Unearthed: a final message from Sandakan’s doomed soldiers
Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 2008
Photo gallery

By the time the button and other relics were buried 63 years ago, the burial party would have harboured no hopes of survival, or rescue, or of anyone in the outside world knowing where they were. They knew that people who came to this remote place were doomed to die. This place was the last camp.

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A few months earlier in 1945, the Japanese high command had ordered that no prisoners survive the war. With Allied forces nearing Sandakan, the Japanese ordered prisoners to march 265 kilometres to Ranau.

Old Town site excavation ruins artifacts

Excavation during the construction of a pedestrian tunnel in Old Town, West Jakarta, has destroyed artifacts and hampered historical analysis, an archaeologist said Thursday.

“The cultural and museum agency should have been informed about the excavation at the Old Town site… a permit should have been sought before the project began,” University of Indonesia professor of archaeology Mundardjito said.

“Digging beneath a historical site without an excavation permit is illegal,” he said.

Late last year, workers who were excavating at the Old Town site — to make way for a western entrance to the pedestrian tunnel in front of Bank Mandiri Museum — found an old tram track, timber poles, terra-cotta pipes and a thick brick and andesite wall.

A preliminary analysis carried out by the agency’s archaeological team revealed the wall position did not match that of the old city wall.

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Read more about the excavations at Old Town.

This is quite an exciting find because until now, there hasn’t been a photograph of Fort Tanjong Katong available, particularly since the site was excavated a few years ago.

Fort Tanjong Katong was built in Singapore in 1879 as a response to perceived gap in the defence grid on the eastern part of Singapore Town. By erecting a battery at the mouth of the Kallang River, Fort Tanjong Katong placated the fears of the local merchant community fearful of an enemy ship sailing into the Kallang River and lobbying shells into the city.

Initially armed with three 7-inch cannons, these were soon rendered obsolete because of improvements in ship armour. Later in 1886, the fort was refitted with two 8-inch breach-loading guns, better than its predecessors, but far below the two 9-inch and one 10-inch cannon that were initially requested for the upgrade. Worse still, the land on which the fort was built was sandy and unstable, making it necessary for the gunners to reclibrate their weapons after every shot. Needless to say, the fort was not effective as a weapons platform as much as it was a psychological placation to the local community. In the early 1900s, it was decided that the fort was to be abandoned, presumably razed, and the site was converted into a public park.

In 2002, the fort was “rediscovered” by a local who lived opposite the park who noticed a difference in the colour of grass, showing the outline of a structure underneath. Excavations of the fort in 2004 and 2005 revealed portions of the moat, fortification wall, drawbridge structure and bastions. (You can download a copy of the Fort Tanjong Katong site report here.) Excavations were aided by copies of the fort’s 1886 plan that were available at the Public Records Office in the UK, but were hampered by the a lack of any photograph of what the fort looked like when it was sanding. In fact, most modern artists impressions of the fort looked like this:

Which brings us back to the Wellcome Trust picture, which was taken by John Edmund Taylor in 1880. The picture throws up more questions than answers:

What part of the fort is shown in the picture?
According to the Wellcome Trust, the picture was taken in 1880, which was a year after the fort was erected and would be armed with the three 7-inch guns. Judging from the walls, it would look like this picture was taken from the interior of the fort which would lead us to question 2…

Which angle was the picture taken from?
While the prospect of the cannons resting atop the two “hills” are tantalisingly intriguing, the lack of cannons and the palm trees in the background would seem to imply that we are facing inland. The bent wall structure also betrays no clues about which part of the fort this could be – it does not match any of the shape of the walls that were unearthed during the 2004-2005 excavation.

So what did Fort Tanjong Katong really look like?
Taylor’s picture certainly throws an interesting light to what (part of) the fort looked like in its heyday and it has thrown some assumptions out of the window. Perhaps it is too early to say “we’ll never know…” and some other photographic archive might shed some more light to this issue.

13 July 2007 update: After speaking with archaeologist Lim Chen Sian, he agrees that the layout looks like the interior of the fort, with the doorway to the left probably leading to the shell store, while the other door leading to the artillery store. He believes that the sand ramp in the middle of the two “hills” leads to the gun emplacement, which would mean that this picture was taken facing the sea, although it still doesn’t explain the coconut trees in the background.

