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downfall of Balambangan
editThere is a book written about this island. the first settlement failed i believe in 1773 after Dalrymple put the Sultan of Sulu (or his envoy?) in stocks. The sultan sent his men to the island a few at a time and they hid there. They waited until the evening after Dalrymple's birthday party when all the garrison troops were drunk or sleeping off the party. they attacked the settlement and drove Dalrymple into the sea. His ships carried him and his men away.
A second settlement was attempted I think in 1800 or 1803 but did not last long, maybe three years at most.
I have been there. It is uninhabited. a dry place, and you must wear long sleeves and pants because of the tiny, biting sand flies that draw blood. we saw a komodo dragon or monitor lizard, and wild boar tracks. many, many of the plants sting and I think there is a swamp. It was what i imagine the land of the dinosaurs must have been like, where everything was dangerous. It seemed a very inhospitable choice for a colony that was once supposed to become like Hong Kong or Singapore, which it predated.
You can still see the ruins of the bases but the cannons and weapons have been mostly looted. we found a lot of chinese pottery and some blown glass (probably from wine bottles)which we offered to the sabah muzium, but they already had a ton of it. 202.82.171.186 05:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC)