When the sports hub was the shipping hub

Posted by noelbynature under Buildings and Monuments, Heritage Sites and Trails
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Think of shipyards and you think of names like Keppel, Jurong and Sembcorp shipyards, all located in the western end of the island. So where would you expect the find ‘Ship Construction Road’? It’s in a more central location than you think - it’s in Kallang!

Jerome explains how Kallang, home of the National Stadium and the upcoming Sports Hub was also once home to Singapore’s first modern shipyard:

My first taste of what life was in a shipyard – an eight week stint in 1982, part of a training programme I underwent, provided me with a first hand view of what the Geylang River and Kallang Basin was like then, one that I would not otherwise have had. The shipyard I was attached to was located at Jalan Benaan Kapal, near the area where the Kallang Indoor Stadium is today. The road had been named in Malay after the activities it was built to serve – Benaan or how it is spelt today, Binaan, the word for building or construction, and Kapal, meaning ship. Looking at the areas around Jalan Banaan Kapal today, it is hard to imagine that it was once had been a hub of activity, with a thriving cluster of family owned shipbuilding and shiprepair businesses. It was Singapore’s first purpose built marine industrial estate, set up based on the recommendation of a UN led industrial survey mission, put in place to identify areas of industrialisation had a potential to develop in what was a newly independent Singapore in the 1960s.

Of course, the area has changed drastically today, and the only remnants that Kallang Basin was once home to a bustling shipyard is the road Jalan Benaan Kapal and some refurbished workshops. Read Jerome’s blog to find out about the time Where slipways once lined the muddy banks of the Geylang River.

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