Pedra Branca & the old keeper of the light

My Lighthouse, My Playground
Ng Tze Yong, New Paper 26 May 08;

MONEY changes hands, and boatmen joke and jibe as news of the Pedra Branca verdict finally filtered to Marina South Pier on Friday.

Mr Hazlee Lewis, 51, gaunt and genial with an old sea dog's tan, sits quietly behind a counter, where he works as a liaison officer for a maritime company.

For months now, he has seen newspaper pictures of suit-clad diplomats battling over Pedra Branca in the high-profile court case fought half a world away.

And once again, the memories are flooding back.

He is a little boy again. He is riding piggy-back on his father. His father is huffing and puffing, making his way slowly up a dark, winding staircase that leads to the top of the lighthouse.

The stone walls smell damp. The steps are orange with the glow from kerosene lamps hanging on the walls.

When they finally reach the top, the view takes the 8-year-old boy's breath away.

He sees sky and sea, 360 degrees all around, glued together in one clean line.

It is hot and stuffy like a greenhouse. But he feels like the king of the world.

In the 1960s, Mr Hazlee Lewis' father, George, was a keeper of the light at Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedra Branca.

He died in 2004 at age 89.

But during the 15 years he helped manage Horsburgh Lighthouse, he often took his family there during the school holidays.

He knew his children missed him.

Work meant he had to rotate between different lighthouses of Singapore, staying for a month at each, with three days of shore leave in between.

Once every six months, he would get a three-week break.

For $200 a month, free food and free lodging, he worked with a crew of six to keep the beacon burning bright.

Every day at sunset, the crew would switch on the beam by turning a fist-sized knob.

Every two hours after that, the crew had to spend 15 minutes winding weights up the tower by hand.

DOWN-TO-EARTH PEOPLE

The lighthouse worked like a grandfather's clock. The descent of the weights turned a 2m-wide lens around the lamp, giving it the characteristic lighthouse sweep.

At sunrise, the lights went out.

The crew would spend the rest of the day polishing the lens, refuelling the kerosene in the lamps, cooking and cleaning.

'They had to cover the lens with a canvas because the sun shining through it could start a fire,' Mr Mervin Lewis, Mr Hazlee's 68-year-old brother, recalled.

He added that most of the crew members on Pedra Branca were 'kampung people', 'down-to-earth folk who talked about nothing but fishing'. Everyone spoke in Malay.

Free time was spent fishing for meals, swimming and playing cards.

'Some workers would carve bird cages as a side business,' he said.

A 2m-long python and iguanas lived among the rocks.

At a nearby reef, there were sea porcupines, octopuses, shrimps, clams, crabs and corals.

Once in a while, colossal oil tankers would rumble by, like floating buildings, leaving the lighthouse choking in diesel fumes.

And when night fell, there were galaxies and shooting stars if you squinted and looked up past the lighthouse beam that spun round and round the whole night long.

The adults loved the peace and quiet. The children got bored.

Mr Hazlee Lewis said: 'After the first week, I told my father every day, 'Papa, I want to go home!'

To entertain him, his father told him ghost stories, just before tucking him into bed, under the woollen blankets with red-and-white stripes.

He told him of the old man who sits at night on the rocks like a mermaid; of the black, hairy arm that once reached in for him from a window high up on the tower; and of the fireball he once saw rolling down the steps of the lighthouse.

'But he was never afraid,' Mr Mervyn Lewis said. 'He knew that spirits existed at all lighthouses.'

Commanding the eastern access into the Singapore Strait, through which some 900 ships now pass daily, Pedra Branca houses a traffic information tower that relays shipping information back to the mainland.

The area is a restricted zone and Singapore's navy boats regularly patrol the waters.

But things were different then.

'Whenever there was a storm, my father would invite fishermen to take shelter at the lighthouse,' Mr Mervyn Lewis said.

'It didn't matter if you were a Singaporean, Indonesian or Malaysian. At sea, we were all friends.'

Once a month, a supply boat came, laden with fresh food and a change of crew.

But there were no electricity and no generators on the island.

Vegetables stayed fresh only for a week. The crew drank filtered rainwater, ate canned food and fished every day before drying the catch on rooftops.

LIKE BEING MAROONED

'It was like being marooned on an island,' Mr Mervyn Lewis said.

'Some of the crew members developed cataracts because of the lack of fresh vegetables in their diet and the exposure to the sun. People didn't wear sunglasses in those days.'

In the days before radio communication was installed, the supply boat would sometimes come unannounced, bearing bad news from the mainland.

The crew would gather on the rocks, watching with dread.

Mr Hazlee Lewis was still a child, oblivious to his father's tough life.

But in school, he would swell with pride when he boasted to classmates: My father works in a lighthouse. He keeps sailors safe.

Every month, a few days before his father's return, Mr Hazlee Lewis and his siblings would put on their best behaviour.

'The first thing my father did when he came back was to get a full report from my mother about our behaviour for the past month,' he said.

'And then he will decide what punishment to give us.'

The sea taught the old man many things.

He was always patient, always thoughtful, strong and silent, just like a lighthouse.

A few years before he died, the children took their ailing father back to the relatively nearer Sultan Shoal and Raffles Lighthouses to look at them one last time.

Mr Hazlee Lewis remembered that his father was quieter than usual that day.

After his death, they scattered his ashes in the sea.

It was the old man's last wish.

Why these rocks matter

# International Court of Justice ruled on Friday that Pedra Branca belongs to Singapore, ending a 28-year dispute between Malaysia and Singapore over the granite islet the size of half a football field.

# Malaysia given control over Middle Rocks, one of two rocky outcrops there, while that of other outcrop, South Ledge, has yet to be determined as it falls within overlapping territorial waters.

# Dispute arose when Singapore protested in 1980 against a new Malaysian map of its maritime boundaries in which Malaysia claimed the islet was theirs.

# Singapore Government argued that it has exercised sovereignty openly and continuously on Pedra Branca for some 130 years without protest from its neighbour until about 30 years ago.

# Pedra Branca is strategically located and key to the safety of international shipping passing through the Strait of Singapore. Whoever controls this waterway controls important trading routes in the region.

# Singapore has installed a Vessel Traffic Information System tower on Pedra Branca, which manages shipping traffic and safety.

# It has also built other facilities there, such as a helicopter landing pad and a desalination plant.