Singapore old Straits and new harbour
W.D. Barnes published this article in 1911 to correct two persistent local misconceptions about Singapore’s maritime geography: that the Selat Tebrau constituted the “old Straits of Singapore,” and that Admiral Keppel discovered the passage through New Harbour. Drawing on a chronological sequence of primary sources spanning nearly five centuries, Barnes demonstrates that the “old Straits of Singapore” were in fact the waterway now known as Keppel Harbour, and that it had been in continuous use by European navigators long before Keppel’s arrival in 1848.
Summary
Barnes opens by dismissing the Selat Tebrau as an implausible candidate for the “old straits” on practical grounds: its western entrance is difficult, the channel is long, ships would be exposed to strong tides and becalming, and the waters were notorious for piracy. By contrast, the passage through New Harbour is short and straightforward, making its supposed disuse before the nineteenth century a historical puzzle requiring explanation.
The core of the article is a chronological examination of navigational sources. Barnes begins with fifteenth-century Chinese sailing directions that reference a “dragon-teeth gate” passage, which he identifies with the western entrance to New Harbour. He then turns to Linschoten’s 1598 sailing directions (a Dutch translation of a Portuguese original, further mediated through French), which describe a route from Malacca to Macau passing through the Selat Sembilan and then through a narrow strait with specific landmarks—Lot’s Wife rock, a red hill, and a cross-shaped reef at the exit—that Barnes matches precisely to the geography of Keppel Harbour. A 1604 map by Godinho de Eredia provides the most direct evidence: it labels both an “estreito velho” (old straits) and an “estreito novo” (new straits), with the old strait occupying the position of present-day Keppel Harbour and the new strait corresponding to the present main Singapore Strait.
Barnes then traces how the confusion arose. He identifies Captain Alexander Hamilton’s 1727 New Account of the East Indies as the probable “locus classicus” from which the Selat Tebrau tradition derived, suggesting that between 1600 and 1700 the Keppel Harbour passage fell into disuse by European vessels—likely because it suited only smaller ships that could be worked with sweeps or towed—and its very existence was forgotten. The article closes by dismantling the Keppel discovery legend: Barnes shows that HMS Rainbow passed through intentionally in 1826, that the harbour was surveyed by Mr. Thompson in 1842, that Lot’s Wife rock was blasted in 1848, and that the Peninsular and Oriental Company had opened offices there by 1852. Keppel’s own 1848 diary entry and his 1853 published account make no claim to first passage; he merely noted the harbour’s suitability for refitting and as a coal depot. The 1900 official renaming to Keppel Harbour, Barnes argues, was based on “very unconvincing” reasoning.
Key Findings
- Godinho de Eredia’s 1604 map (Declaracam de Malaca, p. 61) explicitly labels both “estreito velho” (old straits) at the position of present-day Keppel Harbour and “estreito novo” (new straits) at the position of the present main Singapore Strait, providing the single most direct documentary evidence for Barnes’ thesis (p. 28).
- Linschoten’s 1598 sailing directions describe a strait with a minimum depth of four and a half fathoms, a rock “like a pillar” at the northern entrance (Lot’s Wife), and a cross-shaped reef at the exit with barely four fathoms of water between them—details that match Keppel Harbour’s known hazards (pp. 26–28).
- HMS Rainbow under Captain Rous made the first recorded intentional passage through New Harbour in 1826, with the vessel’s officers noting it was “safe and expeditious for vessels under 600 tons burden” but “narrow and confined” for larger ships (p. 31).
- The rock known as Lot’s Wife (Batu Belayar) was blasted by Indian convicts in 1848 as a dangerous obstruction at the western entrance to New Harbour, and was already shown on charts over two hundred years prior (p. 32).
- The Peninsular and Oriental Company opened offices in New Harbour by 1852, predating Keppel’s 1857 entry in HMS Raleigh and contradicting the claim that Keppel’s demonstration created the harbour’s utility (p. 34).
- The official renaming of New Harbour to Keppel Harbour was gazetted on 19 April 1900 (Notification No. 401, Straits Settlements Government Gazette Extraordinary), citing Keppel’s “first demonstration” of the harbour’s capabilities as the justification (p. 34).
Conclusion
Barnes’ definitive takeaway is that the “old Straits of Singapore” were the waterway now called Keppel Harbour, a fact established by Portuguese and Chinese navigational sources from the sixteenth century onward, and that the passage had simply fallen into disuse by European shipping between roughly 1600 and 1700 as vessel sizes increased beyond what the narrow channel could accommodate. The Keppel discovery legend, while recent enough to be “overtaken,” was already being enshrined in official nomenclature by 1900, and Barnes writes with the quiet urgency of a man trying to correct the record before it calcifies into accepted history.
Context
- Barnes writes from within the colonial administrative milieu of early-twentieth-century Singapore; his argument is framed as a correction of “tradition” and “legend” in service of accurate local history, and his tone toward the Keppel renaming is respectfully critical rather than adversarial.
- The article draws on a wide range of primary sources including Chinese sailing directions (via Groeneveldt), Portuguese and Dutch navigational texts (Linschoten, Godinho de Eredia, Bocarro), British naval accounts (Hamilton, Belcher, Keppel’s own publications), and colonial administrative records (Government Gazette, Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore), making it a notable early example of source-critical local historiography in the Straits Settlements.