The action of the sloops of the Benkoelen at Lehong was the naval engagement in the Riouw bay (Riouwbaai) at Lehong on the West Coast of Atjeh, reported in Het Vaderland in 1893, in which the joint sloop flotilla of the Benkoelen came to blows with the enemy. The affair was quoted by Coblijn in the naschrift of Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen in the context of the discussion that majoor Van Heutsz’s brochure De onderwerping van Atjeh had raised over the issue of firearms to Acehnese.
The engagement
Under command of luitenant ter zee 2e klasse Wichers the Dutch had chased a prauw (native vessel) belonging to Toekoe Oemar and endeavoured to bring her up from the strand. The landing division sent for the purpose was fired upon from the shrub; the fire was silenced with the support of the guns of two sloops, and the prauw was shot to pieces.
The reward of the radja of Pasangan
The same newspaper report stated that the radja of Pasangan, on the East Coast of Sumatra — who had returned to the princes expelled by Toekoe Oemar the small states (staatjes) of their fathers and had hoisted the Dutch flag upon his own state — had presumably been rewarded for all this with permission (verlof) to import fifty Martini-Henry rifles with the necessary ammunition, and tin for fishing-nets. The irony was not lost on the pamphleteers of 1893: at the very same time that the rifles issued earlier to the Atjehers were denounced by Van Heutsz as a dwaze illusie (foolish illusion) that might have to be taken back bloodily, the government itself continued to license the import of breech-loading arms into the neighbourhood of the enemy.
See Also
- Wichers
- Leuhong
- Teukoe Oemar
- Issuance of firearms to Acehnese
- Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen (Coblijn, 1893)
- De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
- Aceh War
- 1893
Source
Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen, door W. A. Coblijn, gepensionneerd Kolonel van het Oost-Indisch Leger (‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef, 1893), pp. 119–120. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-100-Hoe_Atjeh_te_onderwerpen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.