Aroebai

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tagsplace, bay, harbour, colonial, dutch, aceh, buitenbezittingen, tramway, areo-baai-plannen, oostkust-van-sumatra, petroleum, tamiang, oostkust-van-atjeh, achehnese, ar-oe-baai, oil-field, sumatra, east-coast
aliasesAroe-baai, Arube Bay, Aroe baai, Aroebaai, Aroe Bay, the natural harbour of Aroebai, Arubaai, Aroebay, Langsaarbaai, Telok Taboean bay, Aru Bay, Aru-baai, Tamiang baai, Aru Bay (oil field), Teluk Aru, Aru Bay field, Aru-Bay, Arosbaya, Aroëbaai

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Aroebai (also rendered Aroe-baai, modern Arube Bay, in the 1918 Oostkust volume also Langsaarbaai) was a broad, shallow natural harbour on the Strait of Malaka at the northern extremity of the Gouvernement Oostkust van Sumatra, just south of the Besitang River mouth and the Tamiang region (transferred to Atjeh in 1908). Described in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s 1917 account as “the fine and accessible Arube Bay” (de fraaie en goed toegankelijke Aroe-baai) and as “a good roadstead” (eene goede rede), Aroebai was projected as the natural maritime terminus of the Atjeh-tramway network — and as a potential competitor to Belawan, Singapore, and Sabang as a deep-water outlet for the Atjehnese export trade. Three and a half centuries earlier, the same bay had been the theatre of the Atjeh-Aroe war of 1539 and the principal locus of the bedekte taal that De Roo de la Faille decodes as the survival of the Hindu-Buddhist place-world of the Sumatran east coast.

Geography

The Aroebai is sheltered by Pulau Sembilan and Pulau Koempai (Koempej) at its entrance. Two deep channels — the Noordelijk vaarwater (north of the islands) and the Zuidelijk vaarwater (Sembilan-geul, south) — provide the only good natural anchorages on the northern Oostkust coast. The bay’s head silts extensively at low tide, but the channels maintain depth for ocean-going vessels. The Koeala Balbalan inlet (600 m wide, shallow) leads to Pangkalan Brandan 8 km inland; the Sungai Balbalan drains the Pangkalan Brandan area into the bay.

The pre-colonial bay

Three and a half centuries before the Dutch tramway plans, the bay was the theatre of the Atjeh-Aroe war of 1539: the Atjehnese fleet of Alleredin Mahomet anchored here in October 1539 under the command of the sultan’s brother-in-law, brought the kingdom of Aroe to its fall, and closed the Strait of Malacca to Portuguese shipping. Mendez Pinto entered the bay on 5 October 1539, having run from the Nine Islands off Perak across the Strait; asked by Pinto the name of the place, his pilot answered Paneticano — a name De Roo de la Faille decodes as Roe-pang moes-tika-noe-sa, the veiled name of the white-magic islet of Kampi, one of the half-moon of islands sheltering the bay along with Sembilan and Salahadji.

In 1888 the Controleur S.B. Van Rijn visited the bay from Bengkalis, entering between Sembilan and Koempej and recording the islet’s fortress-like hills; crossing to Pangkalan Soesoe, he found dwellings of Malays fled from Besitang, and inland the old bentengs of soengej Si Kondoer and Sérang djaja, said to be the fortifications of the earlier rajas of Aroe, and the soengej Si Djanda, recalling in local memory “the widow Djanda Gidau… of the last raja of Aroe, who fled to that river at the destruction of the realm by Atjeh” — a folk echo of the Queen of Aroe. The hill above the bay, in 1862, still bore the benteng of an Atjehschen avonturier who defiantly flew the Atjehsche flag.

The 1913 Atjeh-tram extension and the Aroe-baai-plannen

The Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s 1917 account of the 1913 extension approvals presents Aroebai as the natural terminus of the Atjeh-tramway’s projected southern extension: the doortrekking was approved of the Atjeh-tram network from Koeala Simpang through Tamiang to Besitang, and from Pangkalan Soesoe to Telok Taboeban (on Aroebai, with a good roadstead), while the connecting line between Besitang and Pangkalan Soesoe is also already in preparation. With the completion of this last line-section, the Atjeh-tram network will finally reach its natural terminus: the fine and accessible Aroebai, by which the economic value of the entire tram network will rise.

