A Little History and A Bit of Romance

A Most Famous Rock

Long ago, when sailors sailing between Europe and the Far East needed water halfway through their voyage, they knew they’d find fresh water, a beautifully restful beach and lots of wild pigs to hunt when they came within sight of a certain rock.

The sea gypsies who lived on the island soon became so used to seeing so many white men around the rock that they even gave the rock a name. They called it Batu Ferringhi or ‘foreigner’s rock’. 

That ‘ferringhi’ is derived from Portuguese gives us a clue to the first Europeans to show up in this part of the world, I think.

Early Penangites

Of course the sea folk were not the only people already living in Penang when the Europeans came. Archaeological evidence suggests that there already people having fun on the island as much as 5,000 years ago. There were also Malays, Minangkabaus, Chinese and Arabs running around long before Edward Lancaster first cast a speculative eye on the place in 1592.

The Founding of Penang

Captain Francis Light. Wasn't he a handsome guy?

The curious thing is that Penang was not founded at Batu Ferringhi where all those sailors kept stopping for water and a bit of R&R just a few minutes' walk from the Bayview Beach Resort. Penang was officially founded over at the northeast tip of the isle instead. By another Englishman, and only after nearly two hundred years after Lancaster first showed up.

The tale of how Captain Francis Light obtained the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah is still being argued today. 

Some accounts have it that the Sultan sent a most special envoy - a young and beautiful Eurasian lady named Martinha Rozells - to 'persuade' the lonely young captain to come over from the Indonesian islands and provide protection for the Sultan against his enemies. 

Sounds a bit like a Hollywood movie, doesn't it? It gets better.

As Light was sailing from Kedah, the nearest place for him to drop anchor was not Batu Ferringhi but over where Fort Cornwallis now stands, just a short walk from the Bayview Hotel Georgetown. 

Light has gone down in history as a bit of a conman who reneged on his promise and didn't provide the protection the Sultan wanted. 

There is, of course, some evidence to show that it wasn't entirely his fault because it was all due to a misunderstanding. Light (and the British East India Company) thought he was supposed to defend Kedah from its enemies. The Sultan thought he would do that by attacking them. Neither ever saw eye to eye on the matter but people argue about it, even today.

Still he did his best to make Penang an important part of the British Empire in the Far East and it is due to the efforts of Captain Francis Light and the men who came after him that Penang enjoys such a successful mix of people, traditions and cultures.

One other thing he did, however, was to make an honest woman of Martinha. In a way. There being no Anglican churches around back then, any kind of marriage with the young lady would not have been recognised by his superiors never mind that she lived with him until he died. In his Will which you can see in the Penang museum, he leaves everything he owned on the island to her.

The Seri Rambai Cannon shown here, was cast in 1603  and was actually a gift from the Dutch to the Sultan of Johor. It had a very roundabout route to Penang, going via Portuguese hands to Java, then Acheh and to Kuala Selngor where it was seized by the victorious British. It is the largest cannon at the fort. And because of that, local women sometimes offer flowers, fruit and other sacrifices to Seri Rambai, in the hopes of begetting children.

I hope this little teaser about my home town's earliest days has been interesting to you and that you will come back once in a while to read about other such little known facts.