Wilhelmina mutiny and murder of Bouwens

Properties2
tagsevent, mutiny, war, colonial, correspondence, anglo-dutch
aliasesWilhelmina affair, Wilhelmina incident, Bouwens' murder, Mutiny on the Wilhelmina, Wilhelmina schooner mutiny

6 min read

The mutiny on the Dutch colonial schooner Wilhelmina in July–August 1819 was one of the most shocking incidents of maritime violence in the waters around Acheh during the early nineteenth century, and a key episode in the tangled Anglo-Dutch diplomacy that followed the Treaty of Pedir. The mutiny and the murder of Lieutenant Marx Bouwens and two of his crewmen, together with the death of Bouwens’ wife and two of his children, gave rise to a protracted correspondence between the Dutch government at Malacca and the British government at Penang that Van der Kemp treats as one of the principal strands of his narrative.

Background

The schooner Wilhelmina, commanded by Lieutenant Marx Bouwens, had formed part of the Wolterbeek commission to Acheh in 1818 and was well known to the colonial authorities of both powers. In mid-1819 she was sent along Sumatra’s East Coast on a mission which included the execution of a commission from the government at Calcutta; she had on board 10,000 dollars and a quantity of small arms. The employment of Malay and Javanese crews in disproportionately large numbers relative to European sailors was already recognised as a serious hazard: the practice, as the Asiatic Journal observed in September 1819, had “led to some scenes of horrible atrocity” — no fewer than four small vessels of war having been lost in this manner within a few months.

The mutiny

In July or August 1819, taking advantage of the absence of a sufficient European complement, the native crew rose against their officers. Bouwens and two of his crewmen were murdered. Bouwens’ wife, who was on board, leapt overboard in her terror; two of her children, whom the Javanese baboe (nurse) tried to save, were thrown into the sea. The survivors among the mutineers — twenty-four in number, with the baboe — brought the ship next day to Pasangan, about six miles from Telok Semawé, then the residence of the pretender Saif ul-Alum (Syf).

The mutineers went ashore, concealing as much of the money and valuables as they could. They set out on foot for Telok Semawé, plundering some of the inhabitants along the way; in fear of pursuit they buried part of the stolen money in the ground. On reaching Telok they were again plundered and stripped, the greater number of them being placed in iron fetters. After some weeks in chains they were set to work building a house for Syf. The inhabitants, hearing rumours of the buried treasure, rushed upon the mutineers and seized what they could of it.

The diplomatic aftermath

The news of the outrage reached the Dutch government by the report of Timmerman Thyssen, governor of Malacca, who communicated to Wolterbeek at Batavia on 1 September 1819 that “the good Bouwens had been murdered by his own people on the height of Acheen, together with his children, and that his wife had been thrown alive into the sea”. Wolterbeek replied on 17 September 1819 expressing his sorrow and noting that, beyond the loss of men and vessel, Bouwens had had 50,000 Spanish dollars on board and an important commission to Calcutta. The British agent at Acheh, Sartorius, subsequently succeeded in securing eleven of the mutineers, who were sent via Malacca to Batavia. Their examination before the Dutch authorities gave, however, an unfavourable impression of Syf’s conduct; and on orders from Batavia, Thyssen addressed a letter of 20 January 1821 to the Penang government, transmitted by Colonel E. Lucas commanding the war-brig Irene, demanding the stolen money and the surrender of nineteen named criminals. The Dutch, having heard that Britain had acquired sovereignty over Acheh, wished to invoke the British interposition before proceeding against Telok Semawé, “to the end of avoiding all possible collision with the vassals of an English government”.

Governor Bannerman had died on 8 August 1819 and had been succeeded by W. E. Phillips, who considered the affair too old to expect any good from a fresh inquiry. When Syf was summoned to Penang in February 1821 he gave his own account, claiming that he had been unable to restrain his people and that the 800 dollars he had taken had been spent on rewards and the maintenance of the prisoners. Phillips held that Syf, having been in the exercise of sovereign authority at Telok Semawé at the time, “can be responsible to no one for whatever disposition he might have made of effects coming to his territories”. The Penang council, with Clubley as secretary, refused to permit Lucas to proceed in person to Telok Semawé, and observed that, as Britain had entered into “a friendly and defensive alliance” with the sultan of Acheh, every exertion should be made to dissuade Dutch vessels of war from appearing on that coast. Lucas returned his Irene to Malacca “onverrichter zake” — without accomplishing his mission. The whole correspondence, in Van der Kemp’s phrase, was a “Papieroorlog” of the kind that would become characteristic of Anglo-Dutch relations in the Straits for decades to come.

Significance

The Wilhelmina affair belongs to the wider story of the Treaty of Pedir (1819) in two respects. First, it confirmed that neither the British nor the Dutch possessed effective means of policing the Sumatran coast, and that the pretender Syf, though pensioned at Penang after his flight to Calcutta in early 1820, remained a powerful and lawless actor in Achehnese affairs. Second, the prolonged and inconclusive exchange between Malacca and Penang illustrated precisely the kind of collision that the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London of 17 March 1824 was designed to prevent: by assigning Sumatra to the Netherlands and the Malay Peninsula to Britain, the treaty drew a line through the waters in which the Wilhelmina had been lost. The episode thus stands as both symptom and catalyst of the diplomatic revolution of 1824.

See Also

Source

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

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