Carnegy was the Harbour Master at Malacca in the years between about 1818 and 1820, and a correspondent of Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek, the Dutch naval commander on the station. He figures prominently in P. H. Van der Kemp (1900) both as an informant of Wolterbeek concerning Raffles’s movements in the Straits in early 1819 and as the subject of a sour private judgement by the Dutch governor of Malacca, Timmerman Thyssen.
Informant to Wolterbeek
In a letter from Wolterbeek to Thyssen, printed by Van der Kemp from his “Malakka-Riouwverhandeling”, the Dutch rear-admiral remarks that “Mr Carnegy, of whom I am now very well satisfied, and who really renders me much service with the researches which he makes at Penang, has informed me that from thence two ships with three hundred men had sailed, destined for the Carrimons with intent to take possession of those islands, and that Mr Raffles was on the point of departing with three more ships and four hundred men for Acheen”. The letter, written during the period when Raffles was at Penang preparing his expedition to the Karimon Islands and the subsequent Acheh commission, shows Carnegy as a channel through which intelligence of British movements reached the Dutch naval command.
Wolterbeek’s reliance on Carnegy is notable, because the rear-admiral was at this time responsible for countering what the Dutch believed to be Raffles’s design upon the Karimon Islands and ultimately upon Lingga and the Dutch position at Riouw. Carnegy’s reports from Penang enabled Wolterbeek to keep Thyssen and the government at Batavia abreast of British preparations. A postscript of 18 March 1819 in Wolterbeek’s letter records that the alarm had been called off: the ships sighted at the Carrimons had in fact been Penang ships bound for Bencoolen via the Karimons, having taken on board ammunition and stores which Raffles had been unable to obtain from Governor Bannerman and had therefore drawn from his own government.
Thyssen’s Censure
A different view of Carnegy is preserved in a private letter from Thyssen to Wolterbeek dated 5 December 1818, in which the governor of Malacca expressed deep displeasure with the harbour master. “In my position”, wrote Thyssen, “I meet daily with unpleasantnesses; the people are not upright. Since the departure [of Wolterbeek] I have also had to perceive that the harbour master Carnegy is a hypocrite.” Thyssen recalled that, when the Dutch wished to introduce a seal duty on praus, Carnegy had recommended a small seal of five kojangs and one guilder per prau, which they had adopted; but he had failed to disclose that under English administration he had himself received two mats per three kojangs and a mat per five kojangs at the clearance of praus. “He has not only left his friend in this lurch, but under our administration he has set up a new tariff on his own authority.” Thyssen raged over this deceit and wrote to the Governor-General requesting that Carnegy be replaced by “a good honest Dutchman”.
The censure is significant because it indicates that Carnegy, though serving in a Dutch colonial administration, was an Englishman who had continued to profit by former English arrangements and was suspected of partiality. Van der Kemp also records a darker circumstance: “Carnegy’s wife had to flee from Malacca because of a murder story, while her husband was said to be on a journey to China” — a reference he pursues in his Malakka-Riouwverhandeling.
Carnegy in the Memoir of Raffles’s Widow
A letter from Carnegy, dated Penang, 2 July 1819, is printed in the Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles by his widow (1830). In it Carnegy spoke with rapture of the founding of Singapore, and concluded: “I have a letter from Sir S. Raffles of the 17th ultimo from Singapore, informing me that there are now five thousand souls there. When we got possession of it in the end of January there were only five hundred; they are the inhabitants from Malacca and Rhio that are gone there. Our ships of war can ride there in war time, and run out off Pulo Auro, and see the coast clear, and back again in a week.” The letter is important as an early piece of independent testimony to the rapid growth of Singapore under Raffles’s administration in the first half of 1819.
Assessment
Carnegy’s place in the Acheh-Singapore story is that of a marginal but recurring intermediary. To Wolterbeek he was a useful informant; to Thyssen a hypocrite; to Raffles’s widow an admirer whose letter could be quoted to vindicate the Singapore enterprise. Van der Kemp uses him as a witness whose several testimonies, taken together, illustrate the complicated personal networks which linked the Dutch and British colonial establishments in the Straits during the years of the Acheh commission and the founding of Singapore.
See Also
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Timmerman Thyssen
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Founding of Singapore
- Malacca
- Raffles’ detour to Karimon Islands
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.
