The Indische Stoomboot-maatschappij (Indies Steamship Company) was the private shipping contractor engaged by the Dutch colonial government to transport troops, stores and materieel to and from Atjeh during the Atjeh-oorlog. Under the terms of its contract, the government paid a liggeld (demurrage) of ƒ 1,200 for every day a ship was held at the roadstead beyond the first 24 hours after arrival. The company’s transports — the Prins Alexander der Nederlanden, the Baron Sloet van de Beele and others — feature repeatedly in Borel’s account of the chaotic debarkation at Oeleh Leh and of the cost overruns that heaped scandal on the conduct of the war.
The Contract and the Liggelden
The contract between the Indische Stoomboot-maatschappij and the Dutch colonial government fixed a liggeld of ƒ 1,200 per day for every ship held beyond 24 hours after arrival at the Atjeh roadstead. The arrangement was, in Borel’s diagnosis, a structural incentive to delay: every additional day at anchor was a fresh ƒ 1,200 to the contractor, while the government bore the cost in money, in men (through cholera bred in the overcrowded ships), and in operational tempo (through troops kept idly afloat when they were needed ashore). The single most damaging example Borel cites is the Baron Sloet van de Beele, which arrived with ~400 reinforcements on 11 June 1874 and alone cost the government almost ƒ 17,000 in demurrage before its troops could be landed — a sum equal to roughly fourteen days of contracted delay. Borel treats the demurrage system as one of the symptomatic failures of Dutch preparation: it compounded the absence of a zeehoofd (sea-pier) at Oeleh Leh and the criminal overcrowding of the transports on the outward voyage from Java.
The Transports and the Debarkation Chaos
The Indische Stoomboot-maatschappij’s ships carried the troops and koelies of the second expedition from Java to the Atjeh roadstead in November–December 1873. Troops and koelies were unnecessarily crowded onto too few transports, causing “groote ellende” during the voyage and during the stay on the reede; the economy measure “door niets gewettigd” fed the cholera that had been brought from Batavia and cost “vele menschenlevens.” generaal van Swieten himself departed Atjeh on 25 April 1874 on the stoomschip Prins Alexander der Nederlanden — the same vessel that had carried him thither. After the departure of the hoofdmacht the company’s transports carried the trickle of reinforcements — the Baron Sloet van de Beele on 11 June 1874, the Prins Alexander with a couple hundred more on 12 June 1874, the 6de bataljon, the 5de and 10de bataljons in December 1874, the Barissans on 10 December 1875 and the 9de bataljon on 21 December 1875 — that sustained the bezettingskorps under generaal Pel. Borel, who as an artillery officer personally supervised the debarkation of the guns at Oeleh Leh, describes the operations at the roadstead in detail: the lack of a pier forced the lightering of guns, horses and stores through the surf, an operation that exposed men and materieel to the enemy’s fire and to the kwade moesson that broke on 31 May 1874.
The Costs of the War
The Indische Stoomboot-maatschappij is also part of Borel’s indictment of the financial costs of the Atjeh-oorlog. The demurrage paid to the company — running, on the Baron Sloet van de Beele alone, to almost ƒ 17,000 — is cited alongside the costs of the vesting-artillerie, the Red Cross comforts, the kettinggang convicts and the spoorweg K. Radja–Oeleh Leh as part of the “kolossale offers” the war had already cost by 1878. Borel’s proposed Indische Brigade of 3 000–4 000 men, estimated at ƒ 6 000 000 for the first year and ƒ 10–15 million for the whole two years, was, he argued, no more than a fraction of what the war was already costing in demurrage, reinforcements, and the slow attrition of the Indische leger — and would, by ending the war, eliminate the very demand for the company’s transports that the demurrage fed.
Sources
D. van den Berg, Cornelis Jacobus Snijders (1852–1939): Een leven in dienst van zijn Land en zijn Volk (Voorburg: September 1944), pp. 22, 35. Koninklijke Bibliotheek shelfmark 0301 4872.
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 49–50, 69.
Acknowledgement of sources. This article combines material from the publications cited above; the material newly added derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897) and Een strijd in Atjeh (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.
See Also
- Liggelden
- Zeehoofd
- Oeleh Leh
- Indische Leger
- Bezettingskorps in Atjeh
- Jan van Swieten
- Generaal Pel
- Departure of Jan van Swieten from Atjeh (April 1874)
- Crisis at Kota Radja (May–June 1874)
- Indische Brigade (proposed)
- 1874
- Cornelis Jacobus Snijders
- Maatschappij “Nederland”
- Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij
- Oleh-leh
- Batavia
- Surabaya
- Penang
- Singapore
- Aceh War
- 1873
- 1875
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 11–12, 77, 144, 150–162, 167, 195.