The Aroe-baai-plannen — the project to develop Aroebai as a deep-water harbour — is presented by the Bureau as a potential rival to the established export harbours of the region: the defenders of the Aroe-baai-plannen, who see in this natural harbour a competitor of Belawan and even of Singapore and Sabang, hope, by the laying of this connecting link, to see the first step taken toward the realisation of those future plans, by the export of the Atjehnese products (pepper, rubber, etc.) — which increases steadily with the reclamation of the Tamiangsche moerassen — to be led via Aroebai. The Bureau further notes that the Aroe-baai-plannen were of evident interest to the whole gouvernement Atjeh and that they were maintained even when, in place of Belawan-Deli, the equally inadequate roadstead of Pangkalan Brandan was put forward as the desired terminus of the Atjeh-tram. The Aroe-baai-plannen thus represented, in the Bureau’s framing, the strategic-economic interest of the Atjeh residency as a whole — pitted against the commercial interests of the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij, the Belawan-Deli trade, and the Pangkalan Brandan commercial establishment.

The Van Heutsz Oceaanhaven proposal (1905–1907)

The Oostkust volume of 1918 traces the Aroe-baai-plannen back to an earlier and more ambitious proposal by J. B. van Heutsz — Governor of Atjeh 1898–1904 and Governor-General of Netherlands India 1904–1909 — to develop Telok Taboean on Aroebai into a full Oceaanhaven for the entire Oostkust cultivation zone. Van Heutsz was the krachtig voorstander (strong proponent) of the Aroebaai scheme. His advocacy stemmed from familiarity with Atjeh’s northern geography from the Aceh War campaigns, the bay’s superior natural depth and shelter compared to Belawan’s shoaling approaches, the potential to link the bay via the Atjeh-tram (then building southeast from Koeala Simpang) directly to the cultivation zone, and the strategic desire to integrate Atjeh and Oostkust economically. The van Heutszgebergte (van Heutsz Mountains) in the Karo highlands was named after him, reflecting his association with the region’s opening.

The original project envisioned a full Oceaanhaven at Telok Taboean (on Aroebai), where the Atjeh-tram would terminate. The bay offered two deep channels (north and south of Pulau Sembilan/Koempai) with good anchorage for large steamers, shelter from the Strait of Malaka’s swell, proximity to the Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij fields at Langsa/Rantau Pandjang, and a shorter sea route to Penang/Singapore for northern cultivation areas (Langkat, Besitang).

The 1910 Kraus-de Jongh report and the Belawan decision

The Handelsvereeniging Medan opposed the plan, arguing that Aroebai lay too far north of the main production centres (Medan, Tebing Tinggi, Siantar), that land transport costs over the poor northern roads would negate harbour advantages, and that Belawan’s central location in the cultivation zone was economically decisive.

In 1910 the colonial government commissioned engineer Kraus-de Jongh to evaluate. His report recognized Aroebai’s technical superiority (depth, shelter, expansion potential) but concluded that general economic grounds favoured Belawan: the cultivation zone’s centre of gravity lay south of the Asahan, and Belawan’s hinterland connections (rail, road, future canals) were already established. The government accepted Kraus-de Jongh’s advice and launched a renewed Belawan dredging program (1912 onward) using a 700 m³ suction dredger. Depths improved from 7½ ft (1907) to 19 ft at low-water spring by 1916. The Plan Nobel for a Belawan ocean harbour was approved in principle. The Aroebaai ocean-harbour plan was verlaten (abandoned); only a modest steamer jetty at Pangkalan Soesoe for the Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij tankers and the Atjeh-tram was built.

Petroleum and the Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij

The Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij (later Shell) developed the Langsar and Rantau Pandjang oil fields in Atjeh (Tamiang region) from the 1890s. Pangkalan Soesoe was chosen as the tanker-loading port because the Aroebaai offered deeper water than the silting Pangkalan Brandan or Belawan-Deli, because the Atjeh-tram could be extended from Koeala Simpang through Tamiang to the bay, and because the bay was accessible to ocean-going tank steamers. By 1918 the KPM had built loading jetties with large tank installations at Pangkalan Soesoe on the Sembilan-geul, and a regular tank-steamer service to overseas ports operated from there. The Atjeh-tram brought oil in tank wagons from the fields to the jetties.

Transport connections (1918)

Significance

Aroebai is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s 1917 account, the projected natural maritime terminus of the Atjeh-tramway and the strategic-economic counterweight to Belawan and Sabang in the Atjehnese export trade. The Aroe-baai-plannen of 1913 represent the most ambitious single project of the 1904–1914 decade for the economic development of the Atjeh residency — a project that, in the Bureau’s view, was of evident interest to the whole gouvernement Atjeh but was actively contested by the established commercial interests of the East Coast. The 1918 Oostkust volume extends the story backward: the Aroe-baai-plannen were the surviving fragment of Van Heutsz’s much larger 1905–1907 Oceaanhaven proposal, defeated in 1910 by the Kraus-de Jongh report and the Handelsvereeniging Medan — a defeat that reduced Aroebai from a projected ocean harbour to a mere petroleum jetty. Three and a half centuries earlier, the same bay had been the geographical anchor of the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539) and the principal locus of the bedekte taal that De Roo de la Faille decodes as the survival of the Hindu-Buddhist place-world of the Sumatran east coast — the pre-colonial history that the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s tramway-and-harbour account does not mention, but that gives the bay’s Dutch-colonial economic importance its much older strategic prehistory.

