Port Blair () is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (tehsil) of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South Andaman and is the territory's only notified town. Port Blair serves as the entry point for visiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Port Blair is connected with mainland India by both air and sea. It is a two to three-hour flight from mainland India to Port Blair's Veer Savarkar International Airport, and three to four days by sea to reach Kolkata, Chennai, or Visakhapatnam from Haddo Wharf in Port Blair. It is home to several museums and a major naval base INS Jarawa of the Indian Navy, along with sea and air bases of the Indian Coast Guard, Andaman and Nicobar Police, Andaman and Nicobar Command, the first integrated tri-command of the Indian Armed Forces and the Indian Air Force. Port Blair is also famous for the historic Cellular Jail and other small islands like Corbyn's Cove, Wandoor, Ross Island, Viper Island and so forth, which were once home to British colonists. Port Blair has been selected as one of the cities to be developed as a smart city under the Smart Cities Mission. History Pre-history The indigenous inhabitants are the Andamenese. Radiocarbon dating studies of the kitchen refuse dumps from the mounds excavated by the Anthropological Survey of India at Choladari near Port Blair indicate human occupation for at least 2,000 years, although they are likely to have diverged from the inhabitants of the mainland significantly earlier. Modern history In 1789 the Government of Bengal established a penal colony on Chatham Island in the southeast bay of Great Andaman, named Port Blair in the honour of Archibald Blair of the East India Company. After two years, the colony moved to the northeast part of Great Andaman and was named Port Cornwallis after Admiral William Cornwallis. However, there was much disease and death in the penal colony, and the government ceased operating it in May 1796. In 1824 Port Cornwallis was the rendezvous of the fleet carrying the army to the First Anglo-Burmese War. In the 1830s and 1840s, shipwrecked crews who landed on the Andamans were often attacked and killed by the natives, alarming the British government. In 1855, the government proposed another settlement on the islands, including