KPM 1888 - 1967

A MOST REMARKABLE SHIPPING COMPANY

s.s. "Camphuys" (1 891) 712 GRT

Lieuwe Pronk I vrrote most of this fj-ve years ago Just for my fanily.

'iYhen I discovered recently that there is vlrtually no record here in.A,ustraLia in EnSlish o f the contribution the KPM shlps , the'ir o f fic ers and crews made to the .A,Ilted war eff,ort during Wor1d lltar II, I decided to publish lt.

L.P | 998

ln memory of my wife, Joy, who shared'the most

memorable 36 years of mY life TABLE OF GONTENTS

1. Earliest contact between EuroDe and the Orient The Silk Road

2. The search for a sea route from Europe to the Orient 9 Early explorers

3. The lndonesian Archipelaqo For 350 Years - The Netherlands East lndies Now - lndonesia (i) Geography 13 (ii) Early history 17

4. The struggle for the spice trade. and then. colonies 19 (i) ln the East 19 (ii) ln Europe 25

5. KPM Zg (i) The first 50 years 28 (ii) KPM during World War ll 69 (a) 3rd September, 1939 - 7th December, 1941 69 (b) 7th December 1941 - 7th March, 1942 72 (c) 7th March, 1942 - 1sth August, 1945 93 (d) KPM ships which served beyond the NEI 124

6. Post War - the final years 126

7" The Pronks in Holland. the Netherlands East lndies and Australia 131 Hendrik Willem Pronk 141 Jan Pronk 142 Lucia Johnanna Carolina Pronk 144 Betty Pronk 145 Peter Pronk 147 Lieuwe Pronk 148

I t_ Prologue ln our family, my brothers, sisters and I are the transition generation.

The transition from Dutch to Australian and from the fabulous Dutch East lndies of the Colonial Era - where four of us were born - to today's shaky world of universal independence or "Freedom" as it is euphemistically called.

My three sons, my sister's children and their children, who all grew up in Australia, knowing little of the Colonial Era or their Dutch ancestry, have been trying for some time to persuade me to write down what I know about it.

So I finally decided to do something about it. The trouble was, I knew so little about this ancestry business myself.

True, we have our Family Tree, going back a couple of hundred years, but that is really only a lot of names and dates. Pretty dry stuff!

What were our grandparents and great grandparents like and what did they do? Where did they live?

I didn't know! That is, apart from my paternal grandmother and two uncles and their families. Apart from that, I can remember meeting only one or two of my relatives since I was about 5, or even hearing anything much about them.

So that little bit I did know about the family wasn't going to be all that interesting either.

But my father and his two brothers were involved throughout their working lives with what was just about the most fascinating shipping company ever - Koninklyke Paketvaart Maatschappy (Royal Packet Navigation Company), formed in Holland a little over a hundred years ago, to operate in the Netherlands East lndies.

Those were the fabulous times, in all those intriguing places, brought to life for us by Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham!

Times, incidentally, which proved to be a crucial period in history - the closing decades of the Colonial Era.

For better or for worse, there was then some semblance of world stability (apart from two world wars and a depression) which is more than can be said for the present era of treedom, independence and general disintegration, as in the USSR, Yugoslavia and elsewhere.

Originally KPM operated only in the lndies, surely one of the most beautiful and bountiful areas on Earth. Later, it extended its activities far and wide. And I had spent 13 years of my life - from 1938 to 1950 - as a small part of KPM towards the end of its existence.

That, I felt, was a story worth telling, and I could tack the family history bit on to the end.

However, it seemed to me, that to get the true "feel" of that story - a bit of the Joseph Conrad touch - it had to be put into perspective. o \Nhy was KPM formed when it was? . Why was it any more interesting than any other shipping company? o What and where were the Netherlands East lndies? . How and when were they discovered by the Europeans? o How did they come to be a Dutch colony, when the Portuguese were the first on the scene and the Spaniards, British and French were also scrambling for colonies in that area at the same time? o How did the Europeans of 500 years ago know about the Orient anyway? o What made them think they could find a sea route to the East, when up till that time the world had been thought to be flat? o What was the first contact between Europe and the Orient? And when?

I didn't know, so I started to do some research. I found that the answer to the last question was - overland along the Silk Road and that was started, at its Eastern end, in 138 B.C.

By this time, the whole thing seemed to be getting a little out of hand - not at all what it set out to be. I now looked like becoming involved not only in the story of the Pronk family and KPM, but also in the geography and early history of the Netherlands East lndies, with only a passing reference to our family.

