[2][3] After the Great War, the British Government devoted significant resources into building a naval base on Singapore Island, where the capital of the Straits Settlements was located, as a deterrent to the increasingly ambitious Japanese Empire with its growing fleet.

Instead, the British Empire relied on the squadron of the Bermuda based America and West Indies Station, utilising the Panama Canal after its 1914 completion, to patrol the western Atlantic and the eastern Pacific, while vessels based in Malta in the Mediterranean Sea could project naval and military force to the Indian and western Pacific oceans via the Suez Canal, which had been completed in 1869.

[4] Originally announced in 1923, the construction of the base proceeded slowly at Sembawang until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

Since 1972, part of the compound is now occupied by the Republic of Singapore Navy's Naval Diving Unit (NDU).

During the 1970s and 1980s, part of this former British naval base became the Singapore Armed Forces' Infantry Training Depot that served to provide a three-month-long basic military training (BMT) course to mostly national service recruits, and the premises continued the legacy of HMS Terror by being popularly referred to as "Terror Camp" .

NZFORSEA consisted of 1 Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (RNZIR), which was based at Dieppe Barracks near Yishun New Town, No.

Under the auspices of the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA), NZFORSEA took over the Royal Navy married quarters and billets, while the Installations Auxiliary Police Force (IAPF) was formed, the small police force was staffed by Singaporeans but commanded by an NZ officer to provide security to the whole area.

When NZFORSEA withdrew from Singapore in 1989, it was replaced by the smaller NZ Defence Support Unit, the South East Asia (NZDSU SEA), with the IAPF still providing security to other nations including the US facilities and personnel.

The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) continues to maintain a small logistics base at Sembawang wharf to control most of the foreign military activities there, which includes repair, refuel and resupply for ships of the Australian, British and New Zealand navies as well as those from other Commonwealth countries under the auspices of FPDA.

[18] With the impending capture of Singapore by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1942, the dry dock gates were blown off and machinery destroyed.