The Rotterdamsche Lloyd was the Dutch shipping line whose steamer Baloeran carried the ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen and the journalist C. Graadt van Roggen homeward from the Indies in February 1933, and aboard which the conversations printed as Een strijd in Atjeh (1934) took place.
H. Wanting’s foreword records the circumstance: “toen in Februari van het vorige jaar de „Baloeran” van de Rotterdamsche Lloyd op haar terugreis naar Nederland twee passagiers bij elkaar bracht, die elkaar nooit hadden gezien en na een kort samenzijn elkaar ook niet weer zouden zien.” — when in February of last year the „Baloeran” of the Rotterdam Lloyd, on her homeward voyage to the Netherlands, brought together two passengers who had never seen one another and who, after a short association, would also never see one another again.
The line’s Indies service — with its calls at Belawan, Sabang, Colombo, Suez and Port-Saïd — supplies the geography of the narrative: the doctor came aboard at Belawan, the conversation began somewhere between Sabang and Colombo, and the letters had to be finished at Port Said for the air mail at Caïro.
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
The Rotterdamsche Lloyd (Rotterdam Lloyd) was the Dutch shipping company which, in author Joh. Langhout’s framing, “indirectly furthered” the bloom of the north of Sumatra by choosing Padang, on the West Coast, as her loading and discharging harbour — and whose intended switch to Belawan (Deli) in the early 1920s was watched anxiously by the whole Padangsche community and by students of Atjeh’s trade routes.
Padang and Belawan
Indirectly, Langhout writes, the Rotterdamsche Lloyd furthered the bloom of the northern part of Sumatra by choosing Padang as loading and discharging harbour: the reports of the latest times pointed out that the company would no longer call at Padang within a foreseeable time and would, like the company “Nederland”, destine Belawan as Sumatra-harbour. It was intelligible that the Padangsche population and the Padangsche Handelsvereenigingen, with the Resident at their head, asked the Lloyd to refrain from his intention. Emmahaven (Padang’s ocean harbour) still took an important place in the row of government harbours of the Indies: “De ruime kolenmagazijnen van Boekit-Poetoes; de electrische bunkerkranen; de transporteur ‘Ombilin’ — would for a part be doomed to idleness… Padang, which thanks to the Rotterdamsche Lloyd has become the principal harbour-place of the West Coast of Sumatra, wishes to keep that position!” Whether the voices would find hearing, and whether the Lloyd’s measure would prove lasting and be extended to all her ships, was not to be determined when Langhout wrote in 1922–1923.
Early ships for the Indies trade
The book’s first photographic plates belong to the Lloyd’s predecessors in the Netherlands Indian coasting trade: “Het barkschip Fop Smit (850 ton) van den Rott. Lloyd. Een der eerste Nederlandsche schepen bestemd voor de kustvaart in Ned. Indië (1867)”, the Overijssel (2,800 tons, built 1878), and a 2,848-ton vessel of the Rott. Lloyd destined for the voyage to the Indies; in 1923 the Rotterdam-built floating dry-dock of Burgerhout’s machine factory, destined for the Indies, could have lifted a ship of the Lloyd’s Patria class (8 million KG).
See Also
- Baloeran
- J. Tijssen
- C. Graadt van Roggen
- H. Wanting
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- Belawan
- 1933
- Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland
- Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij
- Ocean Steamship Company
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 1, 3, 9–10.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 155–156, illustration captions pp. 6, 16, 17(?), 146 (dry dock).