The Fatal Fortress: The Guns and Fortifications of Singapore 1819-1956 by Clements Bill

Author:Clements, Bill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Asia / General
ISBN: 9781473829589
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2016-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Building the Base: 1921–1939

With the signing of the peace treaty at the end of the First World War in 1919 and the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow in the same year, the Royal Navy remained the largest navy in the world. However, the increase in size of the United States and Japanese navies during the war, together with the acute post-war financial crisis facing Britain, meant that it was no longer possible for the Royal Navy to maintain its pre-war ‘two power’ standard. The increase in the size of the Japanese navy, in particular, appeared to the British government to pose a threat to Britain’s sea communications with India, Australia, and New Zealand.

If, as was clear, the Royal Navy could not maintain a substantial fleet in the Far East, then at the very least it must be able to dispatch a fleet to protect Britain’s eastern possessions and aid the Australian and New Zealand navies, should that become necessary. However, any such fleet dispatched to the Far East could only operate successfully if it was provided with base facilities, including dry docks, wharves, workshops, storehouses and fuel depots; and in 1919 no such base existed east of Suez.

The fact that it was no longer possible to maintain fleets in home waters and in the Mediterranean and the Far East at the same time was reinforced by the belief that it no longer appeared necessary to do so. In 1919 a war-weary British government instructed the armed forces to draft their future budget estimates on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any major war during the next ten years.

So the British fleet was to be held centrally in European waters, with an ability to reinforce the Far East as and when necessary; but, as previously noted, this policy required a naval base with full facilities for maintaining a fleet. Where was such a base to be sited?

Four possible harbours suggested themselves: Colombo in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Sydney in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. Colombo was quickly dismissed as being too far from any foreseeable area of operations, and Hong Kong was considered to be too close to Japanese airfields on Formosa (Taiwan). The choice then lay between Sydney and Singapore. After considering both cities, the Committee of Imperial Defence ruled against Sydney on the grounds that the Australian harbour was too far from the Malayan Peninsula and Hong Kong to be an effective base if the reinforcing fleet was faced, as seemed most likely, with a hostile Japan.

At its meeting on 16 June 1921 the British Cabinet accepted the Committee of Imperial Defence’s recommendation that Singapore be developed into a naval base sufficient in size to support the main fleet which would be sent in the event of war in the Pacific. In addressing the cabinet, Arthur Balfour, the President of the Council, said:

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