G. C. Quarles van Ufford was the Jonkheer and former naval officer — chief of the external service of the Hollandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij — who in 1901 took over the management of the Maatschappij Zeehaven en Kolenstation Sabang, and whose name, in author Joh. Langhout’s judgement, will remain bound to the history of Sabang as the man who devoted his life to making of Sabang an ocean harbour.
The saving of Sabang
Where J. M. H. van Oosterzee of the Batavia firm De Lange & Co and General (then Major) Van Heutsz had given the impulse to the establishment, it was decisive for the bloom of Sabang that in 1901 Quarles van Ufford was found willing to take the leadership of the company upon himself. When the continuation of the exploitation ran into danger “because of the little desire which the money-lenders showed to put still more capital into the not yet yielding harbour”, it was Quarles van Ufford who, “door zijn onverzettelijk geloof in de toekomst van Sabang, de onderneming over het doode punt heeft heengeholpen” (“through his inflexible faith in the future of Sabang, helped the enterprise over the dead point”).
Under his administration the year 1903 formed a milestone on the road to success, when the harbour was taken up into the mail service of the Maatschappij “Nederland” and the first mailboat, the Koning Willem III, was festively piloted into the harbour on 29 September 1903 in the presence of Governor Van Heutsz. In 1904–1905 the harbour was equipped with electrically driven coal transporters, and a fixed agreement with the Government was reached in 1909–1910 securing the harbour against foreign capital (see Maatschappij Zeehaven en Kolenstation Sabang).
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 145–146.