From mangroves, barbarians and pirates to an important British port: join me for a walk through the astounding Malay maritime history of Telok Blangah
- Karien van Ditzhuijzen
- Sep 15, 2025
- 10 min read
Updated: Sep 22, 2025
Singapore's history goes back a lot longer than most people realise, and although the archaeological explorations on Fort Canning Hill have sparked a renewed interest in the old stories of old Singapura and it's mythical ruler Sang Nila Utama, not everyone realises Fort Canning Hill isn't the only part of the island that was inhabited in ancient times. One areas often mentioned in old texts is none other than my own neighbourhood of Telok Blangah. So in this post let's explore the Malay Maritime as well as the colonial history of Telok Blangah.
When I moved to Telok Blangah two years ago I too was fairly ignorant of it's illustrious, or perhaps notorious, past. We got a dog and on my daily walks, past the old docks of Keppel Harbour, the gleaming yachts of the Marina, the boardwalk straddling Chermin Bay, the mangroves of Berlayer Creek and the lush slopes of Mount Faber with its fabulous view from the top, I fell in love with the area. And the more I read about its history, the more fascinated I became (some in my family call it obsessed). I want to kick of a series or posts about the area with a general overview of the changing landscape of Telok Blangah from its first recorded descriptions in the 14th century.
The first mention of Telok Blangah is by a Chinese trader called Wang Dayuan, who describes multiple locations in Singapore, of one of which matches the settlement on Fort Canning Hill. The second he calls Longyamen, which means Dragon's Teeth Gate. It is highly likely his Longyamen is what is we now know as Telok Blangah, and the mouth of the Old Singapore Strait which used to have a rather remarkably shaped rock that the Malay call Batu Berlayer, or sail rock.
How Wan Dayuan describes the people inhabiting Longyamen is rather intriguing. On the one hand he says they live in harmony with the Chinese, on the other hand he describes them as barbarians whose favourite pastime is pillage and plunder. He cautions people to be careful here, as pirates might attack with poisoned darts from blowguns. His descriptions do not differ all that much from those of 18th and early 19th century accounts, when both orang laut (local sea nomads, the indigenous people of these islands) and what are often referred as 'Malay pirates' inhabited the bay. The orang laut are alternately described as being friendly and selling fruit and fish to visitors, and as being violent robbers not to be trusted. I imagine both are true.
The popular narrative is that between the 14th century and the arrival of the British in 1819 nothing much happened in Singapore. Nothing momentous happened, but Singapore did remain a trading port in the vast Malay networks, particularly as the Old Singapore Strait was the shortest way to reach China from the west. From the late 16th century the Telok Blangah bay area is mentioned in accounts by European visitors. One of the first is by Dutch traveler Jan Huygen van Linschoten, born in Haarlem in 1563. (Which is coincidentally the town where I got my secondary education and where my parents still live in a neighbouring village). Jan Huygen never made it to Singapore himself, but he had access to Portuguese sources and describes the passage from Melaka to Macao in detail, thereby opening it up for other European travelers. His descriptions include the Old Singapore Strait with its famous Batu Berlayer, the rock pictured above. (Fun fact for the Dutch readers amongst you: yes, he is the Jan Huygen of the famous nursery rhyme! The ton (barrel) in the song is said to refer to a barrel he placed as a marker on an island in the Barentszee as he tried to find a way to the East via the Northern passage. He never made it through.)
Several 17th century European sources, both Dutch and Portuguese, describe the bay as a good location for a settlement, but all decide against it. In 1619 the Dutch settle on what is now Jakarta instead, because the Sunda Strait is navigable all year round, whilst in the Singapore Strait ships have to wait long months for the monsoon winds to change.
We will now fast forward to the the 19th century. The British have settled in Singapore and Telok Blangah has become the land of the Temenggong Abdul Rahman. He was an important Malay royal under the the Sultan of Johor who managed a fiefdom that included Singapore and Johor mainland and he had many followers, including Malay and orang laut, many of which settled in Telok Blangah in Malay kampongs (villages). You can read more about the Temenggong in my earlier post here. Telok means bay in Malay, but the origins of the word blangah are not clear. It is often suggested it refers to a cooking pot but there is another explanation that seems more logical, and that is that blangah is an old Bugis word for anchorage.
