Sembawang Park

Sembawang Park (Chinese: 三巴旺公园; Malay: Taman Sembawang) is a 15-hectare park situated in Sembawang, in the north of Singapore facing the Straits of Johor overlooking Malaysia. It is located at the end of Sembawang Road, where the former Sembawang Road End Bus Terminal was.

Sembawang Park got its name from the Sembawang Tree Mesua ferruginea. There is one Sembawang tree at the centre of the car park C1 close to the Sembawang Bus terminal. The Sembawang park has many interesting connections to Singapore's historical past. The pathways inside the park are old roads, that have recently been repaved with asphalt.

Located on the west of the park is the Sembawang Shipyard, which was His Majesty's Naval Base (H M Naval Base) of the British Royal Navy from the 1920s until Singapore's independence. The busy and geographically advantaged port in Singapore and the urgent need for a naval base made the British decide to establish a Naval Base in Singapore. In 1923, the construction of Naval Base began in Sembawang and completed in 1938. In between it slowed down due to the Naval Disarmament Treaty. The fully operational Naval Base was opened by Sir Shenton Thomas, the then Singapore Governor on 14 February 1938; it was the largest Dockyard outside the British Naval Base. The battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse with four destroyers forming the "Z" force landed in Singapore's Naval Base on 2 December 1941. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese also bought Johore coastlines just opposite the Naval Base and attacked the two warships unexpectedly. The two unsinkable war cruisers sank on 10 December 1941, on whose memory a Sembawang Memorial was unveiled in Sembawang wharfs in 2005.

The Dockyard was closed down in January 1942 realizing that Japanese could use the Naval Base. The British surrendered to Japanese on 15 February 1942, whose details could be found much more from Memories at Old Ford Factory museum where the surrender was signed. For the following three years, till 1945, the Japanese used the naval base to service and repair their navy ships. On 6 September 1945, the Japanese surrendered to the British in Sembawang fleet shore accommodation, now called HMS Terror. From 1968, the naval base was converted and came to use as Sembawang Shipyard. The attacks and operations of the Naval Base at Sembawang are closely connected to the Jetty, Pier and accommodation at the Sembawang Park itself.

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