Rigel Kent

Spanning 1,723 days between 11 August 1786 and 1 May 1791, Light navigated a delicate path. He did not actively try to con the Sultan, though he could easily have bluffed his way through and closed the negotiation on that faithful Monday 1 , during his first audience with the king. He did not do that. Sultan Abdullah, ever cautious and meticulous, insisted on having Macpherson’s reply translated three times independently, using the versions to cross-check a point he had misread in his initial reading. On 8 July 1786, Sultan Abdullah read the Malay translation to Light and pressed him to sign on the document. The king advised him to set aside the plan of settling in Penang, in order to avoid unnecessary expenses should the project fail to materialize. 2 When the Dato Laksamana pressed Light to confirm the annual payment of tiga laksa rials (or some fixed figure he could commit to) and to explain whether a Plan B...

It is believed that Nakhoda Nan Intan founded Batu Uban in 1734. It is unclear whether Nakhoda Nan Intan was the same Malay captain who failed to complete the mission assigned to him by Tunku Raden Muhammad (MS 40320/7, f.105). If Nakhoda Nan Intan is indeed Nakhoda Pu Intan, then the Nakhoda who founded Batu Uban would have been a contemporary of the English captain and spoke to him at least once. The site of Dato Keramat appears on a map issued in Singapore to accompany the Singapore and Malayan Directory (1933). It is located at the first quadrant formed by the junction of Dato Keramat Road and Perak Road. The lower right corner of the site was then occupied by a police station, which remains in operation today. This location may mark one of the earliest settlements in Penang (circa 1705), if a description recorded by Saunders (1885) from a Penang Land Office survey register of 1795 ...