However, by then I had become pretty interested in all this, so I decided to persevere. This is the result.

To fill the many gaps in my knowledge of the lndies, I read the following excellent publications :- o "A History of South East Asia" by Professor D.G.E. Hall o The relevant sections of "Encyclopaedia Brittanica" . "The Silk Road" by Norma Martyn o "lnsight Guide - lndonesia" . and several others. o The events leading up to the formation of KPM and the history of its first 50 years are recorded, in Dutch, in the Company's Golden Jubilee publication, "Een Halve Eeuw Paketvaart" (Half a century of KPM) o The section on KPM during World War ll consists partly of translated extracts from the company's 300-page publication "De KPM in Oorlogstyd", which describes the magnificent contribution made by KPM ships, their officers and crews to the Allied war effort.

To these I have added my personal recollections of the exploits of some 30 KPM ships involved in the New Guinea campaign in the South West Pacific area, as these were operated by KPM's Sydney office, where I was based throughout the war.

Many of the officers of these ships were my friends - a few, very close friends.

I saw them leave Sydney in convoy for the war zone, usually at 6 o'clock in the morning and I was there to meet them on their return. lnevitably, some didn't return.

And before we start our story, I want to record my very sincere appreciation, and that of the rest of the family, of the tremendous job done by my lovely granddaughter, Jennifer. Despite her very busy and demanding career, she still found time to type all this out on her little computer! Thank you, Jen, for all your help, advice and unfailing support! 1 Earliest Contact between Europe and the Orient

The Silk Road

A little over 2000 years ago - in 138 BC - a Chinese Emperor of the early Han dynasty sent an expedition Westward from his capital, Chang-An, the present-day city of Sian, to seek out the Yueh-Chih tribes as allies against their mutual enemies, the warlike Hsiung-Nu, who surrounded China's Western and Northwestern borders in Central Asia.

Although he didn't realise it at the time, this was the first stage of what was later to become the Silk Road -for over 1000 years, the principal link between Europe and the Orient.

Traversing some of the most hostile, barren and forbidding terrain on earth, between Mongolia and Russia in the North and Tibet and Afghanistan in the South, the Silk Road actually consisted of three routes .- . the Southern route, through Khotan and Kurghan; . the Central route, through Kashgar and Samarkand; . ord the Northern route, through Urumchi and Tashkent.

All three routes converged, at their Western end, at lsfahan, the ancient capital, or Teheran, the present capital of Persia, now lran. They then split again -depending on their ultimate destinations - through Baghdad or Byzantium, which later on became Constantinople and is now lstanbul.

Actually, there were no hard and fast routes - just a string of oases and a few rivers, only accessible by camel trains.

A caravan might start off on the Southern route, switch to the Central route, then finish up on the Northern route, depending on the harsh, unpredictable weather or the presence of bands of nomadic marauding raiders.

Over the centuries, some of these oases became trading posts, then towns and, in some cases, sizeable cities.

But this general development naturally did nothing to improve the weather. Fierce blizzards and sandstorms still swept down from the Gobi desert or the Russian Steppes and raiders continued to terrorise the camel trains for well over a thousand years. The most feared of these - Genghis Khan - was not born until 1 156 AD. The family tradition was carried on by his descendants, including Kublai Khan and Tamerlane.

And not until 1240 AD did the Mongols conquer Russia. One can only imagine the fearful perils and hardships faced by the camel trains, which travelled these routes. Undoubtedly, a great many never reached their destinations.

Over the centuries, other travellers appeared in these areas; from the South, the caravans from lndia and Afghanistan; from the North, the Russians; and from West, the Greeks, Romans, Turks and Persians, eventually bringing about, amongst other things, a meeting of Christianity, Budhism and lslam. Most of these travellers faced similar perils and hardships.

But Europe demanded ever more of the treasures of the fabled Orient - silks, porcelain, gold, jade and, above all, spices.

And so, despite the perils and the losses, the trade persisted and expanded- 2 The search for a sea route from Europe to the Orient.

Early Explorers

While all this was happening - on land - mankind, in various parts of the world, had been making determined efforts to travel over water, each independent of the other.

Probably the earliest of these were the reed rafts of the Eygptians, followed by the Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians and other Mediterranean powers.

A Graeco-Egyptian manual on trade and navigation mentions attempts to encourage voyages of discovery in the lndian Ocean and further East in 70 AD.

The Vikings are thought to have reached North America.

