Hadji Hoesin Marikan — by his own account formerly named Shephard, an Englishman or American by birth — was a renegade sailor living at Pidir who, in 1876, kept the Dutch flag on the beach of the roadstead as the paid servant of the prince of Pidir, Toengkoe Radja Pakik.
The flag of the prince
H. F. Meijer describes him in Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876 (1883): once a sailor on a merchant ship, he had come twelve years earlier to Atjeh (Samalanga), turned Muslim, married an Atjehnese woman, and later moved to Pidir, where he lived with his wife in a poor hut near the beach and was paid two and a half Spanish dollars per day by the prince to take care of the Netherlands flag. The Atjehnese princes, Meijer remarks — likening him to the comparable figure of Svendsen (Swinsen), the ablanda hilan (“renegade European”) well known during the Second Expedition — preferred the flag to fly at the beach rather than before their residences, on the pretext that it would be better seen by the ships: the flag was the sign of the prince’s outward submission, not of his disposition.
He stands as a curiosity of the north-coast diplomatic record: a Westerner in Atjehnese service guarding the enemy’s flag in the year of the Dutch landing.
See Also
- Pedir
- Toengkoe Radja Pakik
- Occupation of Pidir (31 May - 4 June 1876)
- Guerilla warfare in Groot-Atjeh
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), chapter VIII, p. 272 (footnote).