Calm was disrupted when everyone was caught in a ruthless fight for a bigger share of the tin pie. Throughout the 19th century, Civil Wars erupted in Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Selangor and often complicated by bloody royal tussle. Rival Malay/ Bugis Warlords would be aided by equally ferocious Chinese Clans fighting territorial control over tin rich areas.
Perfect excuse for the opportunistic British to interfere. With their superior guns and arm twisting tactics, the smoke apparently cleared and the mines were a hive of activity again. The British wasted no time and made iron roads into the Malay heartland. In a short span of time, numerous British financed railway lines began to dot the landscape spanning a common East to west direction.
It is was a mayhem in the villages with supertitious folks greeted the arrival of the steam era akin to doomsday. Wild elephants too were scared out of their wits by sights and sounds of fire eating iron work horse chugging with their tin ore loads to nearby sea ports. These East - West routes i.e. Taiping-Port Weld, Kuala Lumpur - Port Klang, Sungai Ujung(Seremban) - Port Dickson - share a familiar trait - Tin
Needless to say Tin resource brought prosperity for the country. History will also show that tin from Malaya saved Great Britain from bankruptcy after World War II. Countless millionaires were made and with their nouveau riches, they showed off by acquiring lavish taste for western amenities. In Perak, car owners have the privilege of having their Morris and Renault with car plates beginning with the letter 'A' . Selangor was next with 'B' and Pahang 'C'. They were the three of the wealthier states in Malaya and their source was primarily tin. Mansions built on hard cash from Tin also mushroomed in Ipoh, Penang and Malacca.
The collapse of tin price in the 80s suddenly halted the rosy outlook and hit hard at all levels of the society. However what's most unfortunate is how quick we were to distance ourselves from the tin legacy. Suddenly the tin industry became an outclass and not worth a mention except briefly on the school textbooks. We became apparently ashamed of our centuries old ties with mother nature's black gift.
Their immediate demise were hastened by a national inertia on what properly constitute Malaysia National Heritage. As a young country, we were confronting depleting treasures from our chequered past yet they were concerns, valid or otherwise by powerful groups who viewed our Colonial eras with dismay. They held a vengeance by collectively imply any symbolic representation or gestures from the last five centuries as a threat to our national identity.
Nothing were spared. Mining equipment were sold for scrap. Miners unemployed for the first time in their life found no support whatsoever. They quickly turned to cooking and manned the many hawkers stalls. Options were few for them and they have families to feed.
In Seri Kembangan/ Balakong, Selangor, the former world's largest open cast tin mine was shut down and is now a man-made lake with The Palace of Golden Horses(5 Star Hotel) and the Mine Shopping Center at its shores.
Other ex-tin mines were condemned too. They are now either popular fishing grounds, haven for migratory birds and worst, completely reclaimed to begin a new life as Taman (residential garden) found commonly in Puchong, Subang and Sunway, notably of the Sunway Lagoon fame in Selangor, and in Perak -Kampar and Gopeng areas to name a few.
If you are keen to revisit the tin legacy in this country then you have an uphill task. There are NO historical sites, NO dedicated museum, NO conservation of the mining equipments that are important to present or showcase tin and its history in this country.
However, I think there is light at the end of the tunnel. Malaysia while it positions itself as a tourism destination has taken a renewal interest in everything old, rustic and even colonial. Colonial subjects were discarded previously because it was considered against unnationalistic interest and unpatriotic.
The authority has finally awakened to the concept that heritage is a valuable asset and can bring in the precious tourism ringgit. This arrangement is far from perfect in conservation sense but it does offer a glimpse of hope to conservation work and the need to protect heritage sites and the artifacts despite some reservation about colonialization and the diverse cultural and religious backgrounds.
Below is a list of museums and visitor centers offering fascination insights on the tin legacy in Malaysia.
The newly upgraded Gallery C of the Muzium Negara has an impressive exhibition on the subject. The gallery is also a good start to get acquited with the subject of tin and the different methods used in mining for tin ore. Tin ingots and model of tin dredge are on display too. (The current upgrade work in Galleries A & B of the museum is scheduled to complete in May 2008)
Not to be missed is The Royal Selangor Visitor Centre, Kuala Lumpur. Highly recommended. A dedicated venue to highlight pewtersmithing business that has gone global. What I find most interesting is that the visitor center offers visitors stimulating and engaging exhibits not just the history of the Yong family and the trade. Visitors will leave with a profound appreciation of how tin is used and the pride involved in the making of pewterware. Look out for the giant dredge bucket replicas hanging from the ceiling. The buckets were used to dig tin ore in the ponds and there are some 50 buckets in one floating tin dredge!(model available in the Tin History section). Admission is free.
