The Baloeran was the steamer of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd aboard which, in February 1933, on her homeward voyage from the Indies to the Netherlands, the ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen and the journalist C. Graadt van Roggen met and held the conversations printed as Een strijd in Atjeh (1934). The three letters are datelined a/b. „Baloeran”, Februari 1933.
The voyage
The doctor had come aboard at Belawan. He played bridge with the English planter’s wife from Malakka, and spent his mornings — the morning of the sports competitions, the morning of the children’s feast, and the strange morning after the masked ball — sitting in the writing saloon filling great sheets of paper. One afternoon his glass stood beside the journalist’s, and the conversation began.
Graadt van Roggen described the shipboard measurement of time and space: “wij meten den tijd met Engelsche mijlen aan boord en den afstand tusschen Colombo en Port-Saïd met dagen en we sweepstaken op het aantal mijlen van elken dag; wij krijgen vreemde ideeën over tijd en ruimte aan boord.” — we measure time by English miles on board, and the distance between Colombo and Port Said by days, and we run sweepstakes on the number of miles of each day; we get strange ideas about time and space on board. A day later the doctor brought him three Indies newspapers in which his work was described.
The later letters are written under the pressure of the mails: a cold north storm tore at the windows of the smoking saloon as the ship butted against the dark blue waves of “de hitteberuchte, de Roode Zee. Ditmaal koud en blauw. Suez is voorbij.” — the heat-notorious Red Sea. This time cold and blue. Suez is past. The passengers had won the sweepstake with a camel that plodded along the canal; some were lost at the pyramids and would be regained at Port-Saïd; but the letter had to be finished there for the air mail at Caïro. “Dus snel, dokter, wij moeten verder.”
Significance
The ship is the frame of the whole narrative. Graadt van Roggen noted that “aan boord heeft dr. Tijssen weer spreken geleerd” — aboard, Dr. Tijssen had learned to speak again — after the solitude of the kampongs, and that an appeal to his duty had worked wonders. His closing reflection places the doubt he could not dispel in the same shipboard geography: “Ik heb hem dat vertrouwen niet volkomen kunnen geven, geloof ik, tusschen Colombo en Port Said. Misschien dat Holland het kan, dat er onder mijn lezers zijn, die het kunnen tusschen den Helder en Maastricht?” — I have not been able, I believe, to give him that confidence completely, between Colombo and Port Said. Perhaps Holland can do it — perhaps there are among my readers those who can do it between Den Helder and Maastricht?
See Also
- Rotterdamsche Lloyd
- J. Tijssen
- C. Graadt van Roggen
- H. Wanting
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- Belawan
- 1933
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 1, 3, 9–10, 14.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.