(Dr.) James Pattison Walker arrived in Port Blair on 6 March 1858 with 773 criminal convicts including 4 officials from Singapore.

The ruins of the bazaar, bakery, stores, water treatment plant, church, tennis court, printing press, secretariat, hospital, cemetery, swimming pool, the Chief Commissioner's residence with its huge gardens and state grand ballrooms, the Government House, the old Andamanese Home',[10] Troop Barracks, all in dilapidated condition, reminiscent of the old British regime.

There were two reasons: One, to keep them away from other prisoners and the other, to send out a message that a similar treatment would be meted out to anyone who challenged the British authority.

Gauri Shankar Pandey, who belonged to a family that had suffered atrocities during the Japanese occupation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has documented that it was water scarcity that drove Walker out of Port Blair to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island.

Initially, crude barracks of bamboo and grass were put up for the prisoners while the rest of the party stayed on board the ships that had brought them.

Later, the prisoners built houses, offices, barracks and other structures at the penal colony after which they were promptly sent to Viper Island, where the first jail was constructed.

Called Government House, the large-gabled home had Italian tiled flooring on the ground level.

During the late 1880s a small periodical called Ross Island Literary contained stories as well as memoirs of the first colonial days of the region.

But, it was during the tenure of Sir Charles Francis Waterfall that the Island's position as the seat of power collapsed.

He was held as a prisoner of war and his deputy, Major Bird, was beheaded by the Japanese at the clock tower in Aberdeen, Port Blair.

The British started evacuation of the Andaman not for the Earthquake, but due to impending Japanese occupation during World War-II.

Politically, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island is a part of Port Blair Taluk.

[14] There is a pathway up to the northern end of the Island, where the new concrete 10 m high circular lighthouse Tower was constructed in 1977, on an offshoot rock about 50 metres (160 ft) away from the shore line.

It was at this lighthouse that photo voltaic panels were introduced for the first time in India, to charge the batteries for the operation of light.