Bill ...
, which runs the park, to protect them against the elements for future archaeologists to discover. It was also done because the dug-out pits could well breed mosquitoes; there were also fears that someone might fall into one of the 2 m-deep holes.
The remaining funds, about S$150,000, were ploughed back into bursaries and scholarships for the constituency's students.
The archaeology group is lobbying for the site to be gazetted as a
National Monument, and to incorporate the fort remains to be featured as part of the park in future. To date, its status is still pending while waiting for the final decision by the Preservation of Monuments Board and the
Urban Redevelopment Authority
The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is the national urban planning authority of Singapore, and a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development of the Government of Singapore.
Mission
The authority was established on 1 April ...
.
References
External links
Picture gallery of Fort Tanjong Katong excavation in 2004
{{good article
Government buildings completed in 1879
Tanjong Katong
Katong, also known as Tanjong Katong, is a residential neighbourhood in the eastern portion of the Central Region of Singapore, within the Marine Parade planning area. It used to be located by the sea, before land reclamation towards the south ...
Military of Singapore under British rule
Coastal fortifications
19th-century architecture in Singapore