The North Borneo Chartered Company received its royal charter in 1881, granting it authority over a vast stretch of territory on the northern coast of Borneo. The land was rich in timber and potential, but it was also remote, malarial, and home to indigenous communities who had their own ideas about sovereignty. The company needed administrators, engineers, constabulary officers, and explorers willing to push into uncharted river systems. Some of those men paid with their lives. The monument was originally announced as a memorial for Hatton alone, but by the time the stone was placed, company officials had added three other names. Two of the men listed were members of the British North Borneo Constabulary, and Sikh soldiers who served the colonial government also received recognition on the inscription.

The monument takes the form of a Celtic cross rising from a four-stepped rectangular base. Front panels and side plates bear inscriptions with the names of deceased company officials. William Hood Treacher, the Governor of North Borneo, recorded in his 1891 memoirs that "a memorial cross has been erected in Sandakan for Witti, Hatton, de Fontaine and the officers and soldiers of the Sikh who lost their lives in the service of the Government." The use of a Celtic cross -- a design rooted in the British Isles -- placed thousands of miles away on a tropical hillside speaks to the particular strangeness of empire: importing symbols of home into landscapes that could not have been more different. The front inscription has since been renovated and the typeface slightly modernized, but the names remain.

Today the monument stands on MPS Square in front of the Sandakan Municipal Council building, sharing the space with the nearby William Pryer Monument. It is part of the Sandakan Heritage Trails, a walking route that connects the historic landmarks scattered across this coastal town. Sandakan itself was almost entirely destroyed during World War II, so the monuments and structures that survived or were restored carry an outsized significance. The Chartered Company Monument anchors one end of a story arc that runs through the town's colonial founding, its wartime devastation, and its postwar reinvention. For visitors tracing the trail, the cross is a quiet starting point -- a reminder that Sandakan's history began with ambition, loss, and a company that carved a territory out of the jungle.