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Dutch Fort Pangkor

    Dutch Fort (locally called "Kota Belanda") in Pangkor is located at the Teluk Gadung area on the South West part of the island. It was initially called “Dindinghs Fort” due to the island’s location which’s at the end of the Dindingh River.

    Owing to its strategic location that’s facing the coast of the Peninsula, Pangkor Island played a very much significant role in the trade flow of tin in Perak in the older days. In order to monopolize the trade, the Dutch started to build the Dutch Fort at the island in 1670. The fort was built in four squares of ten yards each, with high solid stone walls reaching about thirty feet in height. There were guns inside the fortress as well.

    Those days, the Dutch also station their defense at the coast of the beach hundred yards distance from the fort, in a wooden house of the Governor and a guard ship to prevent any involvement of other countries in the tin business.

    In 1743, the Dutch reconstructed the Fort and laid about 60 soldiers to guard the fortress. Until 1748 when the Dutch Fort was deserted after the Dutch’s initial wish to gain full control over the tin trade did not succeed.

   A restoration work on the Dutch Fort by the National Museum took place in 1973. The fort then was turned into a tourism landmark for Pangkor after it was declared a historical monument under the Antiquities Act in 1976. As the Dutch Fort area has been developed into a tourism destination nowadays, visitors may also find some souvenir shops nearby.

   The Sacred Written Rock (Batu Bersurat) is located not far away from the Dutch Fort. Other than the cravings of the symbol of the Dutch East India Company, VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), one can also see on the huge rock a sketching of a tiger mauling a child. According to the local belief, the drawing was meant to portray the sudden disappearance of the child of a Dutch dignitary in an encounter with a tiger. Another version in interpreting the tiger drawings is that the tiger resembled the local Malays who were angry who then destroyed the Dutch Fort while the child symbolized the Dutch who intruded into the Pangkor Island. This Sacred Rock is thus known as the Tiger Rock by some.