Sinangri was the kampong east of Soerian in the VI Moekims sector, occupied by the Dutch without enemy opposition in July 1875 and considerably improving the stelling-Pel at its weakest point — between Oeleh Leh and Soerian. Its occupation was a long-desired step prescribed by Pel’s plan and was carried out during the ad interim administration of generaal Wiggers van Kerchem after Pel’s departure on three months’ leave on 12 June 1875.
The weak point of stelling-Pel
The western arc of the stelling-Pel, between Oeleh Leh on the coast and Soerian inland, was the weakest point of the entire Dutch perimeter. The sector lay in the territory of Toekoe Nanta of the VI Moekims, the most hostile of the inland chiefs, and its open sawahs and forest edges gave the Atjehneezen easy access to the Dutch line of communication between K. Radja and the sea. Borel notes that the occupation of Sinangri was a “long-desired step” prescribed by Pel’s plan: it would, by extending the Dutch forward line eastward from Soerian, deny the Atjehneezen the cover from which they had harried the western posts. The occupation could not, however, be undertaken until after the completion of the continuous line around K. Radja in May 1875 and until after Pel had departed for Buitenzorg to recover his shattered health.
The occupation
In July 1875, during the ad interim administration of Wiggers van Kerchem, the Dutch occupied Sinangri east of Soerian without enemy opposition. The occupation considerably improved the stelling at its weakest point. With Sinangri in Dutch hands, the western arc of the stelling-Pel was finally closed. Sinangri then became a permanent post of the western arc, and its garrison could sally against any enemy attempt to verschansen (entrench) along the road between Soerian and the coast. The post was, however, only a defensive measure — it did not attack the source of the enemy’s power in the VI Moekims itself. That attack was reserved for Pel’s great winter offensive launched on 26 December 1875, in which Sinangri’s occupation proved its value as the forward base for the operations against the VI Moekims. On 28 December 1875 Lamtermin and Bital were ontruimd by the enemy, as were Toekoe Nanta’s geduchte versterkingen west of Sinangri — “Nergends hadden de Atjehneezen ernstigen tegenstand geboden” (nowhere had the Atjehneezen offered serious resistance).
Nineteenth-Century Historiography & Campaign Analysis
Military History
Captured by the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army during the Second Aceh Expedition in December 1873, Sinangri was converted into a permanent defensive redoubt and supply magazine.
During General Pel’s Campaign in Aceh in 1875 and 1876, General J. L. J. H. Pel utilized Fort Sinangri as an administrative anchor for his defensive chain around Kotta Radja. Troops of the 6th Infantry Battalion and 8th Infantry Battalion stationed at Sinangri covered the transport of artillery across the Aceh River during the Attack on Mibouw and the March through the XXII Moekims.
Account from H. F. Meijer (1883) — the besieged island post of Sinangri
Meijer gives Sinangri its situation as the Dutch post raised about the middle of 1874 in the southwestern part of an island in the great lagune south of Olehleh: its garrison had spent eighteen months as it kept under siege by the enemy, who from his strong, unapproachable positions along the whole left bank of the lagune had done everything to make life there unsafe, enfilading the soldiers’ quarters from across the arm of the lagune until they had to be blinded with double rows of sleeping tables — whose many bullet holes proved, to Meijer, that no useless work had been done.
The island itself is V-shaped: the arms of the lagune knit around it in the most capricious bends; the Atjehnese had laid dikes with water passages through those arms, by which Sinangri’s people communicated at low water with the kampongs across; and the whole left bank of the lagune to Koewala Tjangkoel was lined with the enemy’s works — small redoubts and flèches connected by trenches, with grenade-proof dug-outs and a dozen pieces of iron ordnance. Only because the Dutch march on 30–31 December 1875 from Djempit to Pakan Badak made that strong position untenable did the enemy give it up. Afterwards the post lost nearly all its meaning, its garrison was reduced to one section, its armament removed, and its only task left was the guarding of the new bridge of boats and then juk bridge over the lagune that secured communication with Olehleh.
See Also
- Generaal Pel
- Generaal Wiggers van Kerchem
- General Pel’s Campaign in Aceh
- J. L. J. H. Pel
- Oeleh Leh
- Pekan Badak
- Pel’s Buitenzorg planning session (1875)
- Pel’s offensive against the VI, IV and IX Moekims (1875–1876)
- Second Aceh Expedition
- Soerian
- Stelling-Pel
- Toekoe Nanta
- VI Moekims
Source
Atjeh gedurende de tweede expeditie en later, Een Oud Officier, Batavia: Ogilvie & Co., 1876, pp. 14-22.
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 263, 323–329.