Moesapi (also Kota Moesapi or K. Moesapi) was the old stone fort at the north-eastern corner of the stelling-Pel, about one and a half hours’ march from K. Radja and the most distant post of the Dutch line. Armed with two 12 c.M. voorlaadkanonnen (muzzle-loading guns), its purpose was to cover the Gigieng lagune and the mouth of the Kroeng Tjoet, the major contraband supply channel giving access to the XXVI Moekims. Borel criticises its disadvantageous position: it could not stop boats entering the Kroeng Tjoet.
The original position
Moesapi had been in Dutch hands before February 1874 but was abandoned by van Swieten along with so much else when he adopted the afwachtende houding after the Ketapang Doewa expedition. Its reoccupation was part of kolonel Pel’s work of rebuilding the stelling from May 1874 onward. The old stone fort — described as a Mesigit (mosque) — was re-armed with two 12 c.M. voorlaadkanonnen; Borel complains that these obsolete guns, with their tijdbuis (time-fuse) shells that failed to burst on Atjeh’s wet, covered terrain, were a poor substitute for the achterlaadkanonnen that van Swieten had recalled to Java. The fort’s north-eastern position made it the seaward anchor of the eastern arc of the stelling-Pel, but its guns could not stop boats entering the Kroeng Tjoet.
In the stelling-Pel
By the time the continuous line around K. Radja was completed in May 1875, the east side of the line ran from Blang Tjoet through Kota Alam, Lemboe O. en N.O., Lampriet, Langkroek O., Lamara Z.O. en N.O., Tiban to Moesapi. From Moesapi the line continued along the sea-strand to Oeleh Leh — the basis of the stelling-Pel triangle. Moesapi’s weakness — its inability to close the Kroeng Tjoet — was only made good in February 1876, when Engel reached the Kwala Gigieng on 26 February 1876 and established posts at Kwala Gigieng and on the island of Kota Pohama in the lagune. The mouth of the Kroeng Tjoet was finally closed by the Dutch in 1876, in the wake of Pel’s great winter offensive of 1875–1876 and his death at Lamjoeng on 24 February 1876.
Account from H. F. Meijer (1883) — Moesapi and Kota-Moesapi, 1876
Meijer gives Moesapi its situation as a Dutch work on the left bank of the Kroeëng Titi Pandjang near its mouth into the great lagune: a rectangular trapezium of earth breastwork with palisade added, whose long face towards the lagune was crowned with a great bastion for two guns. In the Kroeëng Titi Pandjang near the post were still found in 1876 the traces of the bridges the Dutch had thrown there during the Second Expedition; Meijer notes, after Van Swieten, that what was wrongly called Kroeëng Tjoet in 1873–1874 was in reality this Kroeëng Titi Pandjang.
300 metres northwest of the post stood the old Atjehnese stronghold Kota-Moesapi, occupying nearly the whole of a five hundred by one hundred metre peninsula surrounded by lagune and marsh: a square redoubt whose walls stand partly in stone and partly in earth, flanked by flèches leaning with their gorge on its west and east faces. The whole work stood neglected, its parapets fallen, its interior partly ruined and partly a mud pool, and in it lay in 1876 two fine bronze cannon of six and four metres — left there for want of any transport, Meijer notes. From the post at Moesapi the Dutch kept their observations on the Kroeëng Titi Pandjang; the communication between it and Koewala Gigiëng along the lagune was assured by the intermediate post of Kota-Pohama.
See Also
- Kroeng Tjoet
- Kwala Gigieng
- Kota Pohama
- Lamara
- Tiban
- Voorlaadkanonnen in Atjeh
- Achterlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M.
- Stelling-Pel
- Luitenant-kolonel Engel
- Generaal Pel
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 176, 263, 322–325, 336.