Though the deep water harbour at Telok Blangah was noticed by William Farquhar in 1820, it would take a few decades before the British developed the area. In 1827 Captain Dill Ross (who we have met in one of my previous posts as the one who built the Woodneuk estate that would later be bought by the Temenggong's grandson Abu Bakar!) did a survey of the waters south of Singapore of which the above is a close-up. The British realised they gave the Temenggong rather prime land, and started buying and leasing parts of it back.
The map below from the year after (1828) shows that the land around Telok Blangah is now earmarked for development. Bukit Chermin is allocated to the Dock company, Tebit Tingi to the P&O company, and the stretch along Chermin Bay is reserved as government land. On Faber Peak a Flagstaff is erected that will signal news to and from incoming ships. The road to the top of Mount Faber that will be cleared in 1845 by Charles Edward Faber who gave the hill its current name, is for now a path labeled as 'right of way to the flag staff and the wells'. The land for the flagstaff is on the top was government owned, the path to it crosses the Temenggong's land.
The development of New Harbour didn't happen as quickly as planned. There were two main problems: the coast was full of mangrove swamps, and its waters invested with pirates.
Some of these pirates were in fact the Temenggong’s own men. Whilst the initial treaty of 1819 with the British allowed the Malay rulers to make money from local traders visiting their port, the second treaty in 1824 put a stop to this. The subsequent death of Temenggong Abdul Rahman in 1825 further aggravated the situation. His eldest son and successor had what we would now call mental health issues, and without a proper Malay leader present, piracy spiralled out of control between 1825 and 1835. Any transactions not endowed by the British were considered piracy, and though some of this business could be deemed a simple continuation of local trade as had been happening here for centuries, others were violent robberies and not only Malay but also Bugis, Chinese and European boats were targeted. Pirates from other parts of the archipelago also plagued the Straits, those from Ilanun in the Southern Philippines being some of the most notorious.
In 1836 governor Bonham approached Daeng Ibrahim, younger son of the late Temenggong, who was at the time rumoured to be deeply involved with piracy himself, for help. Together with the Daeng Ibrahim the British got the pirate problem under control, in recognition of which the British formally installed Daeng Ibrahim as Temenggong in 1841. He became one of the most respected leaders in the Malay world, not only in Singapore but amongst other Malay rulers, and he often negotiated on their behalf with the British.
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This map from the 1840s shows the Temenggongs house as well as several (Malay) villages. Some of the houses in the Malay villages seem to be floating in the sea. This is no error, many of the houses would have been built over the ocean raised on stilts, and the coast here was full of mangrove swamps. Many orang laut lived completely on their boats.
Notable on this map are also the two promontories of Cape St James and Tebing Tingi. St James was originally known as Tanjong Aur (meaning cape bamboo) and boasted the first colonial house of the area, that of trader James Guthrie, of Guthrie and Co, who leased the land from the Temenggong in 1837. It was later demolished to build the St James power station which opened in 1927, and still stands next to the causeway to Sentosa. It has recently been renovated (and now houses the head quarters a well known vacuum cleaner brand..)
Like his father Temenggong Ibrahim continued to live in Telok Blangah. The Istana (palace) he built there was unfortunately torn down in the 1950s, in its place now stands the Harbourlights condominium. What remains of the Temenggong's compound is the mosque, which is built where an old balai, or meeting house for the Temenggong to meet his people, once stood next to the palace. Besides to the mosque is the royal graveyard and the mausoleum with the tombs of Temenggong Abdul Rahman and Daeng Ibrahim. The land and mosque are still owned by the Johor royal family.
In the early 1840s John Turnbull Thomson was installed as official government surveyor and he went around the whole island on horseback for an extensive survey of all the terrain. These wanderings resulted in a detailed map of all of Singapore, that included heights of hills and depths of water. The below image is a close up of the map, published in 1849 showing new developments in the Telok Blangah area.
