Wichers was a Dutch luitenant ter zee 2de klasse (lieutenant of the navy, second class) who, in 1893 — the despatch being reported in Het Vaderland and quoted by Coblijn in the naschrift of Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen — commanded the joint sloop flotilla of the Benkoelen in an engagement in the Riouw bay at Lehong on the West Coast of Atjeh. Under his leadership the flotilla had chased a prauw (native vessel) belonging to Toekoe Oemar and attempted to bring her up from the strand; the landing division was fired upon from the shrub, whereupon the fire was silenced with the support of the guns of two sloops, and the prauw was shot to pieces. The affair at Lehong was cited in the press discussion of the same months in which the radja of Pasangan, on the East Coast, was rewarded with fifty Martini-Henry rifles, ammunition, and tin for fishing-nets for having hoisted the Dutch flag and returned the staatjes (small states) to the princes expelled by Toekoe Oemar — a conjunction that Van Heutsz’s brochure denounced and Coblijn quoted.
See Also
- Sloops of the Benkoelen in action at Lehong (1893)
- Leuhong
- Teukoe Oemar
- Issuance of firearms to Acehnese
- De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
- Aceh War
- 1893
Source
Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen, door W. A. Coblijn, gepensionneerd Kolonel van het Oost-Indisch Leger (‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef, 1893), pp. 119–120. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-100-Hoe_Atjeh_te_onderwerpen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.