SINGAPORE BASE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 152, 24 March 1925, Page 5

SINGAPORE BASE

A VISIT TO THE SITE GREAT OIL STATION I have just returned from a visit to the area designated as the site of the future Singapore base (writes a specitl correspondent of the “Chicago Tribune”). The land, some 2500 acres, was bought by the British Governor-General of Malaya, and paid for by the municipality of Singapore and presented to the Imperial Government at a cost of £130,000. The reservation, which was formerly owned by Chinese rubber planters and speculators, is situated on the northeast shore of Singapore Island.' This island is roughly diamond-shaped, running thirty miles east and west, and fifteen miles north and south. The terrain is mostly fiat, r.nd all the uncultivated parts are dense jungle and swamp. ■ The base is located on the Straits of Johore, a deep sea-water passage about one mile wide and forty miles long, which is the northern boundary of tlie island and separates it from the mainland of the Malay Peninsula. Its southernmost point is on the Continent of Asia. The opposite shores of the Straits, possessing good elevations ten miles inland, are in the territory of the unfederated Malay State of Johore, governed by the Sultan, with a British adviser, and under the direction of a British Governor-Gener-al, who is the joint executive and representative of the Crown in the whole of Malaya. The base has frontage of about six miles on the Johore Straits. This front extends westwards from tlie Seletar Road to a railway and motoi causeway connecting Singapore Island with the Johore shore and Bahru. The causeway—which was planned before the base, and has just recently been finished—deprives the base of a rear exit into the Straits of Malacca, or a rear entrance for damaged vessels, which will now have to steam around the island, a distance of some sixty miles, and enter the base via the eastern or south Chine Sea entrance. This defect, which has caused some discussion in Singapore, may be remedied at any time by destroying the causeway or replacing it with a high bridge. The reservation and the entire eastern half of the Straits are well supplied with inlets. The Malayan creeks are known for their unusual depth and the steepness of theii banks, which are held in place by heavy growths of mangroves. The Straits themselves have ample depth., for the largest ships in the Navy, ind there is space enough for the entire British Fleet, and then some more. Work had just been started on the Base when the MacDonald Government cancelled the entire scheme. One small float of several hundred acres had been cleared of jungle and the cement foundations laid for preliminary warehouses and engineers’ offices. The former owners of the rubber trees on the reservation were allowed to bleed their trees to the last dop of latex, with the result that most of them are in a dying condition, although this will not lighten the great task of removing them.

Although practically no work has been accomplished on the site of the reservation, much has been done elsewhere on Singapore Island to ensure the future oil supply ot the base, and, in fact, to make Singapore one of the greatest oiling stations in the world. Sixty enormous steel oil tanks have been erected, with a capacity reaching hundreds of thousands of tons of oil. These tanks are not on the reservation. Half of them are located in the middle of the rubber forests, in the very centre of the island, at a spot called Mandat. Others are placed several miles inland on the south-west shore of the island, and behind, the slightly rolling ridges of Pasir Panjang, which hide them from the main waters of Singapore Straits. All of them are above the ground, and cover such an area that they aie easily locatable from the air.

Pipelines convev the fuel from tank ships in Commercial Harbour, near the city, to the Admiralty tanks, from which it is presumed they will extentl again from the tanks northward to the base of the reservation, for the refuelling of Admiralty vessels. The pipelines are all buried, some of them under the streets of Singapore, where their presence has become generally known owing to the breaking of pipes in a recent testing of the system. The oil wells of Dutch Borneo and Burma constitute the chief source of supply.

There is no naval or engineering staff here at present charged with planning the future work on_ the base, and no one will speak officially _ on it, neither is the British Royal Air Force represented here at present, although it is rumoured that Singapore’s future importance includes its transformation into an a< roplane and airship station as a link in the chvin of Imperial airways between England and Australia, via India.