When Raffles signed the agreement securing the auspicious title of free port for Singapore, this instantly triggered a landslide of immigrants from neighbouring countries. Within six months, Boat Quay, which was created out of a swampland along the south bank of the Singapore River, became a hothouse for trading. In the 1860's, three quarters of all shipping businesses were done at Boat Quay. Here was the starting point of all that is Sinagpore today: affluent, hardworking and adamant on success.
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Immigrants were keen to erect their shophouses on the already crammed south side of the river because it resembled the concaved belly of a carp, which according to Chinese belief, was where prosperity and wealth lay. Notice that the row of shophouses vary in height. This was a sign of each man's wealth - the higher the shophouses, the wealthier the owner.
Although the sight of sun-tanned coolies and swaylos (water-hands) loading and unloading heavy sacks of rice balanced over their shoulders was of the past, today's Boat Quay has never been any livlier with its colourful facades and playful thematic restuarants and pubs. It has also become a favourite hangout for both the visitors and locals.
Standing opposite Boat Quay across the river and behind Parliament House is the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles. Raffles was an English East India Company administrator, a scholar and the founder of the British settlement in Singapore. Knighted in 1816, Raffles returned to the East in 1818 as Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen and established a settlement in Singapore in 1819. Surprisingly, Raffles made only three visits to Singapore and spent a total of 8 months, 3 weeks and 9 days here. The statue of Raffles in polymarble was made from plaster casts of the original 1887 figure. Erected in 1972, this memorial marks the place where Raffles was thought to have first landed in Singapore in 1819.
