Tim Light has a guest post on Good Morning Yesterday about his memories of the Singapore Swimming Club in the 1960s.

Singapore Swimming Club in 1909. Check out the boats in the lake!

Although now bordered by the East Coast Parkway, the swimming club used to sit by the seaside and had sea water in the pool:

In 1961, the SSC was right next to the sea. The water in the pool was salt water, so I assume that it was sea water, hopefully filtered to remove fish, snakes and seaweed! Strange thought that we didn’t think twice about paddling and swimming in the sea, but we would have been horrified to think that any sea creatures could find their way into the pool.

Before we joined the SSC I couldn’t swim. I had taken swimming lessons back in England, but I was only capable of a special form of the breaststroke that involved hopping along with one foot touching the bottom. Within a couple of weeks at the SSC I was able to swim. No particular stroke, but I was able to flap around and stay afloat without a lot of effort. One of our friends said that the salt water improves your buoyancy.

Check out Tim’s post in Good Morning Yesterday.