and in time the town was called the 'Little Hong Kong of North Borneo'. The Cowie settlement was accidentally burnt down on 15 June 1879 and was never thereafter rebuilt. The first British Resident, William B. Pryer then moved the administration to a new settlement on 21 June 1879 to a residence in what is today known as Buli Sim Sim near Sandakan Bay. During Pryer's tenure of being the first resident of Sandakan, one of his first tasks was to establish law and order. The situation in the nascent colony remained tense, with the Borneans being hostile towards the authority of the British North Borneo Company, and all-out warfare prevented only by the presence of Royal Navy ships offshore. To resolve the situation, Pryer imported policemen from British India and Singapore. His first contingent of police was made up of Indian Sikhs with a large body stature. The Indian police were probably from the Sepoy Company in India and were generally called 'Sipai' by the locals. Meanwhile, the Spanish continued to strengthen their blockade of trade activities in the Sulu Archipelago, resulting in the blockade's opposition by Germans when many of their trading ships were seized by Spain. Both the German and British governments stated the archipelago should remain open to world trade route. Soon, the British began to co-operate with the Germans when rumours about the seizure of their trading ship by the Spanish began arriving to Great Britain which lead the British to oppose the Spanish action. British and Germans then refused to recognise the Spanish sovereignty over Sulu. But with strong opposition from Germans over the illegal seizures of their ships and the British fear of the German presence (which was stronger than the Spanish during the time), a protocol known as Madrid Protocol was then signed in Madrid to secure Spanish sovereignty over the archipelago, making the Spanish free to wage any war with the Sultanate of Sulu without the fear of other foreign western powers intervening and as a return the Spanish would not intervene in the affairs of British in northern Borneo. The prosperity of Sandakan as the capital of North Borneo was however ended when the Japanese occupied the town on 19 January 1942. During their occupation, the Japanese restored the town's previous name, Elopura and established a prisoner of war camp to hold their captive enemies. Allied planes started to raid