The Nicobaren — the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, between the Andaman Islands and Sumatra — were the principal transit anchorage of the early Dutch East India fleets on the Atjeh-Djohor-Malaka route, the place where the Matelieff fleet of 1605 stopped on the outward voyage and where Matelieff announced the secret plan to attack Malaka to his crews, and the place to which the Portuguese viceroy’s relief fleet was detached after the engagement of 18 August 1606 — the detachment that Matelieff would later seek to engage at the Nicobaren on his return from the destruction of the remaining Portuguese fleet on 22 October 1606. The Nicobaren are the principal named transit anchorage in Van der Woude’s chapter “Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” in his Van der Woude (1948).
The Matelieff fleet’s stopover (1605)
The Matelieff fleet of nine ships left Texel on 12 May 1605 with secret instructions to attack Malaka — instructions that “verloren is gegaan”. At Mauritius Matelieff conferred with Admiraal Steven van der Haghen about the state of the Indies; both agreed that Malaka should be the first target. The fleet’s destination was kept secret from the crews until the Nicobaren, where Matelieff finally announced the plan and overcame the men’s reluctance — “het volk was niet aangenomen om te land te vechten” — with the promise of prize money. The Nicobaren stopover was the principal tactical decision point of the outward voyage and the framework within which the Malaka campaign of 1606 was conducted.
The Portuguese detachment (1606)
After the engagement of 18 August 1606 between the Matelieff fleet and the Portuguese viceroy’s relief fleet — an indecisive engagement in which both sides lost two ships and the Portuguese viceroy was killed — Matelieff retired to Djohor to repair his fleet. There he learned “dat de helft der Portugeesche vloot naar de Nicobaren was vertrokken”. Returning to Malaka on 20 October 1606, the Dutch attacked the remaining seven galleons and three galleys on 22 October 1606 and destroyed them; the ships then set course for the Nicobaren “om daar de rest der Portugeesche vloot op te zoeken”, but the Portuguese had withdrawn to a safe anchorage north of Kedah in a bay of one of the Boeton-eilanden, “waar zij met wind en stroom in haar voordeel veilig was voor een aanval”. Matelieff gave up the pursuit.
Significance
The Nicobaren are, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal transit anchorage of the early Dutch East India fleets on the Atjeh-Djohor-Malaka route and the principal named islands of the Bay of Bengal in the early Dutch-Indies period. The Matelieff fleet’s stopover at the Nicobaren in 1605 was the principal tactical decision point of the outward voyage and the framework within which the Malaka campaign of 1606 was conducted. The Portuguese viceroy’s detachment of half his fleet to the Nicobaren after the engagement of 18 August 1606 — and Matelieff’s subsequent pursuit — was the principal naval episode of the Malaka campaign’s aftermath, and frames the Nicobaren’s role as a strategic location in the early Dutch-Portuguese naval war in the East Indies. The Nicobaren would continue to serve as a transit anchorage for Dutch and English East India fleets throughout the seventeenth century and beyond.
See Also
- Cornelis Matelieff
- Matelieff’s Malaka campaign (1606)
- Steven van der Haghen
- Malaka
- Mauritius
- Kedah
- Boeton-eilanden
- Acheh
- 1605
- 1606
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Island group north of Sumatra, mentioned as part of the great folding-mountain arc that includes the Boekit Barisan.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 179.
Source
Coen, Koopman van Heeren Zeventien. Geschiedenis van den Hollandshen Handel in Indië (1598-1614), by Johan van der Woude (Amsterdam: C.V. Uitgeverij v/h C. De Boer Jr., 1948), Hoofdstuk V “Voorgangers, Hollanders en mededingers tot 1614. Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” (pp. 127, 138-139).
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 179.