The Port of Singapore is huge and is the second busiest port in the world in terms of total shipping tonnage. It also tranships a fifth of the world’s shipping containers and one half of the world’s supply of crude oil making it the busiest transhipment port in the world. It was only surpassed in 2005 by Shanghai as the busiest port in the world with the extensive anchorages holding hundreds of ships at any one time. Some 32.2 TEU of containers were handled in 2013 at 57 berths at six large container terminals. Singapore lacks both land and natural resources, with water imported from Malaysia, and the income from the port has been essential for the last fifty years since Singapore became independent in 1965.

History Of Singapore

Singapore lies 85 miles north of the equator and has a hot, humid climate with a constant daily temperature of 25 to 28 degrees Centigrade, and rainfall averages 96 inches per year. Tropical vegetation flourished, but was then cut down for rubber and coconut plantations. Singapore settlement became the only port in the southern part of the Malacca Strait at the end of the thirteenth century. Singapore or Singapura (which means ‘lion city’ in Sanskrit) was founded as part of the Sumatran trading empire of Srivijaya. Chinese traders in the early seventeenth century exported rosewood, Chinese blue and white porcelain, and local produce in traditional junks. However, it was the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) on 28th January 1819, and his evaluation of the deep and sheltered waters of Keppel Harbour as a potentially important port for the East India Company, that Singapore became a place of some significance. The population of the island was only one thousand in 1819 at the time of the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles, and he leased the island from the Sultan of Johore. The British Government took over full sovereignty in 1824 and began to clear the forests and build a city and port. The Raffles Hotel was first opened in 1887 and enlarged in 1899 to the present building near Fort Canning Park.

The first port flourished at the mouth of the Singapore river for forty years after 1819. A hydrographic survey of the river was made and a lighthouse was erected at the eastern approaches to Singapore Strait in 1851 by James Horsburgh, Hydrographer of the East India Company. A submarine telegraph cable was laid in 1871 to link Madras to Singapore, and was extended a year later to Australia and Hong Kong. The early port facilities in Keppel Harbour to the west were much enhanced. The entire wharf frontage, built originally of wood, was demolished and replaced with concrete structures. Facilities for bonded storage, cold storage, vegetable oil storage and latex storage were built. The early port railway system linked into the Federal Malay States Railways. A steam floating crane, steam salvage tug, steam floating coal plant, steam fire float and a fleet of steam harbour tugs, lighters and steel barges were built as essential items of the growing port.

Tanjong Pagar Dock Company

(1865-1912)

This dock company was formed in 1865 with sailing vessels arriving in Keppel Harbour and then unloading into barges. A dock was then built with a branch rail line into the dock from the Singapore tramway. This was the main dock at Singapore for the next forty years until the Singapore Government took over the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company in 1904 as an interim measure before the Singapore Harbour Board was formed eight years later. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, trade through Singapore began to increase, and five kilometres of wharves were constructed at Tanjong Pagar. It became an enclave between the docks and the town for thousands of Chinese and Indian dock workers who had emigrated to Singapore from the mid nineteenth century. The Jinricksha Station building was the centre for the ubiquitous rickshaw trade into Singapore town. Collyer Quay in Singapore town was one of the first quays on the Singapore river, and the site of the first branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Today, it is still the site for a massive skyscraper for this bank, and is staffed by thousands of Chinese bank workers.

In 1908, a contract was awarded to build a new dock on swampland at Tanjong Pagar. It involved the realignment of Keppel Road to run parallel and just south of the railway line from Tank Road to Pasir Panjang between Anson Road and Borneo Wharf. A new dock, named Empire Dock, was then dug out with wharves on the north, east and south sides, with the opening to the sea at the southwest corner near Borneo Wharf. The granite for the new dock came from the Mandai Quarry during the construction period from 1908 to 1917. It was opened on 25th October 1917 by Sir Arthur Young, Governor of the Straits Settlements.

