The Ocean Steamship Company Ltd. — the so-called “Blue Funnel Line” — was the Liverpool shipowner, affectionately remembered in Joh. Langhout’s chapter on the shipping companies, which for almost fifty years maintained an unbroken steamship service between the East Coast of Sumatra and the mother country, and which was “the first steamship company to establish a more or less regulated service”, chiefly for the transport of tobacco from Deli, but also of other products from Atjeh and from the East Coast of Sumatra.
The Deli tobacco service
When in 1869 the Deli Company was founded and the planting of tobacco was taken in hand on a large scale, the then representative of the Deli Company concluded an agreement with the Ocean Steamship Company to take upon herself the conveyance of the tobacco to the European market, for which purpose this steamship company had a steamship built specially fitted out for tobacco transport — a vessel which offered room also for a limited number of cabin passengers. Since Belawan has been accessible also to ships of greater charter, that harbour was regularly called at by the “blauwpipers” (“blue-funnellers”, as the line’s ships were called in Indies parlance).
See Also
- Deli
- Belawan
- Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland
- Rotterdamsche Lloyd
- Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 158–159.