Raffles Lighthouse
Encyclopedia
Lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....
located in the Straits of Singapore, about 14 kilometres south of the main island of Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
.
The Raffles Lighthouse was first mooted in 1833, but the foundation stone was only laid in 1854 when William John Butterworth was the Governor of the Straits Settlements from 1843 to 1855. The stones on which Raffles Lighthouse stands come from the granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
quarries on Pulau Ubin
Pulau Ubin
Pulau Ubin is a small island situated in the north east of Singapore, to the west of Pulau Tekong. Granite quarrying supported a few thousand settlers on Pulau Ubin in the 1960s, but only about a hundred villagers live there today...
. The lighthouse was named after Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore in 1819.
The lighthouse was erected on a 1.3-hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
rocky island
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
called Pulau Satumu
Pulau Satumu
Pulau Satumu is a small island to the south of the main Singapore island, and the southernmost island of Singapore. The Raffles Lighthouse is located on the island. The island's name means "One Tree" in the Malay Language....
, the southernmost off-shore island of Singapore. Pulau Satumu means "one tree
Tree
A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
island" — sa refers to satu (one) and tumu is the Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
name for the large mangrove
Mangrove
Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...
tree, Bruguiera confugata
Rhizophoraceae
Rhizophoraceae is a family constituted by tropical or subtropical flowering plants. Among the better known members are mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora...
. The light source was a wick burner which was replaced in 1905 by a pressurised vapour kerosene mantle burner to increase the light intensity for a greater visible range. A 2nd Order optic was mounted on a roller carriage to allow for smooth rotation. (The Order is a system of classifying the type of lenses used based on the focal length of the lens). This roller carriage was a weight-driven machine which had to be rewound manually to lift the weight whenever it reached the base. The rewinding was done hourly. A crew of seven men was required to man the lighthouse.
In 1968, the installation of a 4th Order electrically operated revolving optic replaced the original 2nd Order optic with a pressurised vapour kerosene ‘Hood’ mantle burner. The light source was changed to 100-volt/1,000-watt incandescent bulb producing 350,000 candelas of light intensity with a visibility range of 22 nautical miles (about 40 km). The power supply came from one of the three generators installed in a generator room built close to the keeper’s room. As the rotation was electrically driven by motors, the crew was reduced to 4 men.
In 1988 the 4th Order optic was replaced by a rotating beacon. This comprised an array of quartz halogen lamps in aluminium parabolic reflectors mounted on gearless revolving pedestal. The lamps require only one-fifth of the energy required to produce the same intensity as incandescent lamps. These low power lamps therefore allow solar power to be used in place of generators. In addition, the operation of the light is controlled by photocell. The manning of the lighthouse was further reduced to two men. The use of solar energy which is freely and readily available has resulted in a reduction of operating and maintenance cost.
The present lighthouse equipment consists of a main and standby rotating beacon, each producing 117,000 candelas with a nominal range of 20 nautical miles (about 37 km). A radar beacon (racon) was also installed at the lighthouse which provides additional navigational information to ships by emitting a morse code on the ship’s radar screen. In 2005, an Aids to Navigation Automatic Identification System
Automatic Identification System
The Automatic Identification System is an automatic tracking system used on ships and by Vessel traffic services for identifying and locating vessels by electronically exchanging data with other nearby ships and AIS Base stations...
(AIS) was installed to broadcast additional positioning information to ships.
Coral Reef Surveys
The National Parks BoardNational Parks Board
The National Parks Board is a statutory board of the Singapore Government.The National Parks Board is responsible for providing and enhancing the greenery of Singapore. NParks manages around 300 parks, the park connector network and the roadside greenery in Singapore...
, National Biodiversity Centre, Blue Water Volunteers and volunteers from the public started a coral reef surveying programme in 2005 to monitor the status of hard corals, mobile invertebrates and reef fish at several locations around 5 southern islands, including Pulau Satumu on which Raffles Lighthouse is located . Internationally recognised techniques developed by Reef Check and the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network were adopted for this programme.
Panoramic image