Account from Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)

Aroe-baai — modern Aru Bay — is the bay on the eastern coast of Sumatra which forms the natural harbour of the Tamiang river-basin and of the onderafdeeling of that name. The Atjeh-tram and the Deli-spoor both sought the Aroe-baai when they were built southward and northward respectively; the Atjeh-tram, in reaching it, had to cross the boundary of its own gewest. The junction of the two lines at Besitang in 1908 gave the Aroe-baai a double hinterland.

Historical Background

Before 1898 the regions near the Aroe-baai were continually disturbed by pepper-planters, wanderers and raiders, and the whole of Tamiang was unsafe. The opening of Tamiang to private enterprise in 1898 — when the Atjeh-weg was about to reach Koeala Simpang — was a token of confidence in the security of oil-winning and tobacco-cultivation, and was the political event that turned the Aroe-baai from a pirate-haunted roadstead into the harbour of a planting-region.

Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)

Aroe-baai was the bay on the East Coast of Atjeh near the border with Langkat whose deep water made it, in 1890, the in-finitely better anchorage for a petroleum establishment than the inner coast — but where, in the absence of every authority, Dutch or native, settlement was then impossible — and which obtained its rail connection (Besitang–Pangkalan Soesoe–Teloktaboehan) in 1917.

The ungoverned bay, 1890

Already in 1890 the Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij had founded its establishment Pangkalan Brandan even south of the border of the province, in the Langkat country. An establishment at the “infinitely more favourably situated” deep-water Aroe-baai was impossible — not only because of the absence of the Dutch authority, but practically speaking also of every native authority: the Atjehnese coastal strip found itself in a state of complete anarchy, the mutual feuds of the chiefs had promoted banditry, and repeatedly the young establishment was startled by attacks of roving bands. In the following years a proposed tramway from the Aroe-baai to Lho Seumawè was rejected by the Government in favour of the coastal tramway (budget of 1901).

The rail connection, 1917

The later coastal tramway was carried to Besitang on the border of Atjeh and Sumatra’s East Coast (construction completed end of 1915, opened 1916), and in 1917 a three-rail branch from Besitang to Pangkalan Soesoe on the Aroe-baai followed — with a third rail giving both the 0.75 m and the 1.067 m gauges, so that material of the Deli railway coming from Pangkalan Brandan could be brought to Teloktaboehan on the Aroe-baai. That bay was already known to history for the incident of the Atjehnese adventurer of 1862.

Account from J. Roest (1916) — the bay in the railway debates

In J. Roest’s chronicle De spoorwegverbinding tusschen Deli, Atjeh en de Aroebaai (December 1916) the bay is the whole scene of the years-long dispute over the ports of the East Coast. He records its advantages for the harbour question of those years: by the Sembilan channel, the bay’s southern entrance, ships came in in safety; near Telok Taboehan, not far from the coast, the water was deep enough for the coast steamers; the water surface was wide enough for the turning and warping of ships; and the quiet of the surface was secured by the opposite island Poeloe Sembilan. Correcting Beyerman, he makes the economic distinction permanent: the traffic which seemed to grow in the bay was in truth the traffic of the river harbour of Pangkalan Brandan in the Babalan river — where Schadee reminded the Cultuurraad that the import and export trade of Tamiang was seated, and not in the Aru Bay.

Roest records how the bay’s full harbour-growths at Telok Taboehan were laid aside when the dredging at Belawan succeeded, and how the Government at the end of 1915 planned the modest coastal installation at Pangkalan Soesoe — the plan being built, for a beginning, at the f 150,000 then on the budget for 1916 — while the long-drawn dispute over the ocean harbour which the Aru Bay had one day been intended to serve ended undecided.

See Also

Sources

De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 69–72 (section “De Atjeh-tram”).

De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), pp. 50–51, 66–67, 76–77, 93–95, 106–107. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.

Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, pp. 7–17.

Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapters I–II, ‘Inleiding’ and ‘Tamiang’, pp. 5, 6. The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 9 (Table 4: Oil production in the East Indies in 1940 and 1941), p. 11 (Oil Districts of the East Indies, North Sumatra).

Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 137–139, 160.

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