The Tradition of Boat Making in Terengganu

Terengganu's boat-builders are a unique lot. Their skill in building boats, has been passed on through the ages and no one really knows when the tradition started. Sabrina Said looks at the history of seafaring in and around the Malay Archipelago and speaks with a Terengganu boat builder.

Terengganu has a country and her country is the Sea! Small though the state is, her culture, her crafts, her old houses with roofs that look like scales of fish, her cuisine, her main traditional occupation of fishing and she has boat building which reflects a civilisation dependent on maritime activities when she was an international trading centre nearly a thousand years ago.

If mists of time were to recount the local history of boat building we would know why local minds to the day can make perfectly stable and seaworthy boats without recourse to lines plans. The development of boat building necessitates a historical overview which speculates on such sophistication unique to Terengganu. It is reasonable to assume that it is the history of any region that impinges on the needs of communities that give rise to the development of all aspects of living requirements.

The Malay Peninsular was an area that could not have been avoided in order to reach two of the world's great civilisations - India obliquely and Mainland China directly.

When Ptolemy of Alexandria, Egypt, drew the map of the Malay Peninsular eight hundred years ago, Terengganu was on it as Primoula and Kemaman was known as Kole. The Ptolemaic description (probably from Chinese and Indian traders) meant that it was an embarkation point with trade ensuring communication with the outside world. Not long after this a Malay kingdom called Langkasuka was established in Pattani (now South Thailand) owing its prosperity to trade and having gold and tin in its possession.

According to M.C. Sheppard's Short History of Terengganu, these commodities might also have been drawn from Terengganu. Since Terengganu was acknowledged on the map one can only speculate a meeting of ideas with her neighbours who were the existing kingdoms from the Funan 200 - 500 AD, the Champa 500 - 800 AD, the Sri Vijaya 800 - 1300 AD (of which Terengganu was a vassal state) and the Majapahit 1300 - 1400 AD. Before the eventual succumbing to Islamic influences in the fifteenth century, the earliest record of Islam is the famous inscribed tablet of Terengganu whose commandments were decreed by a ruler called Raja Mandalika. It is also believed that the islamisation process of this ruler and his subjects was similar to that of Champa and Khmer at the beginning of the 10th Century.

D.G.E Hall's History of South East Asia testifies that east-west relationship clearly: Long before the days of the Prophet the Arabs had made settlements along the trade route between the Red Sea and China. Islam gave a new impetus to their shipping. In the eighth century they were sufficiently numerous in South China to sack Canton in 758 AD. In the ninth century there were several communities of Muslim merchants in several ports en route to China. In the eleventh century they are mentioned as having existed in Champa for some time.

The Arab - Chinese trade ties established itself around 300 AD where southern India was used to gain foothold to South East Asia before reaching Canton. It later became the centre of Islamic dissemination when the Kwang Ta Mosque was built for the Muslim community in 627 AD.

In the 15th century Admiral Cheng Ho alias Haji Sam Po Bo plied the South East Asian waters with Emperor Yung Lo's armada of ships to guard the interests of Chinese traders. In 1409 he was responsible for destroying a whole fleet of ships of the Majapahit Kingdom which had created mischief around Muslim Pasai, north Sumatra. It was also in that century that Terengganu was included in the empire of Malacca - an empire whose greatness was described under the auspicious gaze of one Tome Pires in his "Suma Oriental" - according to Hall:

Malacca has been described not as a trading city in the accepted sense, but rather the site of a vast fair, where during the season the products of China and the Far East were exchanged for those of Western Asia and Europe.

