AT TABLE BAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 64, 16 March 1936, Page 7

AT TABLE BAY

A SECOND SINGAPORE £10,000,000 SCHEME INTENSIVE FORTIFICATION OLD NAVAL BASE TO BE SUPERSEDED [By Tdesrapb—Press Association —OcpyrifM| CAPETOWN, Alarch 12. The decision has been made to intensively fortify Robben Island, which is part of the scheme to make Table Bay a second Singapore. The heavyguns at Lion’s Head cannot be fired, as a full charge would blow the closely-inhabited seapoint to pieces. The Table Bay works are being developed at a cost of £10,000,000 so as to enable vessels of the heaviest tonnage to dock. It is believed it is the intention of the Government to proceed with a big equipment scheme whereby Table Bay will supersede Simon's Town as a naval port. Robben Island was formerly a leper settlement and has since been unoccupied except by lighthouse keepers. Capetown will aways remain an important naval station, as we demonstrated in the late war, when the partial blocking of tho Suez Canal immediately rendered it again the “halfway house to India.” At present the Imperial Naval Station is at Simon’s Town, about twentytwo miles from Capetown. Simon’s Town was first occupied as an vala and military depot, by the Netherlands Government in .1741, as the harbour afforded a much safer anchorage at that time than Table Bay, especially in the winter. A dockyard and military barracks were established, and the port gradually developed as a har. hour of refuge for merchant shipping passing to and from India and. the East. Thus the town became an important commercial centre. Foreign warships of all nations called there for coal and supplies, and American whalers, operating in the South Seas, used it to transfer their whalebone and oil io homeward-bound ships. Whaling vessels sometimes lay in the harbour area to avoid the port charges incurred in Table Bay. In 1814 the Admiralty decided on making Simon’s Town the headquarters of the South African Naval Squadron, which included at that time the west and east costs of Africa. It thus became, and has remained, th< most important strategic naval bast of the Southern Hemisphere. The fin< old “Admiralty House,” set amonj trees, dates from this period. Oldoj stil is the naval cemetery on the hill side, where tombstones record sucl old-time happenings as the cutting mil of French privateers, fights wifi pirates, etc. In 1898 the port, was ceded bv- th« Cape Parliament to the .Admiralty foi exclusive use as a naval station, where by the commercial trade of the town wast lost. Of recent years the town has been the headquarters of the Union training ship, the General 80l ha. Extensive works, begun in 1900. comprise a tidal basin of 28 acres; the ScdKorne dry dock, 756 ft. by 120 ft, capable of docking vessels of the Dreadnought class, and a breakwater 300 ft. long, instructed at. a. cost of £2,500.000.