The Arabs along the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, developed their early primitive craft into the seaworthy dhows, which ultimately ranged as far East as China and almost as far South along the East coast of Africa as the Cape of Good Hope.

The sturdy Chinese junks, travelling South and West through South East Asia to lndia, eventually reached the Persian Gulf around the 8th century AD.

Presumably, the lncas and/or Aztecs were floating around in the Humboldt current on their balsa wood rafts somewhere about the same time.

And the Polynesians - (where did they originate?) -travelled far and wide throughout the greatest ocean of all - the Pacific - in their seagoing canoes and rafts and reached New Zealand.

Then, of course, there were the maritime nations of Western Europe.

For many centuries, Europeans were more or less restricted in their seagoing voyages to the Mediterranean, the Northwest coast of Africa and the coastline of Western Europe, by the belief that the world was flat and that any vessel, sailing too far in any given direction, would fall off the edge of the world and simply disappear.

Long after the overland Silk Road came into being, when it became apparent there was a sea route between China and the Persian Gulf, it still didn't dawn on them that the world was not flat, but round. By this time, they were well aware of the existence of the Orient - they just couldn't work out how to get there by sea.

To them, at that time, it was unthinkable that you could get to the Orient by sailing Westward. There was also no way through the Arctic Circle.

This left only the Southern route and they did, very gradually, push further and further South along the West coast of Africa. But the big worry here was that the further South these little ships travelled, the hotter it became, Would they eventually be consumed by this increasing heat?

Not knowing much about the Equator, a Southern hemisphere or the Antarctic at that time, this appeared to be a distinct possibility.

Eventually, European navigators started to put the pieces together. The Chinese and the Arabs had shown that there was a sea route from the Persian Gulf to China.

But how to get from Europe to the Persian Gulf by sea?

The Arabs had travelled a long way further South along the East coast of Africa than the Europeans had along the West coast, but even they hadn't found a passage through or around this huge continent, being blocked to the West, just as the Europeans were blocked to the East.

But one man in Europe - Prince Henry the Navigator, of Portugal, born in 1394, more than any other, was determined to find a way.

There were others, of course.

One was Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa. Wth his native ltaly not much interested in any maritime adventures beyond the Mediterranean, he gravitated to portugal. But Columbus had the, then, radical idea of finding the sea route to the Orieni by circumnavigating the globe Westward, whereas Prince Henry was convinced that the best way was around Africa.

When Columbus eventually came to the conclusion that he would not get the backing he needed for a major expedition in Portugal, he went to Spain. But for many years the Spanish, too, showed little interest in his ideas.

When well into middle age and on the point of giving up, Columbus obtained the backing he had sought for so many years, from the Spanish Royal House.

With three little ships "Nina", "Pinta" and "Santa Maria", he finally set out to the West to achieve his dream in 1492.

\Nhat he found, of course, was the New World - not China.

About the same time, Prince Henry took an each way bet by sending yet one more expedition down the African coast and another South Westward.

Both paid off, in different ways.

The expedition Southward, along the West African coast, under Vasco de Gama, finally rounded the "Cabo de Bono Esperanz?", the Southernmost point of that continent, turned North Eastward into the lndian Ocean, and reached Goa, on the West Coast of lndia, in 1497.

10 Fourteen years later, the Portugese took Malacca, at that time, the greatest trading centre in South East Asia, and the whole of the Spice lslands lay before them!

The South Western expedition, under Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil in the year 1500.

ln our bhsd, modern-day world, a trip to Goa, Brazil or the Caribbean is no big deal. But we have to marvel at the courage and steely determination of these explorers of 500 years ago, who set out in their tiny sailing ships, about the size of a Manly ferry, for they knew not where, with no charts, primitive navigating instruments and not knowing where, if anywhere, they might be able to replenish their limited supplies of food and water.

Although the Chinese and Arabs were making much longer sea voyages, much earlier than the Europeans, the feats of these early European explorers, who discovered the New World and Brazil, were really much more spectacular.

The Chinese and Arabs at least knew more or less where they were going and had coastlines of known countries to follow. The Spaniards and the Portugese South West expedition took off into the wide blue yonder.

As we are not concerned here with the Americas, and only marginally with the exploits of the early Spanish explorers, let us now have a look at the "Spice lslands", which the Portuguese (re)discovered at the beginning of the 16th century.

n 3. The lndonesian Archipelago For 350 Years - The Netherlands East lndies Now - lndonesia (i) Geography

I suppose every hard pressed business man and every overworked mother and housewife has, at some time or other, conjured up visions of beautiful, peaceful tropic islands, surf lapping gently on beaches fringed by coconut palms waving in the breeze, and groves of bananas, mangoes, pawpaws and other exotic fruits, just waiting to be picked. The business man probably envisions the odd dusky maiden as well.