Tome Pires who arrived there as secretary and accountant of the Portuguese factory in the year following Alberquerque's conquest of the city wrote in his invaluable Suma Oriental a detailed account of its commerce and administration under its sultans such as is found in no other source:

Men cannot estimate the worth of Malacca on account of its greatness and its profit. Where other ports had one Shabandar to take charge of all ships coming into the port, Malacca had no less than four. The most important dealt with ships from Gujerat. Another from the Coromandel Coast, Bengal, the Mon Kingdom of Lower Burma, and Pasai in North Sumatra, a third in charge of those from Palembang Town, the Moluccas, the Bandas, Borneo, and the Philippines and a fourth in charge of the Chinese and merchants Malacca's rapid rise to a position of world importance at the end of the fifteenth century, a position be it noted, that it was never to hold again after its conquest by the Portuguese in 1511. It became the focus of an expanding east-west trade movement in which Muslim trade from the ports of North West India played a role.

The sea and ships were actually the means of bringing civilisations together. This bare historical sketch signifying intense trade and other activities moving synonymously with the growth of Islam does not mitigate the theory that these contacts ensure a continuum of civilising processes which cannot preclude boat building. To travel vast unlimited distances with unlimited cargo fast, ships were the best transport. The question that arises would be where were the boat building centres and can we venture the theory that traditional boat yards that remain with us today in Southeast Asia have a longer history than we can imagine? It might not have been for an international clientele but nonetheless if only for local use, it guarantees a preservation of skills that is with us to the day.

It suffices for us to glimpse that she must have gained from the diverse cultural contacts. Eclecticism is not merely to copy blindly but to improve and to develop until one's own uniqueness emerges. Or it works the other way round, whereby, the traditionally unique Malay boat building techniques adapts itself to the influences that arrive these shores. The ability to make do without any lines plans in building massive vessels just by the 'eye of experience' have more obvious factors such as the psychological premises, for example, the environment, innate technical aptitude, peer pressure, and so forth coupled with the historical reasoning.

For that premise we shall narrate one particular biography of one of Terengganu's master craftsmen on Pulau Duyong in the state capital's estuary.

Haji Abdullah bin Muda the man who is internationally known for custom made boats has, at his fingertips, the knowledge of traditional boat building that can only be variations in a theme when customers order vessels that are along western lines. His experiences in the industry stretched from the days when as a little boy his environment provided scope for play learning that included nothing but boats. He used to watch craftsmen at work and as any child knows, imitation is a teacher. By the age of six he began to handle the tools of the trade. He smoothed planks whilst making sail out of nipah palms and tree barks. The resources within his immediate environment were his toys just like any kampung boy. His intelligence and rich natural environment as raw potential was an impetus for sharpening perceptions. He knew that he wanted to make boats and had the confidence that he had the ability to do exactly that as he never had any misgivings about his chosen calling.

By fifteen, he began to be apprenticed to and worked at the same time with the other boat builders. At the time there were around six builders who made boats for the fishing community and for the general populace. By 1945 and during the war they built small craft mostly for the local market and the riverside community. This was his practice ground for further training with RIDA (the forerunner of MARA Shipyard). Here, when he was working for five years in the 60's they made all manner of wooden boats from the traditional to the modern police and customs patrol boats.

It was at this juncture after two years of working for them that he felt a strong urge to try and make boats of his own on Duyong. The first boat he ever made was for personal use along the lines of the passenger craft that one sees ferrying people across the estuary today. It was his first taste of success when the boat's lucrative sale encouraged him to build another. His makeshift workshop was by his house and as the orders rose he resigned from RIDA.

He remembers the thirty five footers which were mainly fishing boats that he sold for RM1,500 each in 1965. They were all made of Chengal (Malaysian Ironwood) where a block of 6 feet by 9 feet by 22 feet would cost a mere RM50 which means the equivalent tonnage of RM300 per tonne. The price of Chengal in 1990 was RM3200 per tonne compared to RM1400 in 1989, a hundred per cent rise, which was a seemingly uncontrollable trend.

The international element to this story began when an American came to Duyong one day and asked for the boat builder. It was his first contact with a Westerner. The first thing that caught Haji Abdullah's attention was the extraordinary trust that the mysterious American gave him. The Haji was adamant that he had never made the type of boat that he was suggesting, however flattering. The American persisted until he gained ground and went to the extent of saying that he was prepared to sacrifice the money if the boat was not to specifications.

