Raffles Lighthouse ( Chinese: ; ms, Rumah Api Raffles; ta, ராஃபில்ஸ் கலங்கரை விளக்கம்) is a lighthouse located on Pulau Satumu in the

Singapore Strait The Singapore Strait is a , strait between the Strait of Malacca in the west and the South China Sea in the east. Singapore is on the north of the channel, and the Indonesian Riau Islands are on the south. The two countries share a maritim ...

, about south of the main island of

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

History

The Raffles Lighthouse was first mooted in 1833, but the

foundation stone The cornerstone (or foundation stone or setting stone) is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure. Over t ...

was only laid in 1854 when

William John Butterworth Major-General William John Butterworth (10 June 1801 – 4 November 1856) was the governor of the Straits Settlements from August 1843 to 21 March 1855. In 1851, when the Straits Settlements were transferred from the authority of the Gove ...

was the

Governor of the Straits Settlements The governor of the Straits Settlements was appointed by the British East India Company until 1867, when the Straits Settlements became a Crown colony. Thereafter the governor was appointed by the Colonial Office. The position existed from 1826 ...

from 1843 to 1855. The stones on which Raffles Lighthouse stands come from the granite quarries on

Pulau Ubin Pulau Ubin, also simply known as Ubin, is an island situated in the north east of Singapore, to the west of Pulau Tekong. The granite quarry used to be supported by a few thousand settlers on Pulau Ubin in the 1960s, but only about 38 villagers ...

. The lighthouse was named after Sir

Stamford Raffles Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (5 July 1781 – 5 July 1826) was a British statesman who served as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816, and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. He i ...

, who founded modern Singapore in 1819. The lighthouse was erected on a rocky island called Pulau Satumu, the southernmost island off the main island of Singapore. Pulau Satumu means "one tree island" – ''sa'' refers to ''satu'' ("one") and ''tumu'' is the Malay name for the large

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in several ...

tree, '' Bruguiera confugata''. The light source was a wick burner which was replaced in 1905 by a pressurised vapour

kerosene Kerosene, paraffin, or lamp oil is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in aviation as well as households. Its name derives from el, κηρός (''keros'') meaning " wax", and was reg ...

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 The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light; it is the inverse of the system's optical power. A positive focal length indicates that a system converges light, while a negative foca ...

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. Raffles Lighthouse locator map

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 a 100-volt/1,000-watt

incandescent bulb An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxida ...

producing 350,000

candela The candela ( or ; symbol: cd) is the unit of luminous intensity in the International System of Units (SI). It measures luminous power per unit solid angle emitted by a light source in a particular direction. Luminous intensity is analogous t ...

s of light intensity with a visibility range of . 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 four men. In 1988 the 4th Order optic was replaced by a

rotating beacon Rotating beacon may refer to: * Aerobeacon, a light assembly used to create a fixed or flashing signal visible over long distances * Aerodrome beacon, a beacon installed at an airport or aerodrome to indicate its location to aircraft pilots at nigh ...

. This comprised an array of

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

halogen lamp A halogen lamp (also called tungsten halogen, quartz-halogen, and quartz iodine lamp) is an incandescent lamp consisting of a tungsten filament sealed in a compact transparent envelope that is filled with a mixture of an inert gas and a smal ...

s in aluminium

parabolic reflector A parabolic (or paraboloid or paraboloidal) reflector (or dish or mirror) is a reflective surface used to collect or project energy such as light, sound, or radio waves. Its shape is part of a circular paraboloid, that is, the surface generat ...

s mounted on a 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 Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic ef ...

to be used in place of generators. In addition, the operation of the light is controlled by a

photocell Photodetectors, also called photosensors, are sensors of light or other electromagnetic radiation. There is a wide variety of photodetectors which may be classified by mechanism of detection, such as photoelectric or photochemical effects, or b ...

. The manning of the lighthouse was further reduced to two men. The use of

solar energy Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar power to generate electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating), and solar architecture. It is an ...

which is freely and readily available has resulted in a reduction of operating and maintenance cost.

Present-day lighthouse

The present lighthouse equipment consists of a main and standby rotating beacon, each producing 117,000 candelas with a nominal range of . A radar beacon ( racon) was also installed at the lighthouse which provides additional navigational information to ships by emitting a

Morse code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...

on the ship's radar screen. In 2005, an Aids to Navigation Automatic Identification System (AIS) was installed to broadcast additional positioning information to ships.

Coral reef surveys

The

National Parks Board The National Parks Board (NParks) is a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development of the Government of Singapore. History In November 1989, Minister of National Development, S. Dhanabalan, presented the National Parks Bil ...

National Biodiversity Centre The National Biodiversity Centre (: NBC; Chinese: 国家生物多样性中心; ms, Pusat Kepelbagaian Bio Nasional; ta, தேசிய பல்வகை உயிரியல் நிலையம்) is a branch of the National Parks Boa ...

, Blue Water Volunteers and volunteers from the public started a

coral reef A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. C ...

surveying programme in 2005 to monitor the status of hard corals (''

Scleractinia Scleractinia, also called stony corals or hard corals, are marine animals in the phylum Cnidaria that build themselves a hard skeleton. The individual animals are known as polyps and have a cylindrical body crowned by an oral disc in which a mo ...

''), mobile

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s and coral reef fish at several locations around five

southern islands The Southern Islands is a planning area consisting of a collection of islets located within the Central Region of Singapore, once home to the native Malay islanders and sea nomads before they were relocated to the mainland for urban redevelopm ...

, 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.. Western Islands, panorama, Nov 06

References

* * .

External links

Raffles Lighthouse on the Lighthouse Depot website
(with photograph)

Satellite image of Raffles Lighthouse and Pulau Satumu on Google Maps

Singapore on the Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society World List of Lights (WLOL) website
{{Authority control Islands of Singapore Lighthouses in Singapore Lighthouses completed in 1855 Western Islands Planning Area 19th-century architecture in Singapore

History

Present-day lighthouse

Coral reef surveys

See also

References

External links