The nearby big King’s dry dock measuring 856 feet by 94 feet was officially opened on 26th August 1913 by Sir Arthur Young, the Governor of Singapore. The Empire Dock and King’s dry dock were major undertakings involving the use of many steam shovels, cranes, locomotives and dredgers. King’s dry dock took four and one half years to build using some 92,500 cubic metres of concrete weighing 203,000 tonnes mixed from 21,300 tonnes of cement. The Admiralty dry dock at Hong Kong was the next largest dry dock in the Far East but was 30 metres shorter in length. The Gladstone dry dock at Liverpool was the only one bigger than the new Singapore dry dock, which could be emptied of water in just two hours by two huge steam engine driven pumps at a rate of 85,000 litres per minute.

The Empire Dock was the main loading and discharge dock for the thousands of British cargo-liners and tramps that called at Singapore for the next fifty years from 1917 to the late 1960s. It was superseded by the age of the container and was eventually filled in for redevelopment of the container stacking yards of the Tanjong Pagar Container Terminal in 1989. Tanjong Pagar began to improve in status and wealthy Chinese and Arab traders began to buy property here, but it has still remained a predominantly working class area with a majority Chinese population and a minority Indian population.

Singapore Harbour Board

(1912-1964)

The main causeway north across the Johore Strait was built in 1922 by a contract to Topham, Jones and Railton Ltd. with an immigration and customs point at Woodlands on the Singapore island end. A Royal Navy base was established in 1921 at Sembawang in the northern part of the island, with a contract given to the Sir John Jackson construction company to build a base with full facilities in 1929. This was to protect the important trades in rubber and tin, and in 1922 the facilities of the Singapore Harbour Board were listed as follows :-

* Empire Dock for ships drawing up to 45 feet in draft to discharge and load with ease and other wharves and jetties in operation

* Wet Dock area of 21.5 acres

* Length of wharves at 10,000 feet

* Sheer legs lifting up to 60 tonnes

* Coaling facilities of up to 5,000 tonnes per day

* Storage area of 200,000 tonnes of coal

* Machine shops equipped with modern tools for repairs to vessels and machinery

* Steam tugs with full fire fighting and salvage equipment

* Steel and wooden lighters, railway rolling stock, launches, pontoon cranes and other craft.

Dry docks as follows :-

Name                         Built                             Size                              High Water on Sill

King’s Dock               1913                             856’x94’                     34’

Albert Dock              1879                             470’x56’                     21’

Victoria Dock           1868                             464’x57’                     20’

No. 1 Dock                1859                             384’x45’                     17’

No. 2 Dock                1870                             435’x50’                     14’

In the 1930s, a number of new features were introduced e.g. mechanical coal bunkering, fuel oil installations, and storage for palm oil and latex. The West Wharf extension was completed in 1938, and the East Wharf was partly reconstructed in reinforced concrete in 1940, but work was halted due to World War II. The island was thought to be inviolable until the Japanese swept in from the north and took it across the Johore Strait causeway in February 1942. The causeway had been blown up by the British in the middle, but this only delayed the Japanese for a week. A large contingent of over 80,000 men of the British, Indian and Australian Armies was captured at Singapore, including my uncle Harry Lea, who later suffered horribly working on the Burma Railway and in a prisoner of war camp in Japan. Keppel Harbour lost 70% of its warehouses in the bombing and much of its machinery and equipment fell into disrepair. Sunken ships and small craft littered the harbour, but the port was liberated again in September 1945 and the port began to recover for commercial working. The Singapore Port Workers Union (SPWU) was formed in 1946, and by hard work the port re-opened with the cost of repair work to Singapore Docks by June 1949 put at $10.5 million.

The cost of labour was high in the postwar era, and thus the Singapore Harbour Board (SHB) began to mechanize. In 1949, a variety of equipment was introduced including Ransome electric elevating platform trucks, fork lifts, mobile cranes and side towing motors. The SHB workforce numbered 15,000 in 1951, and the 1950s were notable for the planning of the East Lagoon Scheme to create nine new berths totalling 5,600 feet in length. This only came to fruition in the container port at Tanjong Pagar East Lagoon when opened on 23rd June 1972, an event described as probably the most significant event in the history of the Port of Singapore. A new drydock of length 616 feet and width of 85 feet was excavated between 1953 and 1956 using every new type of mechanical shovel. One half of the money for the new Queen’s Dock was provided by the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, and the new dock was opened in late 1956 near to the King’s Dock of 1913.

