SINGAPORE BASE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4826, 27 March 1925, Page 3

SINGAPORE BASE.

— A VISIT TO THE SITE. GREAT OIL STATION. 1 have just returned from a visit to the area designated as the site of the; future Singapore base (writes a special correspondent- of the "Chicago Tribune”). The land, some 2500 acres, was bought by the British Governor-General of Malaya, and paid for by the municipality of Singapore, ami presented to the Imperial Government at a cost of £130,000. The reservation, which wais formally owned by Chinese rubber planters and speculators, is situated on the northeast shore of Singapore Island. This island is roughly diamond-shaped, runing thirty miles east and west, ami fifteen miles north and south. The terrain is mostly flat, and all tne uncultivated parts are dense jungle and swamp. The bajae is located on the Straits of Johore, a deep sea-water passage about one mile wide and forty miles long, which is the northern boundary of the island and separates it from the mainland of the Malay Peninsula. Its southernmost point is on the Continent of Asia. The opposite shores of the Straits, possessing good elevtions ten miles inland, ai‘e in the territory of the unfederated Malay State of Johore, governed by the Sultan, with a British adviser, and under the direction of a British Governor-Gener-al, who is the joint executive and representative of the Crown in the whole of Malaya.

The base has frontage of about six miles on the Johore Straits. This fro’»t extends westwards from the Seletar Road to a railway and motor causeway—which was planned befoie tlrn base, and has just recently bee-i fimidied —deprives the base of a rear exit : nto the Straits of Malacca, or u rear entrance for, damaged vessels, which will now have to steam around the island, a distance of some sixty miles, and enter the base via the eastern on south Chine Sea entrance. This defect, which has caused some discussion in Singapore, may be remedied at any time by destroying the causeway or replacing it with a high bridge. The reservation and the entire eastern half of the Straits are well supplied with inlets. The Malayan creeks are known for their uiiusual depth and steepness of their bank.', which are held in place by heavy growths of mangroves. The Straits themselves have ample depth for the largest ships in the Navy, and .there Is space enough for the entire Britijsh Fleet, and some more.

Work had just been started on the Base when the MacDonald Government cancelled the entire scheme. One small float of several, hundred acres had been cleared of jungle, and the cement foundations laid for preliminary warehouses and engineers’ officers. The, former owners of the rubber trees on the reservation were al'owed to bleed their trees to the last drop of latex, with the result that most of tliein are in a dying condition, although this will not lighten the great task of removing them.

/although practically no work ha>s bee n accomplished on the site of the reservation, much has been done elsewhere on Singapore Island to ensure the future oil supply of the base, and, in tact, to make Singapore one of tne greatest oiling stations in the world. Sixty enormous steel oil tanks have been erected, with a capacity reachim; hundreds of thousands of tons of oil. These tanks are not on the reservation. Half of them are located in the middle of the rubber forests, in the very centre of the island, at a spot called Manda. Others are placed several miles inland on the southwest shore of the island, and behind the slightly rolling ridges of Pasir Panjang which hide them from the main waters of Singapore Straits. All of them are above the ground, and cover such an area that they are easily locatable from .the air.

Pipelines convey the fuel from tank ships in Commercial Harbour, near the city, to the Admiralty tanks, from which it is presumed they will extend again from the tanks northward :o tin: base of the reservation, for the fuelling of Admiralty vessels, The pipelines are all buried, some of them under the streets of Singapore, where their presence has become generally known owing to the breaking of pipes in a recent testing of the system. The oil wells of Dutch Borneo and Burma constitute the chief source of supply.

There is no naval or enginering staff here at present charged with planning the future work on the base, and no one Will speak officially on it: neither fe the British Royal Air Force represented here at present, although it is rumoured that Singapore’s future importance includes its transformation into an aeroplane and airship station as a link in. the chain of Imperial airways between England and Australia, via India.