Singapore, 1962 to 1964 – Royal Naval School (by Tim Light)

At the end of 1961, my brother and I left St. Andrews School, never to return. In January 1962 we started as pupils at the Royal Naval School, in the Naval Base at Sembawang. In 1962, the British armed forces still had a massive presence in Singapore, with a large proportion of the territory being occupied by the various Naval, Army or Air bases. The Naval Base was probably the biggest of these bases.

My parents were not in the forces, but the services schools must have been the best option for giving us an education aligned to the British curriculum. I imagine that our places had to be paid for, but I don’t know how much or who paid it. I have an idea that the Metal Box company made a contribution towards our schooling. One minor bonus for my parents was that the uniform was exactly the same as St. Andrews, i.e. Navy shorts and white shirt. Minus the St. Andrews badge, of course.


Also at the start of 1962, we moved into our new home at 7 Sian Tuan Avenue, Hong Kong Park, off Dunearn Road. We went to school in the RN School Bus, a smart Bedford bus, in Navy Blue livery with white trim. There must have been naval personnel scattered around the island, because the school ran a large number of routes out from the school. There was even a mini-bus station at the school.

The bus proceeded through Bukit Timah, Bukit Panjang, and Woodlands, entering the Naval Base through the gates near to the causeway. There were still a few miles to go to reach the school, which was at the Sembawang end of the base. We had to pass the dockyard, and it was always interesting to see the various warships in the dock. I was never an expert, so I couldn’t distinguish between battleships, cruisers or most of the other vessels. There was always a buzz of excitement when one of the great aircraft carriers was expected. I remember Ark Royal and Bulwark. They were enormous.


The school was a pleasant collection of buildings in a nice location. The classrooms were a set of three long, single storied buildings, with 3 or 4 classrooms per block. The sides were completely open, allowing a refreshing breeze to pass through. The main assembly hall was a classic old colonial-style wooden building on stilts, with a balcony. This hall was used for assembly, music and drama lessons. My most vivid memory was hearing the announcement that President Kennedy had been assassinated.


There was another similar building that was used for martial arts and crafts. I was a member of the fencing club, and enjoyed some success with the foil. School finished in the early afternoon, but there were activities every afternoon including sports, crafts, choir, etc..


The other buildings that I remember were a staff and administration block that also had a library, and the toilet block. Finally there was a Padang where we played football and rounders.


My first teacher was Mrs Ransome, who was a somewhat mature lady, kindly but stern, in the tradition of Victorian matrons. I’m probably doing her a disservice with this description. She was probably not as old as my young eyes perceived her to be. One memory of Mrs Ransome was her insistence on the accurate use of English. One poor lad said to her, “Please Miss. I’ve got all ink on my hands.” Mrs Ransome said, very severely, “You do not have all ink on your hands, William. You have some ink on your hands. If all ink was in this classroom, we would all have drowned in it.”


After that, in year 3, we had Mr. Nutter. He was a decent bloke, who made lessons interesting, and was constantly distracted by the wildlife. He set up an aquarium, and had various live insects and rodents on the nature table. In cages of course. I managed to incur his wrath by failing to deliver my homework on a number of occasions, with increasingly laughable excuses. He finally lost patience and caned me. I deserved it.


In year 4 we had Mr Steele. He was a little more severe and not as much fun, but still a good teacher so long as you didn’t mess with him. Which I didn’t.


It was in year 4 that I started to fall in love with some of my fellow pupils. Anne Turner and Margaret Pillage spring to mind. I wonder where they are now. My best pal was Keith Stannard, and I spent a few weekends stopping over at his house in the naval base, just up the road from the school. These were lovely old black and white houses on stilts. We would go fishing on a jetty, catching lots of fish as we watched the big grey warships coming and going. Wonderful times.


To my eternal shame, I left the Royal Naval School without exchanging addresses with any of my friends. This was not intentional, but my parents had arranged for me to be placed in a prep school in Yorkshire at very short notice. But I could have made an effort to contact my friends. Now they are just a distant memory.

The school buildings still exist, as a school for prison staff, I think.


I have many more happy memories of this school. Too many for this blog.

Football @ Sembawang in the 1960s

Recently, I watched the episode of Project Neighbourhood on Sembawang. This programme was aired in November last year, and I had recorded it for subsequent viewing. There was quite a bit of history of the presence of the British forces at the Sembawang Naval Base. Of particular interest was the interview with local soccer hero, Quah Kim Song, who said that he developed his speed and courage through his matches against the British soccer teams.



I thought my friend Mike Robbins might be interest in this documentary and asked him to go Mediacorp’s xinmsn website to watch Episode 6 of Project Neighbourbood. Following that, he emailed me.


Hello again Chun See,


Have just watched episode 6 with interest and have attached two photos.


The Singapore football photo below includes me playing my last game in Singapore (I am in back row 2nd from right end of picture). This was a game played before one of the Indian employees returned to India I seem to remember. It was played on the pitch adjacent to the Dockyard Swimming Club.

The second photo (project neighbourhood) features an evening celebration with the Quah family previously mentioned to you. Sitting at the table 4th from right is myself and on my left is one of the two other British members of my section. That same person, Tony Walker, also appears in a photo in episode 6 at about 18.52 minutes! He was single and lived in the club mentioned.

