1st August 1939
Julie and Harry were finally prepared for their sea voyage to Singapore. They had been successful in arranging staff and management for their two properties, Raby Castle and Westmoreland Manor. They were to sail on the newly constructed RMS Mauretania in first class; the voyage would take six weeks.
The voyage went without incident and the ship’s facilities were second to none.
Singapore
It is unknown when Singapore was first settled.
A third century Chinese account describes it as Pu-luo-chung, or the ‘island at the end of a peninsula’. Later, the city was known as Temasek (‘Sea Town’), when the first settlements were established in AD 1298.
During the 14th century this small but strategically located island was renamed. According to legend, Sang Nila Utama, a Prince from Palembang (the capital of Srivijaya), was out on a hunting trip when he caught sight of an animal he had never seen before. Taking it to be a good sign, he founded a city where the animal had been spotted, naming it ‘The Lion City’ or Singapura, from the Sanskrit words simha (lion) and pura (city).
The five kings of ancient Singapura then ruled the city. Located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, the natural meeting point of sea routes, the city served as a flourishing trading post for a wide variety of sea vessels, including Chinese junks, Indian vessels, Arab dhows, Portuguese battleships, and Buginese schooners from Indonesia.
The next important period in the history of Singapore was during the 19th century, when modern Singapore was founded. At this time, Singapore was already an up-and-coming trading post along the Malacca Straits. It was also then that Great Britain started to see the need for a port of call in the region. In particular, British traders needed a strategic venue to base the merchant fleet of the growing Empire, and to forestall any advance made by the Dutch in the region.
The then Lieutenant-Governor of Bengkulu in Sumatra, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, landed in Singapore on 29th January 1819 after a survey of the neighbouring islands. Recognising the immense potential of the swamp-covered island, he helped negotiate a treaty with the local rulers and established Singapore as a trading station. Soon, the island’s policy of free trade attracted merchants from all over Asia and from as far away as the Middle East and the US.
In 1832, Singapore became the centre of government for the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the advent of the telegraph and steamship, Singapore’s importance as a centre of the expanding trade between the East and West increased tremendously between 1873 and 1913. Its prosperity attracted immigrants from around the region. By 1860, the thriving island nation had a population that had grown from one hundred and fifty in 1819 to eighty one thousand, comprising mainly Chinese, Indians and Malays.
After the First World War, the British government devoted significant resources to building a naval base in Singapore, as a deterrent to the increasingly ambitious Japanese Empire. Originally announced in 1923, the construction of the base proceeded slowly until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. When completed in 1939, at the very significant cost of five hundred million dollars, it boasted what was then the largest dry dock in the world, the third-largest floating dock, and enough fuel tanks to support the entire British Navy for six months. Heavy 15-inch naval guns stationed at Fort Siloso, Fort Canning and Labrador, as well as a Royal Air Force airfield at Tengah Air Base defended it. Winston Churchill touted it as the ‘Gibraltar of the East.’
Unfortunately, it was a base without a fleet. The British Home Fleet was stationed in Europe, and the British could not afford to build a second fleet to protect its interests in Asia. The plan was for the Home Fleet to sail quickly to Singapore in the event of an emergency.
