Semibilangeul (the Sembilan geul or channel) was the deep-water southern entrance of the Aru Bay off the coast of Langkat on the East Coast of Sumatra, sheltered by the island Poeloe Sembilan — the channel by which, in the harbour debates of 1912–1916, ships heavy enough for coastal steam could enter the bay and reach the projected harbour of Telok Taboehan.
The channel and the harbour question
The Sembilangeul had a greater draught than the other bay entrances — and it was precisely the deeper draught of this southern entrance that the promoters of the first-class harbour at Telok Taboehan invoked when they answered the objection of Schadee, preserved by J. Roest in De spoorwegverbinding tusschen Deli, Atjeh en de Aroebaai (1916): the greater draught in the Sembilangeul had, in all the years since, never given cause to a removal of the traffic to the existing harbour places at that channel, so it gave, Schadee concluded, no ground for the expectation that the traffic would shift itself to a new harbour place at Telok Taboehan.
Across the water from the bay’s quiet surface — sheltered, as Roest describes the place itself, by the opposite island Poeloe Sembilan — the channel brought the ships deep enough to the bay’s edge, where, at no great distance from the coast, the water was deep enough for the shipping and the expanse large enough for the turning and warping of vessels.
See Also
Source
De spoorwegverbinding tusschen Deli, Atjeh en de Aroebaai, door J. Roest, in Tijdschrift voor het Binnenlandsch Bestuur, Deel XLIX, Afl. 6 (Batavia, December 1916), pp. 465–466, 476.