As you can imagine after being at sea for some time, sailors clearly needed to let off steam. It was a navy tradition that each ship had several sports teams - football, tug of war, cricket, rugby etc. Whichever port a ship visited, it would be part of the goodwill visit to arrange to play some sport with the local community.


As far as Singapore was concerned this was the base of the Far East Fleet with many ships going and coming. There were often inter-ship and inter-service (Army and Air Force competitions). The base was also used by the US Navy at that time for R & R from their Vietnam patrols. I remember seeing aircraft on the deck of an US carrier showing scars of their action - the odd bullet hole here and there.


The ships on arrival would be up for any matches they could arrange hence competition also with the local base employees. Through these matches I am sure local friendships were formed. Clearly many of the sailors would be bigger than Quah Kim Song. I imagine his speed enabled him to avoid many crunching tackles!


As an aside the Naval Golfing Society in the base had a monthly day at the Island Country Club - thoroughly good day out. I remember the little kids coming out at every other hole to sell us cold drinks. I am sure times have very much changed there.

More Memories of Sembawang

More memories of Sembawang, this time via email from a friend from Australia (I presume).

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G'day Lam,

I just stumbled upon your blog about Singapore in the 60's and 70's and felt a wonderful sense of relief - Singaporeans still remember the 'Kampong Days'!!

I was a member of the ANZUK Force serving with them for about two-and-a-half years - in retrospect, perhaps, the most educational and significant years of my life! I spent a bit of time at Changi and used to catch the bus along Tanah Merah Road - not sure if it was actually, Tanah Merah Besar …. also lived in the barracks at HMS Terror, a house in Sembawang and lastly at Woodlands.

I just visited Singapore in 2008 and was dismayed to [and shocked and impressed by the vastness of the changes - culturally as well as economical - though Lee Kwan Yew was always going to make a big statement after getting booted out of Malaysia] find the village just out of Sembawang where I used to go and learn TKD was nowhere to be found - I think maybe the railway station was built on that site!! And the Sembawang Strip [probably you never went there, but just about every western serviceman would have had a beer there] looked so sad and lifeless.

It came as a shock - because even though I have spent many months in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos .. and saw the changes in those places - they did not have the same level of emotional impact as I experienced in retracing my early soldier years in Singapore. I doubt now you even have the Indian piercing festivals etc..

Anyway .. please excuse my rambling .. congratulations on your initiative - it is very worthwhile.

Regards

Terry

PS – I think the village that Terry mentioned must have been Chong Pang Village and the ‘Sembawang Strip’ must be referring to the row of bars that I blogged about in my previous post.


This 1967 photo of the same row of shops by A. J. Allen is from Memories of Singapore. Doesn't seem to have changed much over the past 43 years.


OK, here’s a quiz to test your knowledge of Singapore. Below are two photos of houses which I was quite surprised to see. Where is this place? It is quite difficult to see houses like these nowadays. I think Victor has blogged about such buildings in the Alexandra Road vicinity.

Memories of Sembawang

I have enjoyed reading several posts by my fellow nostalgia bloggers like Philip Chew, Thimbuktu, YG, Victor and Jerome Li sharing their memories of Sembawang. Although Sembawang is not ‘my territory’, I do have some memories of that place which I too would like to share with you. But, unlike my other stories, my memories of Sembawang don’t go back very far. In fact they are relatively recent, going back to the early nineties when my kids were still quite young.

At that time, I often brought my family to places like the Changi Beach, Kallang River, MacRitchie Reservoir, West Coast Park, Seletar Reservoir and Sembawang Park on weekend evenings. My wife and I wanted our children to spend more time in the outdoors than in air-conditioned cinema halls and shopping centres. Recently, I read an article about research done in Australia which says that regular exposure to the outdoors is good for children’s eyesight. Maybe that’s the reason why all my three children do not need glasses – at least not until recently when my youngest started to use them – which is quite unusual by Singapore standards.

At Sembawang Park, we would visit the jetty and the kids liked to play on the beach. As night fell, we often went for dinner at a zhi-char coffee shop located in a cluster of HDB flats near the Sembawang Community Centre. On the way, we would pass by a row of shops on the left some of which had bright neon lights which I assumed were bars. I was a bit surprised to see these bars because that stretch of road was quite dark and deserted. Furthermore, I thought these bars usually catered to the British military personnel who would have long left Singapore by 1990.


I have not been to Sambawang area for a long time and have heard about the tremendous changes that had taken place there. And so when I recently had a chance to go to the Sembawang MRT station early one morning, I decided to go to Sembawang Park for my brisk walking exercise and check if these places were still around.

As expected, I was totally overwhelmed by the transformation of what was once the Chong Pang Village and Canberra Road. In fact, as I drove along Sembawang Way, I missed the turn (it was still quite dark) and I ended up in Yishun instead of Sembawang Park. Anyway I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the block of shops that used to house the bars is still there. In fact I had my breakfast there. But I was saddened, though not surprised that the cluster of HDB flat near Sembawang CC had disappeared. As for Sembawang Park and the surrounding; it didn’t seem to have changed much. Still very peaceful and quite.

Some things do not change

The Beauliew House which had two sections; one serving Chinese and the other serving Western food

This is the jetty and beach where we enjoyed ‘quality time’ as a family