Hall of Fame exhibition - celebrating the pioneers
Featured Hall of Fame inductees - clockwise from left: William Read, Teo Eng Tat, Tan Kay Toh, Jack Snowden and Francis Lee.
As part of the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club's (RSYC) bicentennial anniversary, History Ink was commissioned to develop a Hall of Fame exhibition to honour eight individuals whose contributions shaped the history of the RSYC. However, selecting the inductees wasn't easy, as countless members had played important roles in the Club's development. To guide the selection process, History Ink established a criteria based on three crucial questions: whether the individual was essential to the Club's survival, whether they brought lasting change to the RSYC, and how significant their service to the Club had been.
The RSYC Hall of Fame exhibition showcasing its eight inductees.
Research Methodology
Once the eight inductees had been selected, we set about researching each member’s wider background and achievements alongside their contributions to the Club. While the biographical structure of each profile was the same, the research methodology varied by individual, depending on the time period.
The research for the nineteenth century inductees relied mainly on external historical sources rather than the Club’s own archives, as the the RSYC’s earliest record dates back to the 1900s. We called upon a range of sources including NewspaperSG, Singapore’s digital newspaper archives; the digital collections of Roots.sg; resources from the National Library Board, memoirs, as well as the RSYC’s official history book ‘The Three Burgees’, written by member Peter Dunlop in 2010. We then weaved together these sources to write detailed biographies. The inductees from this period included William Read, who was an early pioneer of the ‘Singapore Yacht Club’, as it was then known. Read arrived in Singapore in 1841 and played an important role in Singapore’s development. We were already familiar with Read through his role as founder of the Singapore Turf Club - another of our recent heritage projects from 2024.
While we looked to external sources for the history of early members, we were able to call upon the Club’s archives for those featured from the twentieth century onwards. The Club’s minute books, annual reports and committee records provided ample evidence of important milestones and contributions, while the archive’s rich holdings of personal letters from former members offered insight into the more human stories, including friendships (and competion!) within the sailing community. For more contemporary inductees, the Club’s magazine, first published in the 1980s, proved invaluable. Articles published in the magazine revealed the issues that members considered most important at the time, and how they responded to them. By combining these diverse sources, we were able to tell compelling and little-known stories about Club stalwarts including Tan Kay Toh, Jack Snowden, Ned Holiday, Teo Eng Tat and Max Blake.
Luke reads the Hall of Fame exhibition.
Exhibition Design
The exhibition was designed by Oxygen Design Studios. They gave the panels a curved structure to resemble a sail billowing in the wind, which were complemented by blue perspex waves set behind. The sleek appearance of the display perfectly complements the modern architecture of the RSYC clubhouse. In a nod to the exhibition’s historical character, each panel features traditional watercolour-style illustrations of the inductees.
Hall of Fame display dedicated to inductee Tan Kay Toh.