The Sungai Lembing Museum, Sungai Lembing, Pahang. Recommended. Known once as the El Dorado of Malaya because of its unsurpassed richness, now a dying town with largely an aged population with their grandchildren. One of the few perfect in-situ museums in Malaysia. The diorama of machinery and life in the tunnel can literally transport visitors back to the site itself worth the trip. The museum authority deserves a pat for Admission is free.
Visitor Information
Journey from Kuantan to Sg. lembing is approximately 45 km and takes about 1 hour by car.
The Sg. Lembing Museum is located at the far end of the quaint town. Pass the row of wooden shophouses and the handicraft center next to the main town field. Museumi s located on top of the hill. Lookout for the town's sole surviving Petrol Station and the antique looking fuel pump used for filling up the town's motorized vehicles.
The Jabatan Muzium run museum makes a welcomed weekend stop to get a sense of how tin was mined then. Besides the museum, visitors can access to the mining ground where tin ore was taken out from underground tunnels. The tunnels are located not too far from the museum.
Proceed by taking the small narrow road up the cliffs next to the museum lower entrance. DO NOt go beyond the tunnel opening because there is real risk of the tunnels collapsing. One can still walk inside the tunnels for about 10 meters and experience the claustrophobic environment.
Authorities have blocked any atempts to go beyond that and visitors will come face to face with earth rumbles and fallen wooden beams inside. Watch out too for the Bats!
Another highlight for history bluffs is the wooden ruins of the Smelting plant. A major fire destroyed a substantiate part of the plant and all is left of the structure is burned wooden poles.
Visitors will bel rewarded with sights of cement ponds at different levels supposedly used to filter tin ore (May 2005). Abandoned railway sleepers are still visible near the ruins. In the museum, maps and photos indicating a railway system with its rolling stocks and track was in place in Sg. Lembing.
For a close encounter with the huge tin dredge previously used to dig tin ore, one has to travel north(3 hours from KL) to Tanjung Taulang, Perak. T.T. No. 5, Tin Dredge is one of the two remaining floating tin dredge in Malaysia. The other one is in Dengkil, Selangor but unfortunately is left idle when the Wetland cum museum project fell through. And accessiblity there is a problem.
T.T. No. 5 should offer visitors an unforgetable learning experience and the trip should help history bluffs appreciate better the floating vessel the size of half football field. Guided tour is available and the dregde and museum complex is run by a private venture and there is an admission charge.
Darul Ridzuan Museum, Ipoh. Read that it has an exhibition on mining but no more information available.
RELATED READING
Tin dredge to open to public - The Star Jan 30, 2008
By G. MAHINDER SINGH
AFTER years of relative obscurity, the Perak tin dredge at Tanjung Tualang will open its doors to the public from Feb 1. Run by Osborne & Chappel, the attraction will have packages that include guided tours – a trip to a tin mining museum and movies on how the 4,500 tonne giant works – for both children and adults.
Steven Ng, a company director in charge of development and marketing, said the dredge, T.T. No. 5, has been given a RM100,000 facelift.
Historical: Ng showing the tin dredge that has been given a RM100,000 facelift. There are toilet facilities, a canteen, parking lots, ticket booths, an exhibition room and walkway around the dredge, he said.
“During its tin-mining heyday, there were 40 dredges operating in Chemor, Ipoh, Gopeng, Batu Gajah, Papan, Tronoh and Malim Nawar,” said Ng.
T.T. No 5, one of the last great reminders of the time when the Kinta Valley was the world’s richest tin
producing area, was built in 1938 by W.F. Payne & Sons for Pernas Chartered Management Sdn Bhd.
Once belonging to Southern Malayan Tin Dredging (M) Sdn Bhd, the dredge had scoured for tin ore in the Kinta Valley for 44 years.
Operations stopped in 1983 due to the collapse of the tin mining industry. Since then, it has lain in a man-made pond at Desa Perlombongan, about 10km from Batu Gajah, Perak.
“At one time, the dredge would run on electricity for 24 hours in two shifts with 20 workers per shift,” related Ng.
In 1997, Pernas Chartered Management Sdn Bhd donated the three-storey high dredge to the state, which had spent over half a million ringgit to develop it into an attraction.
Ng said among other things, the company was planning to showcase other methods of tin mining to visitors.
“With the help of the Chinese tin miners associations, non-governmental organisations and Matta Fair, we should be able to get 400,000 visitors by year end,” he added.
The first package (RM5 for adults and RM3 for children less than 60cm tall) will include a movie, visit to the dredge museum and a tour of the dredge from outside.
The second package (RM15 for adults, RM8 for children aged 12 years and above) features tours inside the dredge.
RELATED READING
Bright future awaits Sungai Lembing - NST 2007
That’s the nickname given to Sungai Lembing, a sleepy hollow which is a 45-minute drive from Kuantan. It earned the name due to the Westerners’ involvement in tin mining activities in the area 100 years ago. The place has a record of sorts for it is home to the largest, longest and deepest underground tin mine in the world.“Sungai Lembing will be sleepy no more,” said Department of Museums and Antiquities (East District) director Mohd Razaimi Hamat, adding that there were plans to revive the tin mine and the old British bungalows under the Ninth Malaysia Plan. He said the plan involved promoting the town’s rich historical tourism product.
The underground tunnels and mining site are currently closed to the public as they are no longer safe to visit. They have been rendered unstable through disuse and occasional floods in the town. “Efforts will be put in place to reconstruct the underground tunnels and mining areas while preserving the main structure to allow tourists a chance to revisit the historical mining site and learn how underground mining worked some 100 years ago.“The rebuilding of the tunnels, mining areas and bungalows will take a few years to complete but this will be carried out in tandem with promotion efforts to attract tourists to visit the existing Sungai Lembing Museum, which is still not widely known,” said Mohd Razaimi.The museum, which is a must-visit place in town, tells the story of how Sungai Lembing was once the richest tin mining area in Pahang around the early 20th century. Locals there prospered when they earned about RM1,000 per month. With that kind of money then, they could afford to purchase British-made home products and furnishings.
Mining activities in the town started with British colonisation when the area was first explored in 1888 under Sultan Pahang Almarhum Sultan Ahman Muazzam Shah 1, who agreed to the proposal by a London-based mining company to mine tin in Sungai Lembing. The company operated in Sungai Lembing from 1905 till 1986 under Pahang Consolidated Company Ltd (PCCL).The tin mine’s underground tunnels, known as pengkang, were dug by hand with the occasional use of explosives. The deepest tunnel at Myah Mines was 700 metres below ground.At that time, the population in Sungai Lembing was 10,000, and they enjoyed basic amenities. The British built a police station, a school, a hospital, shops and residential areas.However, the town suffered several unfortunate incidents such as a fire that ravaged shophouses in 1921, floods in 1926, the Japanese Occupation in 1941-1945 and the communist insurgency in the 1950s. A fatal blow to the prosperity of the town was when tin prices in the world market collapsed in 1985.This caused PCCL to crash, incurring huge losses. Mining activities then ceased and the economic activities in Sungai Lembing came to a halt.
Ever since the closure of the tin mine in 1986, Sungai Lembing has slowly slipped into an almost deserted place with miners moving into agricultural and logging areas elsewhere.However, visitors to Sungai Lembing today will still be able to see some of the town’s old characteristics, such as houses and shophouses still spotting a blend of the Pahang Malay traditional architecture with a Western influence. Houses occupied by tin miners in the old days are still standing, including 40 bungalows meant for British officers.Another interesting structure is the hanging bridge built for use during floods. There are now six hanging bridges in town.Most of the locals today sell coconut biscuits, fruits, wild lychee and tilapia which they fish from Sungai Lembing.According to local folklore, Sungai Lembing was named after the Malay weapon lembing (spear). It is said that a group of hunters hurled a spear at a deer. The deer jumped into a river with the spear still embedded in its body. After a long time, a group of miners arrived at the river and found the spear that killed the deer. The miners then named the place Sungai Lembing.Sungai Lembing Museum is open daily from 9am to 5pm. For enquiries, call 09-5412378.
Related ReadingThe Star - Saturday March 22, 2008
Dredging up the past -BY LIZ PRICE
For a trip down memory lane to Malaysia’s tin-mining past, nothing beats a visit to TT No.5, one of only three dredges left in the country. Walking onto the tin dredge was like stepping back in time. The cavernous interior was strangely silent, but I am sure that when this dredge was in full operation, the noise and vibration would have been almost unbearable. This huge metal monster is a relic of the past, a reminder of the once bustling tin mining industry that thrived in Malaysia.
Tin mining is one of Malaysia’s oldest and most successful industries. In the 1600s, this industry started to thrive in Kedah, Perak and Selangor. Over the centuries, tin was extracted in huge quantities from both open cast and deeper mines. Dredges were commonly used. Today, there are only about three old dredges left in the country, and this one at Chenderoh, near Tanjong Tualang, Perak, has been preserved. In Feb 2008, it was opened to the public for tours.