Rise of the Great Fort

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Following the discovery, the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry proposed to reconstruct the Malacca Fort, for which the Cabinet approved a fund of RM12.8 million three months ago.

Rui and Nordin are part of a team of local and foreign experts comprising historians, archaeologists, architects, geologists and conservationists put together by the Department of National Heritage to oversee the fort’s reconstruction.

Heading the team is Heritage Commissioner Datuk Professor Zuraina Majid.

“We are not aiming to rebuild the whole fort, only about 50 per cent of the original.

“What is of primary concern is the authenticity of our reconstruction,” says Zuraina.

With only the foundations to work with, her team will have to rely heavily on historic documents by authors like Tome Pires and Emanuel Godinho de Eredia, drawings, paintings, as well as consultation with experts familiar with the architecture of that era.

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Read more about the Malacca Fort, the Fortaleza D’Malacca also known as A’Famosa.

A’Famosa to be rebuilt

Portions of the buried ruins of Fortaleza D’Malacca or the mighty A’Famosa fortress built in 1512 will be brought to “life” for the world to see. About 350m of the buried walls of the fortress will be reconstructed stone by stone to its original dimensions of 8m by 5m, said Commissioner of Heritage Prof Datuk Dr Siti Zuraina Abdul Majid. She said the completed structure would encompass the city’s 11.3ha heritage site in Bandar Hilir.

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Presently, the department is using documents and paintings of the fort dating back to 1512 to determine its dimensions and design, but may require further documents from overseas sources.

“We might study the Galle Fort, which is fully intact in Sri Lanka, as it is a good example of how the fort would look like because they both share a similar history,” she added.

Kota artifact part of old railway structure: Expert

An underground structure found by workers while digging a pedestrian tunnel in Jakarta’s Old Town district might have been part of the foundation for an old railway structure from the 19th century, a recent analysis reveals.

“We have compared old maps of the area and found that in the 1800s, there were three railway tracks intersecting at that point (where the structure was found),” tunnel project structural expert Josia Irwan Rastandi said.

The old map reveals that after the southern city fortress wall was demolished, the Dutch built two railway tracks running east to west and a tram track running north to south.

Underground wall worthy of further investigation, experts say

The discovery of an underground structure in a historic area of West Jakarta is only the beginning of the process of studying and understanding the site, experts say.

Last month, workers digging the western entrance of a pedestrian tunnel in the Old Town area uncovered the remnants of a stone wall, buried some three meters under the earth.

“The wall is likely to stretch farther along the north-south axis,” Josia Irwan Rastandi, a structural advisor to the contractor building the tunnel, Wijaya Karya, said last week.

The ongoing construction project makes it unlikely the city administration will permit a thorough on-site investigation, but archaeologists may be able to examine the ruins from another vantage point.

The stone structure, which stretches along a straight north-south axis, is intercepted by a 160-centimeter-thick brick wall, running east-west.

Heritage activists previously called for the construction project to be halted, in the belief that the findings were part of the Batavia city wall, which was built in the early 1600s.

However, preliminary archaeological studies carried out by the city’s cultural and museums agency have determined it is not part of the old fortress

30 November 2006 (The Star) – Ancient wall find halts tower work
1 December 2006 (The Star) – Blocks similar to earlier find
1 December 2006 (New Straits Times) – Excavation for Malacca tower project unearths ruins of Dutch fort
1 December 2006 (Bernama) – Survey tower site possible Dutch fort
2 December 2006 (The Star) – Digging deep to verify Malacca wall status
2 December 2006 (New Straits Times) – Ancient wall most likely part of a Dutch fort
3 December 2006 (The Star) – Mohd Khalil visits site of ancient wall
3 December 2006 (Bernama) – Ancient wall discovery needs further study, says Rais

Strangely enough, I was just in Malacca last weekend. The city is certainly very historical, and there’s a lot of living heritage present as well. For now, the work on the tower has been suspended for a couple of weeks while archaeologists try to ascertain the structure the wall belongs to. The unearthed structure is believed to be part of a Dutch fort and may date between 1641 and 1824.

Related Books:
- The Malay Sultanates 1400-1700 (The Encyclopedia of Malaysia)