 Most notable developments are the P&O ferry terminal on Tibing Tingi (there is still a ferry terminal at the same location at Harbourfront Centre) and a second colonial house that had been built on Bukit Chermin (far left on map) in 1848. This was Cliff House built by merchant William Kerr. Kerr would become one of the founding partners of the New Harbour Dock Company. Unfortunately the Cliff House that perched on top of the hill was demolished after a fire in the 1960s.
In 1846 Temenggong Daeng Ibrahim was presented with a State Sword by Governor Butterworth, the ceremony for which can be seen in the above watercolour in the National Museum of Singapore, to acknowledge his role in helping to curb piracy in the area.
John Cameron, the owner and editor of The Straits Times newspaper from 1861 to 1881, in his book "Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India" from 1865 paints an enchanting picture of the entry to New Harbour from the sea. Its rich green jungle is dotted with the white washed residences of the merchants, the conical Mirror Hill (Bukit Chermin) reflects perfectly in the bay, and the beds of coral under the sea are so beautiful they 'appear to vie with the scenery above.' The slopes of Mount Faber are covered with the pineapple plantations of the Temenggong 'not unlike potato fields at home.'
Reading descriptions like this makes me yearn for a time machine, to go for a walk along this bay, and see what Telok Blangah looked like a century and a half ago. These days the best way to see what old Singapore used to look like is to visit surrounding islands in Indonesian Riau, that are less developed and still have old Malay villages and unspoiled nature.
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The next map from 1871 shows another new development: the construction of the first two docks of the Keppel Shipyard which were built in the late 1850s.
The last map I want to share in this post is from 1907. The harbour continues to grow steadily, particularly as steamships get more and more popular and several coaling stations are built next to the shipyards.
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During a 1900 visit of Admiral Henry Keppel the harbour was renamed in his honour, and became known as it is today: Keppel Harbour. Though for some time into the 20th century it was referred to as New Harbour still. Keppel is often credited with either 'discovering' New Harbour as well as with clearing it of pirates but neither claim is true. Even if we ignore the fact that the Malays had used this harbour for at least half a millennium and that it was noted by William Farquhar in 1820, as we have seen above the area had been surveyed by Captain Dill Ross in 1827 already and more extensively by government surveyor Thomson in 1844.
Keppel, according to his own diary, surveyed New Harbour again in 1948, and impressed with the deep water, he recommended to the admiralty to add dry docks for ship repair and coaling stations to the harbour. Even if his report did play a small role in the expansion of the harbour, its development was well on the way before Keppel first set foot in Singapore in 1832, more so in 1848 when he actually made it to New Harbour itself.
And what about the pirates? Keppel has been involved in anti-pirate campaigns in the region, but particularly in Borneo, but these didn't happen until the 1840s, by which time New Harbour was relatively peaceful and established. As we saw above, it was Temenggong Daeng Ibrahim who played the main role in eliminating piracy in Telok Blangah.
History has a habit of writing itself without much reverence to true events. Credit for the 'founding' of Singapore has gone to Thomas Stamford Raffles alone, even though the amount he contributed to its actual development is debatable. Likewise credit for the development of Keppel Harbour has gone to a man that had very little to do with it at all.
Perhaps Temenggong Daeng Ibrahim Harbour would have been a more suitable name?
The growth of New Harbour continued into the 20th century. It became a loading station for coal for steamships, had several dry docks to repair ships, and a large depot for the Telegraph company. With the rise of steamships the old Singapore Strait overtook the Sunda Strait as the main thoroughfare to China, and its port became the largest in the world in the middle of the 20th century.
Sources:
All maps and images come from the National Archives of Singapore, unless otherwise stated.
The first two drawing of maps by Wan Dayuan come from: The Golden Khersonese. Studies in the historical geography of the Malay Peninsula before A.D. 1500 , Paul Wheatley, 1961
The drawing by Vincent Brooks comes from the book: Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India, John Cameron, 1865
It would be too much to mention all my other sources here, but some particularly relevant to this area are:
Singapore: Notes on the History of the Old Strait, 1580-1850 C. A. Gibson-Hill
Prince of Pirates, The Temenggongs and the development of Johor and Singapore 1784-1885, Carl Trocki