The Kroeng Raba-baai (Bay of Kroeng Raba) is the small bay on the west coast of Groot-Atjeh at the mouth of the Kroeng Raba, which generaal Verspijck proposed as a landing-place for the third brigade of the second expedition in November 1873. Van Swieten rejected the proposal out of “vrees” (fear), and the brigade was instead left at Padang. Borel treats the rejection as “eene groote strategische fout,” since a simultaneous descent on Kroeng Raba would have placed a Dutch column within about three hours’ march of the Kraton and cut off the enemy’s line of retreat.
The rejected landing
Verspijck’s plan called for the Padangsche brigade — already embarked and ready — to be landed at the Kroeng Raba-baai while van Swieten’s two remaining brigades descended from Pedro-punt on the north coast. The two columns would then converge on the Kraton from opposite sides, completing an encirclement that the single-front advance could never achieve. Borel’s verdict is sharp: “Drie jaren later bewees de generaal Pel het tegendeel” — three years later, in January 1876, Pel’s colonne marched from Lampagger through the Blang Kalla kloof to Loenga on the right bank of the Kroeng Raba mouth without difficulty, proving that the terrain Verspijck had proposed to use was perfectly practicable. The rejection meant the enemy’s retreat route from the Kraton remained open throughout the fall of the Kraton on 24 January 1874, and the Atjehnees leadership escaped to organise the long resistance of 1874–1878.
The Kroeng Raba in later operations
The Kroeng Raba itself, as Borel describes it in the closing chapters, formed the western end of the great afsluitingslinie that Pel planned between the mouth of the Kroeng Raba on the west coast and the mouth of the Kroeng Raya on the north coast, with the aim of isolating Atjeh from the sea. Pel’s colonne reached the river’s mouth on 15 January 1876 and found the hoofden willing to submit; the planned line was eventually extended from the Kroeng Raba to Kwala Gigieng after Pel’s sudden death at Lamjoeng on 24 February 1876. The Kroeng Raba-baai was therefore not merely a rejected alternative but the western anchor of what Borel considered the only strategic solution to the war.
Account from H. F. Meijer (1883) — the bay and its bad anchorage, July 1876
Meijer preserves the report of the naval station commander at Olehleh of 11 July 1876, in which the bay was called, in this season of the year, “one of the worst anchorages of the west coast” — the full ocean swell rolling in without pause, and weather generally worse there than further to the south, as near projecting mountainous land points. Landing with loaded sloops would risk total loss of what was embarked; and only a steamship with a very powerful engine could lie safely with such unexpected heavy rain squalls.
Nevertheless the hired steamer Marion, Captain Osborne, attempted the bay at his own responsibility on 13–15 July: at King’s Point the naval escort had to order back; Osborne went ashore, rode on horseback to look at the beach with his own eyes, steamed in at dawn on 15 July, could land nothing by sloop, threw the bundled engineering materials overboard for the surf to bring, and had to work his ship out under full steam when dragging her anchors — the engineering stores for the new fort of Kroeëng Raba being largely lost in the sea.
See Also
- Kroeng Raba
- Generaal Verspijck
- Padangsche brigade
- Second Aceh Expedition (1873–1874)
- Blang Kalla
- Lampagger
- Kroeng Raya
- Kwala Gigieng
- Jan van Swieten
- Generaal Pel
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 12, 20–22, 323–325, 336–342.