lord canning had wanted to build a port that would be an alternative to kolkata and a rival to singapore. what no one heeded were the warnings of a lowly shipping inspector henry piddington, who had lived in the caribbean and knew all about hurricanes and storms. he wanted the mangroves to be left alone, as they were bengal’s defensive barrier against nature’s fury and absorbed the initial onslaught of cyclonic winds, waves and tidal surges. the settlement was built with a strand, hotels and homes, but in 1867 the matla river surged and reduced the town to a "bleached skeleton".