Marudu Bay ( Malay: ''Teluk Marudu'') is a large

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

on the north coast of the island of

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

. It is located in the state of

Sabah Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah has land borders with the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and Indonesia's North Kalima ...

, Malaysia and opens to the

Sulu Sea The Sulu Sea (; Tausug: ''Dagat sin Sūg''; ; ) is a body of water in the southwestern area of the Philippines, separated from the South China Sea in the northwest by Palawan and from the Celebes Sea in the southeast by the Sulu Archipela ...

. Administratively, it is a part of

Kudat Division Kudat Division () is an administrative division in the state of Sabah, Malaysia. It occupies the northern tip of Sabah. Its total area of 4,623 square kilometres (6.3% of Sabah's total territory) makes it the smallest of the five divisions of Sa ...

. Kota Marudu District is on the south side of the bay, Kudat District on the west and

Pitas District The Pitas District () is an administrative district in the Malaysian state of Sabah, part of the Kudat Division which includes the districts of Kota Marudu, Kudat and Pitas. The capital of the district is in Pitas Town. Etymology Pitas is ...

on the east side.

Geography

The bay covers an area of approximately 1000 km².

Mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen a ...

swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

s are mainly found at the southern end of the bay around Kota Marudu.

History

Marudu Bay had been in the overlapping spheres of interest of the

Sultanate of Sulu The Sultanate of Sulu (; ; ) is a Sunni Muslim subnational monarchy in the Philippines, Republic of the Philippines that includes the Sulu Archipelago, coastal areas of Zamboanga City and certain portions of Palawan in today's Philippines. H ...

and Bruneian Sultanate since the 18th century. Attempts to drive the Sultan of Sulu's followers out of the region failed. A punitive expedition by the "

White Rajah The White Rajahs of Sarawak were a hereditary monarchy of the Brooke family, who founded and ruled the Raj of Sarawak as a sovereign state, located on the northwest coast of the island of Borneo in Maritime Southeast Asia, from 1841 to 1946. Of ...

James Brooke James Brooke (29 April 1803 – 11 June 1868), was a British soldier and adventurer who founded the Raj of Sarawak in Borneo. He ruled as the first White Rajahs, White Rajah of Sarawak from 1841 until his death in 1868. Brooke was born and ra ...

in 1845 only succeeded in weakening the power of the Sultanate of Sulu in the region for a short time, despite naval support from Sir Thomas Cochrane. Although Sharif Usman, the Sultan's governor, was killed in this punitive expedition, his son Sharif Yassin returned to Marudu Bay in 1870 and founded a trading post at the mouth of Tandik River. Shortly after his appointment,

William Hood Treacher Sir William Hood Treacher (1 December 1849 – 3 May 1919) was a British colonial administrator in Borneo and the Straits Settlements. He founded the Anglo Chinese School in Klang on 10 March 1892. Family Treacher was the fourth son of Rev. ...

, the first governor of

North Borneo North Borneo (usually known as British North Borneo, also known as the State of North Borneo) was a British Protectorate, British protectorate in the northern part of the island of Borneo, (present-day Sabah). The territory of North Borneo wa ...

under the

North Borneo Chartered Company The North Borneo Chartered Company (NBCC), also known as the British North Borneo Company (BNBC), was a British chartered company formed on 1 November 1881 to administer and exploit the resources of North Borneo (present-day Sabah in Malaysia) ...

, moved the company's headquarters to a small bay in Marudu Bay that had just been discovered by

Alfred Hart Everett Alfred Hart Everett (11 October 1848 – 18 June 1898) was a British civil servant and administrator in Borneo as well as being a naturalist and natural history collector. Career Everett was born on Norfolk Island to British parents: George, the ...

. It was here in Kudat where North Borneo's first capital was located for two short years. In 1887, Count Geldes d'Elslov acquired extensive areas of land on Marudu Bay and began growing

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

. From these beginnings emerged the London Borneo Tobacco Company. In 1892, the Filipino national hero

José Rizal José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (, ; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is popularly considered a na ...

, together with like-minded people, planned to found an agricultural settlement at the mouth of Bengkoka River in Marudu Bay in order to escape the repression of the Spanish government. However, the idea of a patriotic enclave was never realized.

British Borneo Exploration Syndicate Company Limited

In 1904, the British Borneo Exploration Syndicate Company Limited acquired the

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek and ) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic Competition (economics), competition to produce ...

to exploit the mineral resources in the Marudu Bay area and began mining

manganese Manganese is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese was first isolated in the 1770s. It is a transition m ...

. The company constructed a wharf, offices, and a 22-mile

metre-gauge railway Metre-gauge railways ( US: meter-gauge railways) are narrow-gauge railways with track gauge of or 1 metre. Metre gauge is used in around of tracks around the world. It was used by several European colonial powers including France, Britain and ...

from the bay to the deposits. However, poor management resulted in the first (and only) ship's load of manganese being dumped overboard upon arrival in England as it turned out to be low-quality shale with low manganese content. The company returned its mining rights to the Chartered Company in 1913. The narrow-gauge railway was dismantled. The route later served as a route to the rubber plantation of the Taritipan Rubber Estate, which had acquired the former mine site. The two locomotives became the property of the North Borneo Railway (now known as Sabah State Railway). The locomotive "Biliajong", built in 1905, was scrapped before 1914. The "Marudu" locomotive was used at Jesselton and survived both world wars. She was scrapped in 1954.A. N. M. Garry
Overseas Industrial Locomotives - Chapter 5: Borneo.
irsociety.co.uk; accessed on April 12, 2012.

Literature

* K. G. Tregonning: ''A History Of Modern Sabah (North Borneo 1881–1963)''. 2nd edition. University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur 1965, Reprint 1967.

References

{{Geography of Sabah Pitas District Kota Marudu District Kudat District Sulu Sea Landforms of Sabah Bays of Malaysia