He returned to America to finalise finances. Unfortunately while on transit in India, he died when undergoing surgery. When the hospital authorities inspected him they only found Haji Abdullah's credentials on him. They contacted the Haji to claim the enormous sum of money on the deceased whom they took to be his father. Haji Abdullah replied that his own father was still alive and that the currency was not his by right. That particular incident gives credence to the Malay proverb "Kerbau di ikat dengan tali tertapi manusia terikat dengan janji" / the buffalo is tied with a rope but a human being is tied by a promise. It seemed that this first test of integrity had opened the floodgates for the world.

His next foreign customer was a Singaporean wood supplier. The boat was sold in Singapore and Haji Abdullah's name began to spread. From France came two orders, the first was completed but the second remained in his yard for nearly three years before the owner had enough money to rig and sail the boat away.

It was the third customer from Canada who advised him to print his first name card. The completed Terengganu boat made a round-the-world trip and needless to say, so was the master craftsman's name and his enterprise flourished further.

Since then, there have been a stream of satisfied foreign customers throughout the seventies and eighties. But there have also been abandoned projects by customers who could not complete payment of their boats. The biggest reason would be that the customer has miscalculated on the costs. The cost of Haji Abdullah's labour and materials are covered but what usually stumps the customer is the later realisation that the fittings for the big yacht sometimes outweigh the cost of the hull and superstructure. The Haji would have done his job and as he waits for his customers to sail it away he is awared that the wait could be for years. At the time of this interview, there was a sixty-five foot yacht that has been in his yard for over ten years; the English owner has not left any new contact address. Haji Abdullah's maxim is clear as he reiterates: "With God help, I shall not sell any unclaimed boat for as long as the owner is absent. What I value is the promise I make however long that takes."

The existence of regattas of classic boats throughout the world are due to many factors not least of which is the existence of master boat builders like Haji Abdullah. The next vital factor is due to the fact that the yachts are made of wood and because they are made along traditional lines. They are hand crafted. No two boats can be the same. The opposite to this is obviously that it is not factory or mass produced as are fibreglass boats. The moulding techniques of fibreglass boats which lends itself to mass production is categorised in a different class altogether/cost wise.

A wooden yacht, custom made by Haji Abdullah for example, if built along classic lines under his own excellent standards of finish and materials, rigged and fitted out will be insured and valued not at cost but at replacement value. This means the value of what it would take to build a similar boat in the West. It is also true that whatever wooden yacht that is made to standard will have an insurance claim far exceeding the original cost that Haji Abdullah had estimated due to those factors.

A properly fitted boat will have galvanised or stainless steel bolts. It will hold its value very well to a mass produced one which would depreciate faster as for example a motor boat at 10 - 20 % annually. Comparatively a well maintained wooden sailing boat would only depreciate at 5 % annually.

For a profession whose existence depends completely on an expensive primary commodity there have been difficult times. The fear for builders like Haji Abdullah then as well as now is the export of chengal to countries like Thailand where it is in great demand and the risk of illegal smuggling is high. At the time appeals from visitors like the ambassadors of Algeria and Italy drew attention to his plight. He remembers with gratitude the personal intervention of the former Assistant Minister of Primary Industry, Datuk Alias Ali, for the export flow was lessened and the price was controlled.

Haji Abdullah and others like him were fortunate that time. But the question remains as to the long term future of such priceless wood not because of the price but its availability. The present Government policy calls for an export ban on chengal. However that ban is only a policy that is not as yet implemented this year. For the present the rate of levy has risen to RM250 cubic metre and there is a quota for every company registered with the Malaysian Timber Board as added restrictive measures for a steady market which has seen a price drop of RM 1,900 cubic metre in 1996.

It is said that the most ethically demanding of all vocations is the business profession. Haji Abdullah is from the old school where the first and foremost objective of business is to earn an honest living and where wealth cannot be the overriding factor. For a profession to befit him for life, ideally, most qualities within the man reflects an equilibrium. The over forty years of experience in a still thriving but precarious trade is one manifestation of that balance.