and submitted a report to Lord Willingdon, the Governor of Madras. He showed that the Vypin coast could be protected from erosion by laying large granite boulders to reduce the force of the waves and that the scraped soil could be used in an environmentally friendly way. His plan mainly consisted of adding excavated soil to the island of Venduruti, filling a part of the embankment itself. Plans to dredge the rock-harder estuary to connect the new island to the shore and Mattancherry on one side by building new jetties, as well as laying out the outline for a modern harbor with harbor island, bridges and railway. For the next twenty one years, he was involved with the construction of the port and succeeded in transforming Kochi into one of the safest harbours in the peninsula, where ships berthed alongside the newly reclaimed inner harbour equipped with a long array of steam cranes. However, Bristow's port project was seen by the India Office authorities in London as the crazy idea of a British engineer. This is because the dredger ship and other technologies required to build the port at Kochi, as well as the necessary fuel and metals including iron, were not readily available during the ravages of the First World War. But Bristow saw a potential that the authorities in London, Delhi and Madras did not. He used the workers who know Kochi, backwater and sea. The steamship Padma, sailing from Bombay on 26 May 1928, was the first major ship to enter the newly constructed inner harbour of Kochi. In three stages, an estuary 450 feet wide and three and a half miles wide was formed connecting the deep sea and Cochin Bay. An area of 780 acres was developed from the lake using soil and the island was named Wellington Island. Around 3.2 km2 of land was reclaimed during the dredging process. The Willingdon Island, as it was known (after the Madras Governor), soon grew to become a prominent part of the city. It today houses the Cochin Port and the headquarters of the Southern Naval Command. Speaking to the BBC on 11 August 1935, Bristow proudly proclaimed his achievements at the Kochi port with the following words: I live on a large Island made from the bottom of the sea. It is called Willingdon Island, after the present Viceroy of India. From the upper floor of