Well, that is part of what nature has created in great profusion throughout this fantastic arch i pelago.

Obviously, this idyllic description does not fit all the 13,500 islands, which make up the752,400 square miles of it. ln fact, because it extends 3,200 miles from Eastto West and 1,100 miles from North to South, encompasses the junction of three major sections of the Earth's crust and involves a complex series of shelves, volcanic mountain chains and deep sea trenches, the islands vary very greatly.

Many have rocky reef-girt coasts - no beaches and not too many waving palms or bananas.

These are mainly the islands at the Eastern end of the archipelago, although the West coast of Sumatra and the South Coast of Java, exposed to the lndian Ocean, have similar rocky coastlines and heavy ocean swells.

Then again, great stretches of Sumatra's East coast, Borneo's South, East and West coasts and the South coast of New Guinea are low lying and swampy.

Large areas of Borneo and parts of Sumatra are covered with dense tropical jungle.

Sumatra, Java, Bali and Celebes are studded with massive volcanoes, rising to 10,000 feet. Many are still active. Others have beautiful crater lakes like Lake Toba in Sumatra, formed by earlier eruptions. Java alone has 22 of the 70 volcanoes classified as active or recently active.

Probably the best known volcanic eruption occurred in 1883, when Krakatau in Straat Soenda off Java's West coast, erupted from the shallow sea bottom with a force equivalent to that of several hydrogen bombs. The death toll from the resulting tidal waves is said to have exceeded 35,000. But even this disaster is dwarfed by the cataclysmic 1815 eruption of Mt Tambora on Soembawa - the largest in recorded history, in which 90,000 people were killed and over 80 cubic kilometres of ejected volcanic debris blocked out the sun for many months.

Mt Kinabalu in Sabah is over 13,000 feet in height, surpassed only by snow capped Mt Jaya, in New Guinea at 16,500 feet.

So rich are the volcanic soils of Java and Bali and so abundant the rainfatl, that they produce three crops of rice a year without the use of fertilisers.

Soemba, Soembawa, Flores and Timor, with much less rain and poorer soils, have large areas of grasslands, and it is on these islands that most of the country's livestock - cat1e, pigs, goats and the wiry little Timor ponies - are raised.

Celebes, one of the smaller of the major islands, but still as large as the United Kingdom, and shaped roughly like a rather lopsided capital "K", is a real mixture of pretty well everything. it siti just aOout on tne junction of two tectonic plates and is separated from the neighbouring islands by very deep sea trenches. OnfV it's North Eastern and South Western areas are volcanic, with steep 1 1,000 foot mountains. Here are it's spectacular gorges, fast flowing rivers, dense rainforests and beautiful highland lakes. Other areas include extensive grasslands. It's inhabitants, too, vary greatly, from the highland Toradja's to the intrepid sea-faring Boeginese of the South. The flora and fauna of this fascinating island naturally vary enormously as well.

(lncidentally, in my day, the Tomini Bight area of Northern Celebes was of considerable importance to KPM as the major copra producing area of the archipelago).

Scientists tell us that during the last ice age, sea levels were over 400 feet lower than they are today. This means that New Guinea was then joined to Australia, and the great Vtaiay peninsila and the Western part of the lndonesian Archipelago was one expanse of dry land.

But the Eastern part of the archipetago was separated from the Western by this series of very deep sea trenches, running roughly North-South between Borneo and Celebes in the North and Bali and Lombok in the South. This so-called Wallace Line, named after the famous naturalist Sir Alfred Russell Wallace, divides the flora and fauna of East lndonesia from that of the West.

There are other well-defined differences between the opposite ends of the archipelago - nothing to do with the wallace Line.

There are, for example, two pronounced prevailing weather patterns, the dry East Monsoon and the wet West Monsoon, varying in duration and intensity between East and West.

l4 The Eastern islands of Flores, Soemba, Soembawa and Timor are not greatly affected by either, one way or another. Their climate is more like the Australian weather pattern and they, too, can actually have fairly prolonged droughts. Everything West of Bali is very much affected by these monsoons. ln general, tne East Monsoon, which blows more or less from June to October, is cool anO 6ry. The stronger West Monsoon, from December to March, is hot, humid and wet and can whip up quite boisterous seas, even in these sheltered waters. Times, duration and intensity vary from one year to the next. Between the monsoons are horrible humid, airless, flat periods, which the Dutch called "Kenterings" - intervals or changeover periods, periods of prickly heat and short tempers Actually, the temperatures don't vary all that much from East to West or East Monsoon to West Monsoon - they normally lie within the range of 25"-33o celcius at sea level and some 5 or 6 degrees cooler in the beautiful mountains of Java, at about 3,000 feet above sea level.