In 1959, petroleum products formed almost 70% of exports, with rubber, rice, tropical fruits, sugar, palm oil, tin and other minerals accounting for the remainder. Singapore attained internal self government in 1959 under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. In 1963, Singapore joined an independent federal Malaysia, but differences between the leaders led to separation. On 9th August 1965, Singapore became an independent republic within the Commonwealth under Lee Kuan Yew, with the intention of creating a prosperous country of ‘Singaporeans’ from the mixed Chinese, Indian and Malay peoples.

Port of Singapore Authority (PSA)

This Authority was formed on 1st April 1964 as a statutory board with responsibility for all of the functions of the previous Singapore Harbour Board. This included four tugs and harbour craft as well as its own fleet of steam locomotives and diesel shunters. The Port Officers Union (POU) was formed in 1967, and the British naval base of Sembawang was taken over in 1971 with four commercial wharves formed from the warship quays. The repair facilities and dry-docks became the private Sembawang repair yard which is described later in this article. The arrival of the first container ship, the Swedish vessel Nihon, on 23rd June 1972 to begin operations on the first container ship berth at the new Tanjong Pagar Container Terminal was historic. Container operations and transhipment are the ‘bread and butter’ trades of the present port, which achieved the one million TEU mark for the first time in 1982, and the five million TEU mark for the first time in 1990 to become the world’s busiest container port for the first time.

In 1991, Keppel Container Terminal began operations, and the ten million TEU mark was achieved for the first time in 1994. A milestone during 1998 was the hundredth million container to pass through the port since the start of container operations in 1972. In Millennium year, the Pasir Panjang Container Terminal opened, with extensions for COSCO container ship berth in 2003 and MSC container ship berth in 2005. Thirty years of moving containers was celebrated during 2002, and the twenty million TEU mark was achieved during 2005. The biggest container ship in the world, Emma Maersk of Maersk Line, made her first Asian call at Singapore during 2006 at Pasir Panjang Container Terminal. This terminal also has a new dedicated car terminal for NYK and ‘K’ Line car carriers, opened in 2007, and a new dedicated container terminal in 2008 for Pacific International Lines (Pte) Ltd. of Singapore at the Keppel Container Terminal.

Forty years of container operations were celebrated by the PSA during 2012, and the six container terminals presently in use are Pasir Panjang Phases 1, 2 and 3 with twenty six berths, Keppel Container Terminal with 14 berths, Brani Container Terminal with nine berths, and Tanjong Pagar Container Terminal with eight berths. Phases four and five of Pasir Panjang Container Terminal will add another sixteen berths when operational in the year 2020. Container lines from all of the world call including Maersk Line, ANL, Hamburg Sud, Hapag Lloyd, MSC, MISC Berhad, MOL, NYK, OOCL, PIL and many others engaged on the Europe to Far East container trades.

Jurong Multi Purpose Port

Jurong Port facilities in the west of the island were set up in 1963 by the Singapore Economic Development Board (SEDB) to support the growth of the first and biggest industrial estate in Singapore, Jurong Industrial Estate. The port officially commenced operations two years later with two berths, and later became a wholly owned subsidiary of JTC Corporation in 2001. Cargo tonnage handled passed the million tonne mark for the first time in 1970, and an expansion programme for four new deep water berths, the extension of an existing berth, and the addition of warehouses and transit sheds was begun.

The reclamation of mudflats and land at Pulau Damar Laut was begun in 1989 to create more deep water multi purpose berths. The Jurong Port Cement Terminal, a dedicated common user facility, was also added by large scale land reclamation in 1996 and now produces 90% of the cement throughput into Singapore. The Jurong Container Terminal began operations in 2001 in this then fully fledged multi purpose port. The Jurong Penjuru Terminal was completed in 2008 to handle lighterage and ship chandling businesses. The port is bounded by Jurong Island Highway, Jurong Pier Road, and the reclaimed island of Pulau Damar Laut, and handles 40,000 ship calls every year.

