SINGAPORE – Sail up the Singapore River and back in time at the National Museum Of Singapore’s new exhibition. 

Once Upon A Tide, which opens on May 24, traces Singapore’s growth via the sea and its waterways. 

The story arc melds a tribute to SG60 with a potted history of the nation as the show is serving double duty during its run. The Singapore History Gallery will be closed at the year’s end for a revamp and will reopen in late 2026, so Once Upon A Tide will be the museum’s anchor show in the interim. 

Mr Daniel Tham, 44, the museum’s principal curator for pre-colonial and colonial Singapore, says the sea references and fairy-tale element of the title are deliberate. “We want to reference our interest in storytelling as a museum. We are also referencing Singapore’s identity as an island, the importance of the sea and, later, the centrality of the Singapore River.”

Hence, the show begins with artefacts that literally map out historical references to the island now known as Singapore. 

Mr Tham says: “We asked the question, ‘Has Singapore always existed?’ We’re commemorating 60 years as a nation, but obviously, Singapore’s history goes further back. How far back does it go?” 

Pretty far back as the items on display suggest. The earliest reference is in second-century Greek astrologer and geographer Claudius Ptolemy’s illustrated Geographia, which famously calls the Malay Peninsula “the Golden Chersonese”. 

A 16th-century reproduction print of Ptolemy’s map is displayed alongside stone tools unearthed at Pulau Ubin. These prehistoric adzes possibly date back 3,000 to 5,000 years. They were collected by Major P.D.R. Williams-Hunt, then the acting director of Museums for the Federation of Malaya in the late 1940s to early 1950s. 

This first section of the exhibition also includes interactive displays where visitors can try locating Singapore on old maps which refer to the island variously as Singapur, Cinca Pura and Sabana. 

Mr Tham notes that even if the island was not identified, the straits of Malacca and Johor, major waterways in the region, would be charted.

The island’s strategic position and the role of the Singapore River in its history form the next part of the story, and so the exhibition space has been designed to mimic the river, with a corridor that branches off into two tributaries for the subsequent chapters. 

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