Carnegy was the Harbour Master at Malacca in the years between about 1818 and 1820, and a correspondent of Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek, the Dutch naval commander on the station. He figures prominently in P. H. Van der Kemp (1900) both as an informant of Wolterbeek concerning Raffles’s movements in the Straits in early 1819 and as the subject of a sour private judgement by the Dutch governor of Malacca, Timmerman Thyssen.
Informant to Wolterbeek
In a letter from Wolterbeek to Thyssen, printed by Van der Kemp from his “Malakka-Riouwverhandeling”, the Dutch rear-admiral remarks that “Mr Carnegy, of whom I am now very well satisfied, and who really renders me much service with the researches which he makes at Penang, has informed me that from thence two ships with three hundred men had sailed, destined for the Carrimons with intent to take possession of those islands, and that Mr Raffles was on the point of departing with three more ships and four hundred men for Acheen”. The letter, written during the period when Raffles was at Penang preparing his expedition to the Karimon Islands and the subsequent Acheh commission, shows Carnegy as a channel through which intelligence of British movements reached the Dutch naval command.
Wolterbeek’s reliance on Carnegy is notable, because the rear-admiral was at this time responsible for countering what the Dutch believed to be Raffles’s design upon the Karimon Islands and ultimately upon Lingga and the Dutch position at Riouw. Carnegy’s reports from Penang enabled Wolterbeek to keep Thyssen and the government at Batavia abreast of British preparations. A postscript of 18 March 1819 in Wolterbeek’s letter records that the alarm had been called off: the ships sighted at the Carrimons had in fact been Penang ships bound for Bencoolen via the Karimons, having taken on board ammunition and stores which Raffles had been unable to obtain from Governor Bannerman and had therefore drawn from his own government.
Thyssen’s Censure
A different view of Carnegy is preserved in a private letter from Thyssen to Wolterbeek dated 5 December 1818, in which the governor of Malacca expressed deep displeasure with the harbour master. “In my position”, wrote Thyssen, “I meet daily with unpleasantnesses; the people are not upright. Since the departure [of Wolterbeek] I have also had to perceive that the harbour master Carnegy is a hypocrite.” Thyssen recalled that, when the Dutch wished to introduce a seal duty on praus, Carnegy had recommended a small seal of five kojangs and one guilder per prau, which they had adopted; but he had failed to disclose that under English administration he had himself received two mats per three kojangs and a mat per five kojangs at the clearance of praus. “He has not only left his friend in this lurch, but under our administration he has set up a new tariff on his own authority.” Thyssen raged over this deceit and wrote to the Governor-General requesting that Carnegy be replaced by “a good honest Dutchman”.
The censure is significant because it indicates that Carnegy, though serving in a Dutch colonial administration, was an Englishman who had continued to profit by former English arrangements and was suspected of partiality. Van der Kemp also records a darker circumstance: “Carnegy’s wife had to flee from Malacca because of a murder story, while her husband was said to be on a journey to China” — a reference he pursues in his Malakka-Riouwverhandeling.
Carnegy in the Memoir of Raffles’s Widow
A letter from Carnegy, dated Penang, 2 July 1819, is printed in the Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles by his widow (1830). In it Carnegy spoke with rapture of the founding of Singapore, and concluded: “I have a letter from Sir S. Raffles of the 17th ultimo from Singapore, informing me that there are now five thousand souls there. When we got possession of it in the end of January there were only five hundred; they are the inhabitants from Malacca and Rhio that are gone there. Our ships of war can ride there in war time, and run out off Pulo Auro, and see the coast clear, and back again in a week.” The letter is important as an early piece of independent testimony to the rapid growth of Singapore under Raffles’s administration in the first half of 1819.
Assessment
Carnegy’s place in the Acheh-Singapore story is that of a marginal but recurring intermediary. To Wolterbeek he was a useful informant; to Thyssen a hypocrite; to Raffles’s widow an admirer whose letter could be quoted to vindicate the Singapore enterprise. Van der Kemp uses him as a witness whose several testimonies, taken together, illustrate the complicated personal networks which linked the Dutch and British colonial establishments in the Straits during the years of the Acheh commission and the founding of Singapore.
See Also
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Timmerman Thyssen
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Founding of Singapore
- Malacca
- Raffles’ detour to Karimon Islands
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.