Jurong Port now operates a General Cargo Terminal, Bulk Cargo Terminal, Cement Terminal, Container Terminal, Roro Terminal, and the Penjuru Terminal. It handled 13.5 million tonnes of cargo and 1.8 million TEU of containers during 2013 including steel and steel products, project cargo, machinery and mechanical items, transhipment of metal ingots, bulk cement, furnace slag, copper slag, liquid bulk cargo and many other cargoes. In summary, the facilities are :-

Berths                                                  23

Quay Length                                     4,547 metres

Area Free Trade Zone                   1.2 million km2

Area Non Free Trade Zone         320,000 km2

Maximum vessel size                    150,000 dwt

Maximum draft                               16 metres

Warehouse area                             280,000 km2

Pulau Bukom Shell Refinery

The developments which were to be of the greatest significance in the years ahead were the establishment of oil storage and bunkering facilities in 1892 of the Asiatic Petroleum Company (part of Shell) at Pulau Bukom, and the Standard Vacuum Oil Company at Pulau Sebarok. Pulau Bukom lies three miles to the south of Singapore island and is 0.56 square miles in area. It is part of Singapore and its oil transhipment and oil storage figures are counted in the Singapore port figures. Pulau Bukom was known as Freshwater Island in 1892 when Mark Abrahams built three storage tanks on it in readiness for the arrival of his uncle’s (Sir Marcus Samuel, founder of Shell) first tanker, Murex. The Malay name of Pulau Bukom was acquired about the same time and is derived from Rangkek Bukom, the Malay term for a shell of the Conus family.

Pulau Bukom is fairly wide at one end and tapers to a narrow end and, with its central hill, looks just like a shell lying on one side. During World War II, much of the island was destroyed and found to be a mass of rubble, twisted steel, and charred metal plating, by the British. It had lost all of its 62 tanks, all the storehouses and had only two out of seven boilers working. Rebuilding and rehabilitation was a stiff task, but Bukom started again as a bunkering port and entrepot, blending products sent to it from elsewhere. A refinery costing £3 million was declared officially open on 26th July 1961 to process 20,000 barrels of crude per day into 3,300 tonnes of bottled liquid petroleum gas per year and 75,000 tonnes of bitumen per year. This was increased in the late 1960s by a £5.5 million extension with three times the capacity of the existing plant, bringing it up to three million tonnes of crude handled every year. The present Shell Oil Refinery manufactures bitumen and chemicals and is being extended in size and capacity.

Keppel Shiprepair Yard

Keppel Harbour waterway was used as early as the thirteenth century for sailing ships en route from the Straits of Malacca to the South China Sea. In August 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles had appointed William Farquhar as the first Resident of Singapore. Farquhar was much impressed by Keppel Harbour to the west of Singapore Settlement which he named as New Harbour. In 1848, Capt. Henry Keppel anchored his vessel Meander in the sheltered and deep water of the New Harbour. This name remained until the year 1900 when Keppel, then an Admiral, visited Singapore again. The acting Governor, Sir Alexander Swettenham, renamed it as Keppel Harbour after him. The trade of Keppel Harbour by the middle of the twentieth century gave the impetus for the current prosperity of Singapore.

After the formation of the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) in 1964, it was decided to set up the Singapore Drydocks and Engineering Company in 1968 to take over the Dockyard Department of the PSA. On 23rd August 1968, the name of the company was changed to Keppel Shipyard (Pte) Ltd. Six dry-docks at Tanjong Pagar were taken over, namely the King’s Dock, Queen’s Dock, Albert Dock, Victoria Dock, No. 1 Dock and No. 2 Dock, and were now owned by the privatised Keppel shiprepair yard. The Albert and Victoria Docks were filled in at the end of 1983 to allow the PSA to build an extension of the container terminal at Tanjong Pagar.

