Memories of Fort Siloso

A few months ago, I heard that Fort Siloso on Sentosa Island will be gazetted as one of Singapore’s national monuments. That’s fantastic news. It has certainly brought back memories of my years working in the planning and development of Sentosa, that included designing a small part for Fort Siloso. As many of us (especially history enthusiasts and generally the people in Singapore) know, Fort Siloso is one of four coastal artillery batteries on Sentosa that were built by the British as part of their ‘Fortress Singapore’.

A Little Bit of History

Here’s a little bit of history on Fort Siloso. In 1874, the British colonial government decided to build fortifications on Sentosa, then known as the ‘Pulau Blakang Mati’. It was to protect Keppel Harbour that was built in 1859 on a land purchased from the Temenggong of Johor. Other than Fort Siloso that is located on the western end of Sentosa and the Imbiah Battery nearby, there were also Fort Serapong and Fort Connaught on the eastern end. The Imbiah Battery and Fort Serapong have been left as ruins in the jungle while Fort Connaught was demolished to make way for a golf course, leaving Fort Siloso as the only fort that could be visited by the general public today.

Among the guns installed at Fort Siloso in preparation for the Second World War were 7-inch guns, 64-pounder guns, 10-inch guns, 6-pounder guns, anti-torpedo-boat guns and anti-aircraft machine guns. These were supposed to be used against an attack from the south (from the sea), but the Japanese invasion however came from the north. While the guns were turned 180 degrees to fire at the main island of Singapore during the 1942 Battle of Singapore, it reportedly resulted in casualties among the British and local troops due to friendly fire. On 15 February 1942, Singapore fell (“The worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history” – Winston Churchill) to the Japanese, who used Fort Siloso as a prisoner-of-war camp.

Immediately after the Second World War, the British took back Fort Siloso, employing the 1st Malay Coast Battery and the Royal Artillery to man the fort’s guns. The duty was given the Gurkhas in 1946 and in 1967, Sentosa was handed over to the Singapore government following British military withdrawal. I guess that’s when the fun started for the island, when Mr Alan Choe – Sentosa’s former Chairman and former Chief of the Urban Renewal Unit (today’s URA) – managed to convince the government to turn Sentosa into a tourism destination.

My Small Part for Fort Siloso

In 1974, Fort Siloso opened as a museum and twenty years later it went through a major refurbishment in the early 1990s. That was when I joined Sentosa as an architect, two years after graduating from university. At that time, tourism destination master planning, historic conservation and themed attraction were all alien subjects to me. Meeting the international consultant who designed Fort Siloso’s refurbishment and looking at their work was an eye opener, and I thought that I could do that too. After all, my fingers were itching to do my own design, and managing the design of consultants was just not thrilling enough for my younger self.

As luck would have it, the GM of Sentosa in the mid-1990s issued a challenge for us to produce new ideas and deliver the product ourselves. By that time, the refurbishment of Fort Siloso was already completed, but the museum was still suffering from low visitorship. Fort Siloso is located on top of a hill – the problem was that many Sentosa visitors either simply didn’t know the fort was up there, or they saw the walk uphill to be too troublesome. Interestingly, the Underwater World located at the foot of the hill was always packed with visitors. When a colleague from the attractions department proposed to have a stop for trackless train (referred to as the ‘beach train’ in Sentosa) right in front of Underwater World to bring visitors up to Fort Siloso, I jumped at the chance and said, hey, this could be more than just a train stop – it could also be the face of Fort Siloso and I can design that!

Given a budget of only half a million Singapore dollars, the project had to be designed as simply a fa?ade, especially as a big chunk of the budget had to be spent on structural works to build a retaining wall after we cut the slope at the foot of the hill. The fancy name that we gave to the project at that time was the ‘Fort Siloso Gateway’, but its name in the authority’s planning permission was quite a hilarious ‘Proposed Retaining Wall with A Train Stop’. However this is no ordinary retaining wall, but one designed to harmonise with the architecture of Fort Siloso. Other than the shape of arches created on the wall and the detailing of the train stop’s metal roof truss that is complete with fake rivets, I also designed replica guns that are made from fibreglass, which are placed high up on large pillars along the wall. The last item to be installed in the project was its signage which reads ‘Fort Siloso 1885’. It was an interesting scene when the sign was put up, as some people were seen writing down ‘1885’ in their small notebooks. It turned out that they took the installation to be a sign that they should buy the number 1885 in the 4 digit (4D) lottery.

Working on the design and project was a lot of fun. Yes, the structure is not part of the original Fort Siloso, but we tried as much as possible to make it look authentic, at least to the general public. From street level, I think only experts could tell that the guns are not real. Most importantly, the project has done its part to attract visitors to visit the real Fort Siloso.

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