The dredge looks like a colossal metal monster sitting in a pond, maybe a relative of the dinosaur. It looks too big to possibly move, but these massive dredges once devoured swamp and jungle as they searched hungrily for tin deposits. Steven Ng, 56, the man responsible for renovating this giant, is a director of Osborne & Chappel, the company that gave the dredge, TT No. 5, a RM100,000 face lift. Osborne & Chappel was started by British engineers in Malaya in the 1890s and was at the forefront of the alluvial mining industry in Malaysia.
TT5 was built in 1938 by W.F. Payne and Sons (UK), and modified in 1960.
As we walked onto the dredge, we realised just how big it was. The pontoon is 75m long, 20m wide, and three storeys high. It is essentially a floating factory where buckets on a chain scoop earth deep from the pond. These buckets were then transported up to an area high in the body of the dredge.
Nordin our guide opened a hatch in the wall and revealed the buckets on the ladder, which once took them to the top of the dredge. It looked like something from a bizarre fairground ride.
Each bucket was huge, made of manganese steel and the edges were reinforced to endure the damage done when scooping up the earth containing tin.
There are 115 buckets on the ladder, and each one can hold more than 600 litres. The maximum digging depth of this dredge was 31m. At the front end we could see the buckets where they came out of the water before beginning the long ascent to the top of the dredge. We also clambered up to the upper levels to get an overall picture of how the dredge worked. The dredge was built using steel girders, many of which came from Britain and have the manufacturers’ names stamped on them, such as Shelton, Skinningrove, and Appleby-Frobingham.
The dredge weighs 4,500 tonnes. It was moved by means of a 1.5km long cable, worked from the control area.
If the cable was released on the right side, the dredge moved left. At the top of the dredge, we got a bird’s eye view over the surrounding ponds. I was surprised to see a few birds nesting in the dredge. There are three ponds in the vicinity, and the one TT5 sits on is surrounded by paths and embankments. Fish have been stocked in the neighbouring ponds, which hopefully will encourage more birds in the area.
From the front end of the dredge, we walked along the narrow walkway on the roof and entered the next area where we had a close up view of the buckets all the way to the very top. Further on, we got to look down on the jigs. Leaving the buckets, the excavated material was broken up by jets of high-pressure water as it fell on to the revolving or oscillating screens.
Large stones and rubble were retained by these screens, while the tin bearing material passed to the jigs. These were vibrating trays, where water was forced up from below, pulsing up in a wave, so the heavy tin sank and the lighter hematite floated off. From this primary separating plant, the tin went down to the palong below and into a big container ready for transportation. The waste went out via a disposal chute at the tail end of the dredge and was subsequently dumped on the banks. These tailings were bulky as excavating just one cubic metre of new ground produced 20 cubic metres of waste material, as the new ground was compact, but the waste was separated and full of water.
Nordin informed us that the dredge operated 24 hours a day, with three shifts of about 17 men.
An area near the jigs was designated as the eating area, where the men had their food. A selection of tools is now exhibited here. Back at deck level, we could see the many hoses above our heads, which carried the tin from the jigs to the collecting areas. We continued our tour around the back end of the dredge and had a look at the control area. On the wall here is a list of the major components of the dredge and the date they were installed and last serviced.
We could see that the bucket band was fitted in 1974. Nordin showed us how the buckets were fixed to the band, and we could see the giant hammer used for removing the pins, which held the buckets in place.
There are squat toilets on the dredge at the back end, which open directly to the pond. After our tour of the dredge, we walked around the outside and then went to the small exhibition room.
During the heyday of the tin mining industry, 40 dredges were operated in Perak, with a record of 105 working in 1929 in the whole of the peninsula. This particular dredge stopped work around 1983 after more than 40 years of service.
Ng’s goal is to preserve the dredge. More money is needed to repair the two pumps. He also wants to set up a palong and to turn the area into a living museum, with people dressed in traditional clothes, including women dressed as dualang washers. A video will also be shown on how this giant worked. A visit to this dredge is an ideal way to get some understanding of what was once one of Malaysia’s most important industries.
TT5 is open from 8:30am to 7pm daily, including weekends and public holidays.
A RM10 entrance fee is charged for a walkabout on deck level while the grand tour is priced at RM15 and includes a guided one-hour tour on the upper levels and a video presentation.
TT No. 5
5th Mile Jalan Tanjong Tualang, 31000 Batu Gajah Perak
For more information, call: 05 3702 2216 or 012 517 1260
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