A small island to the north of Jurong Island was named Pulau Hantau or ‘Ghost Island’, and it was renamed in 1983 as Keppel Island so that the Keppel Shipyard (Pte) Ltd. could leave Keppel Harbour and relocate to it and a section of the main island near to the Tuas Second Link checkpoint to the mainland. Dry docks were then developed in exchange for the Victoria and Albert dry-docks given back to the PSA for redevelopment. Keppel Shipyard (Pte) Ltd. has since gone from strength to strength in its new location at Keppel Island, and their order book is always busy with many types of ship repair.

Shortly before the move, tragedy struck in Keppel Harbour when the drill ship Eniwetok was leaving on the evening of 29th January 1983. The top of the drilling tower drifted into the Sentosa Island cable car system. The drilling derrick became entangled in a cable causing two cabins to fall into the sea killing seven people. Another four cabins were left dangling precariously with some thirteen terrified tourists trapped inside. A daring but successful rescue attempt was mounted using two helicopters operating in high winds from which rescue personnel were winched down to the cabins to pull all thirteen tourists one by one to safety.

Sentosa Island was once a military garrison named Pulau Blakang Mati, and is now a playground on which one of Singapore’s two holiday resorts has been built. There are now three ways to reach Sentosa Island, firstly a cable car from Mount Faber Park via the World Trade Centre, secondly the Sentosa Express Monorail, and thirdly a boardwalk across Keppel Harbour. The areas around the former dry docks has since undergone redevelopment as a luxury waterfront residential community and marina. Two passenger ferries are operated, named Alexa and Sea Gull, with accommodation for 220 passengers and were built in Singapore by the Singapore Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd.

Sembawang Shiprepair Yard

In 1968, the Singapore Government gained control of the former Royal Naval Dockyard at Sembawang in the north of the island, paying the British Government a symbolic fee of one pound. The Singapore Government then founded a new company to operate and expand the shipyard called Sembawang Shipyard (Pte) Ltd., which became operational in June 1968. Instead of operating the shipyard directly, a contract was placed with Swan Hunter (International) Ltd. of Tyneside fame to become the shipyard’s managing agent. Two hundred and fifty senior Tyneside foreman and workers together with Swan Hunter Shipbuilders Ltd. director Reg Ibison as Managing Director and other naval personnel began work to continue contracts on naval frigates and ‘Ton’ class minesweepers. The company then began training the local population with the objective of replacing the British personnel entirely over the course of a few years.

Sembawang carried out its first commercial shiprepair in March 1969 with seventy ships undergoing repairs and drydockings by the year end. The smaller ships used five former Admiralty floating docks arranged alongside to the quay or parallel to the quay and further out into the Johore Strait. AFD10, AFD18, AFD20, AFD31 and AFD49 had lengths varying from 213 feet up to 584 feet with widths from 42 feet to 85 feet to handle ships up to 20,000 dwt. These five former Admiralty floating docks gave very good service, with folding arms at each end to allow personnel to transfer across the dock at the higher level. The big King George VI Dock of length 1,045 feet and width of 130 feet and depth of high water over the sill of 40 feet had been cut into the island ground in 1938 and could handle tankers and bulk carriers up to 95,000 dwt. Two smaller ships were often dry-docked in this dock simultaneously, and there was enough cranage and workshops surrounding the big dock to take on major conversion projects. A fleet of five new tugs was operated in 1973 in Sea Cougar, Sea Jaguar, Sea Lynx, Sea Mastiff and Sea Panther all built between 1966 and 1973. The funnel colours are yellow with a red top and bear a central red houseflag, hulls being black with red boot topping, and deckhouses and bridges are yellow.

