WD2972

View of Batu Berlayer, Singapore. c.1823.

Probably by Lieutenant P. Jackson

Inscribed on front in pencil: ‘Battoo Burlayer West Entrance New Harbour viewed from the North (Easterly) close at hand.’ Top left: ‘ This is the West End of Blaken Maati an island about 5 miles long’. Watermark: ‘J. Whatman 1820’

Pencil; 25.8 by 41.8 cm.

Note: The drawing depicts in the right-hand foreground Batu Berlayer, Sailing Rock, sometimes known as Lot's Wife, with, in the middle distance, an Asian craft leaving the western entrance of New or, as it came to be called, Keppel Harbour. The drawing appears to be similar in style to the previous one and is therefore probably the work of Lieutenant Philip Jackson. There is no indication when it was drawn but it cannot have been long before 1823 (that is, some four years after New Harbour was 'rediscovered' and named by Lieutenant-Colonel William Farquhar) and may even have been a year or so later. Jackson accompanied the Resident, John Crawfurd, in August 1825 on a journey around Singapore aboard the ‘Malabar’ to take formal possession of the island and its dependencies following the conclusion of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty (1824), but the return was made via St. John's Island and not through New Harbour so that he did not visit Batu Berlayer on that occasion. The place, however, is shown as 'Batu Balayan' on the map which Jackson produced as a result of the journey.

Batu Berlayer is, or rather was, on the main island of Singapore, and was an important landmark for Asian and European ships running eastwards along the Keppel Harbour passage. It was Batu Berlayer, and another distinctive granite formation on the southern side of the Strait, that caused the passage to be called Dragon-teeth Strait by the early Chinese navigators, and was described as such by Wang Ta-yüan in the fourteenth century A.D. The passage was utilized by the first European ships in South-East Asian waters until it passed out of general use for such vessels during the seventeenth century. It continued to be mentioned in charts and sailing directions and was described by John Thornton in his ‘Oriental Navigation’ (London, 1703) as 'a scragged Rock, shewing like a ruined Wall'. Sadly, this historic landmark was destroyed by the Settlement Surveyor, J.T. Thomson, in August 1848 to widen the entrance to Keppel Harbour.