By the end of December 1970, only fifty Tyneside personnel remained at the yard, which had successfully repaired 144 commercial ships and 342 naval vessels, some from the Singapore self defence fleet, during the year. Shares were offered on the Singapore Stock Exchange in April 1973 and provided the company with the means for an ambitious future expansion programme. The new Premier Dry Dock was opened in 1975 at a cost of $50 million to overhaul VLCCs and supertankers up to 400,000 dwt. The VLCC Texaco Panama built in 1972 was one of the first tankers into the new dock, as was Al Andalus of 362,946 dwt built in 1975 by Astano S.A. at El Ferrol for the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company. The ore/oil Walchand of 104,750 dwt was docked for Scindia Line, and the ore/oil Jedforest of 154,900 dwt was docked for P. & O. Four former French liners used the floating docks at this time in Belle Abeto ex Laennec, Chidambaram ex Pasteur, Le Havre Abeto ex Charles Tellier, and Malaysia Raya ex Laos. Tankers entering the King George VI Dock at this time included Emma Maersk of 64,697 dwt built in 1964 by Kockums at Malmo, Persian Commander ex Naess Commander of 39,460 dwt owned by the National Iranian Tanker Company and built in 1957 by Nederland Dok at Amsterdam.

One frequent customer was the Indonesian Government fleet (P.T. Pelarajan Nasional Indonesia), whose ferries were often in dock including Tampomas of 7,150 grt with accommodation for 142 cabin class passengers and 1,500 deck passengers and built in 1956 at the De Schelde yard at Flushing. A class of smaller ferries of 2,575 grt were also reengined at the yard e.g. Bogowonto, Brantas, Bengawan, Batanghari, and Bian. The narrow Straits of Malacca are a mecca for frequent collisions, and one such event saw the general cargo ship Golden Bell of 7,107 dwt in the yard for repair of bow damage. Sembawang became an important shiprepair yard for large shipping, and completed the docking of its first cruise ship, Arcadia of P. & O., in 1978.

A new floating dock was added to the facilities in 1978 at a cost of $9 million and measured 183 metres by 15.25 metres, and three years later the yard purchased the President floating dock capable of repairing ships up to 150,000 dwt and built by Kawasaki in Japan. At this time, only two Swan, Hunter personnel remained on site in Managing Director Neville Watson and General Manager E.S. Ware and both men returned home in 1983 with their positions now filled by Singaporeans. The cruise liner Ocean Pearl was upgraded in 1988, and another ship Ocean Spirit was converted into a cruise ship for Ocean Cruise Line, specialising in scuba diving tours. A large tanker was converted into the FPSO Nan Hai Fa Xian, the VLCC Alandia Surf was repaired after explosion damage had been suffered, two container ships were altered in size, and the cruise liner Royal Odyssey was completely refurbished.

A new floating dock called the Republic Dock was added in 1990 and is capable of repairing ships up to 60,000 dwt. A new North Pier of 700 metres in length plus other yard upgrades cost $100 million in 1994 to increase its cruise ship business e.g. Langkapuri Star Aquarius was converted into a luxury cruise ship in 1993. The last of the Admiralty Floating Docks (AFD) was broken up in 1997, and investments were then made in other yards e.g. 23.5% in the Jurong Shipyard in Singapore founded in 1963, the Bohai Sembawang Shipyard in Tianjin in China, and the Karimum Sembawang Shipyard on Karimum Island forty kilometres off the coast of Singapore in Indonesia.

A new holding company, Sembcorp, was formed in 1995 by the Sembawang Shipyard, and diversification into the power generation and civil engineering and construction markets began. Sembcorp Industries had a turnover of $3.3 billion during Millennium year, and presently its portfolio included power generation stations of 5,800 megawatts in China, water treatment plants, construction, distribution and waste management companies. Four wind power farms were added with a total capacity of 247.5 megawatts, as well as a 25% stake in the coal fired Shanxi power plant in Singapore with a capacity of 2,100 megawatts. A water treatment joint venture was announced in 2013 in Oman with the Salalah Power and Water Company.

The Sembawang yard opened a new Superintendents building, named the Aquarius building, on 2nd July 2009, much needed for the Marine Superintendents of regular clients such as BP Shipping and the Indonesian Government. The Marine Shipyard Division of Sembcorp now owns five shipyards in Singapore, two shipyards in Indonesia and others in the United States, Brazil and a 30% stake in the Cisco Shipyard Group of China with seven shipyards. Shiprepair now accounts for 52% of turnover, with power generation and other businesses accounting for 48% of turnover. This is a great expansion in only 45 years from one shiprepair yard given away for one dollar and then staffed by Tyneside skilled craftsmen in 1968.

PSA Facilities Summary

The PSA is now wholly owned by Temasek Holdings (Pte) Ltd., operating cargo terminals at Tanjong Pagar, Keppel, Brani, Pasir Panjang and Sembawang. These cargo areas have the following facilities in total:-

Container Berths                             57

Quay length                                      15,500 metres

Area                                                     600 hectares

Maximum draft                               16 metres

Cranage                                              160

Total TEU capacity                           35 million TEU

Cruise Terminals

Cruise ships constantly arrive at the existing Cruise Terminal in Keppel Harbour, or at a new large Marina Bay twin berth facility on reclaimed land at Marina South. This cost $500 million to build over three years, and was opened on 22nd May 2012 with the first cruise ship arriving four days later. The twin berths are 360 metres in length with a draft of 11.5 metres, and they have mooring dolphins of sixty metres, with the ability of berthing cruise ships up to 220,000 gt. The Terminal interior space for passengers is 300,000 square feet and includes passenger processing areas, security clearance, and baggage handling, while outside there is a coach and car park of 340,000 square feet.

Singapore became a cruise ‘turn round’ port in 1993 when Star Cruises was set up by Singapore entrepreneur Eddy Lee for the fast growing Asian cruise market from Singapore. Cruises lasted a week and took in the beautiful west coast of Malaysia to Phuket and other Thai islands. In 1995, one million passengers were carried on Star Cruises and the company won the World Travel Market Global Award for promoting Asian holidays. Their funnel colours are red and white horizontal stripes on the top half with a dark blue bottom half and a central yellow star. The first ships were the small casino ships Megastar Aries and Megastar Taurus, and two former Baltic ferries acquired from Viking Line and refitted as Langapuri Star Aquarius (ex Athena) and Star Pisces (ex Kalypso). Superstar Gemini, Superstar Capricorn and Superstar Leo and Superstar Virgo, the latter pair of 75,000 grt followed, and the current fleet is Megastar Aries, Megastar Taurus, Superstar Aquarius (ex Norwegian Wind), Surperstar Virgo, Superstar Gemini (ex Norwegian Dream), and Superstar Libra (ex Norwegian Sea).

Postscript

Singapore is a very vibrant city with brightly coloured bum boats with ‘magic eyes’ painted on their prows heading out from the Singapore river daily to sell their wares to the nearest ships in the many anchorages off the port. Tourists and cruise passengers are taken into the hot, humid downtown areas of Singapore with China Town, Universal Studios on Sentosa Island, the Raffles Hotel, and the many museums and art galleries high on the agenda. The annual Changay festival showcases the best in Chinese opera and music, and is accompanied by the usual brightly painted human dragons in costume in downtown Singapore. These lion or dragon dances come by definition with much excitement, colour, and noise provided by clanging cymbals and exploding firecrackers. The clear waters of the Johore Strait and other quiet corners of Singapore island offer excellent snorkelling and scuba diving. Singaporean restaurants are highly rated for their excellent Chinese, Malay and Indian menus on offer. The shopping in downtown China Town can hardly be rivalled elsewhere in the world.

The Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) handled the first container ship of 18,000 TEU capacity, Maersk McKinney Moller, in September 2013. The PSA was voted the ‘Best Global Container Terminal Operating Company’ in 2013 for the eight year in a row. New container terminal cranes were added at Brani and Pasir Panjang Terminals in 2013 so that the ‘Triple E’ class of Maersk Line can be handled. The first batch of automated rail mounted gantry cranes for the Pasir Panjang Phases 3 and 4 developments were received during the year, so that future expansion is assured. A highlight of this success came on 1st April 2014 with the Authority celebrating its 50th Anniversary and revealing yearly profits of SG$1.43 billion. The huge maritime cluster of terminals at Singapore is the largest transhipment hub in the world for both containers and oil. The colourful Singapore flag with a red half above a white half and a white crescent and five white stars on the red half will continue to fly above the port headquarters for many years to come.

I wish to thank the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) and its excellent website www.singaporepsa.com.