So, geographically and geologically, as well as in practically every other way, this huge arihipelago - this "string of emeralds" - represents one of the most unusual areas in the world, encompassing a major juncture of the Earth's tectonic plates, and the meeting point for the peoptes and cultures of mainland Asia and Oceania.

These factors have created a highly diverse environment and society, in which the only common elements are the susceptibility to seismic and volcanic activity, close proximity to the sea, and the moist, tropical, coastal climate.

For good measure, it includes three of the five largest islands in the world New Guinea, Borneo and Sumatra (the other two are Greenland, the largest, and Madagascar).

\A/hat all this technical jargon means, is that lndonesia is a land of endless and incredible contrasts. lt is now one nation, but that is about all that any one part of it has in common with any other.

We like to think of Australia as a country of great contrasts, and so it is, with our North Queensland rainforests, the Gulf country, the Barrier Reef, the Dead Heart, the Nularbor Plain and the Kimberleys.

But lndonesia leaves us for dead!

\Nhere else could you find - in one country - dozens of different races, speaking different languages, with totally different customs and cultures? Or landscapes varying from majestic volcanic mountains to mangrove swamps? Or fauna, ranging from elephants and tigers to the Komodo dragon and the orangutang, to the almost extinct rhinoceros of Java? Or hundreds of different birds, including the breathtakingly beautiful Birds of Paradise? Or an infinite variety of trees, palms, shrubs and flowers, including spectacular orchids and the world's largest parasitic flower - the grotesque Rafflesia?

15 Or products ranging from copra to coffee; frorn pepper to palmoil; from rubber to rice; from sugar to salt, sisal and spices; from tobacco to timber; from tea to tin and tapioca? And we haven't even mentioned the fact that lndonesia is the major oil producer in South East Asia! lncidentally, quite a few of the trees or shrubs, which produce these commodities, were subsequently introduced from elsewhere - like rubber, from Brazil. Also from Brazil came the Cinchona tree, the source of quinine, then the only remedy against the ever-present malaria.

This, very briefly, is what the Portuguese found as they gradually penetrated into this wonderful Archipelago almost 500 years ago.

Now, let us look briefly at the early history of this fascinating country, which is our next-door neighbour.

r6 (ii) Early History

Although sketchy in parts, with sizeable gaps, the history of man in the archipelago goes back to the dawn of time, with the so-called "Java-man". As far as I am concerned, this is a subject best left to suitably qualified scholars and scientists! Apparenly the early ancestors of the present day human melting pot, which is tndonesia, came from mainland Asia - possibly from what is now Cambodia and Thailand. Even in pre-(lndonesian)-historic times, these people are thought to have been the dominant shipbuilders and sea-farers of the region, controlling trade through the Malacca and Soenda Straits. There is some evidence of a direct sea trade with China early in the Sth century, and with lndia and Ceylon even earlier. We should bear in mind, that when we think about "lndonesia" of those days, we are not thinking of one nation as it is today. lnstead, there were a number of independent Kingdoms or Suttanates, some of which were so far apart that they had virtually nothing to do with each other. On the principal islands of Sumatra and Java, where these kingdoms were close to each other, there was intense rivalry amongst them. Note also that up to the arrival of the Europeans, Borneo was just a big, useless blob of jungle and swamp, inhabited by strange people, who hunted with blowpipes. And the spice producing Moluccas, which were to cause so much trouble later on, were then really only of interest to Chinese and Arab traders. So, up to the arrival of the Portuguese early in the 16th century, the focus of power and trade was very much on Java and Sumatra, together with what is now Malaysia and Southern Thailand. The first significant Kingdom, which dominated the scene for two centuries, was based in West Java. Records of this period are sketchy. By the beginning of the 7th century, the outlines of lndonesian history were becoming more apparent. They record a well established Budhist maritime Empire - Srivijaya - based on Palembang in South East Sumatra, which controlled trade in that area, with what were then the largest ships in the world - 600 tons. And that lasted for 600 years.-But history also records the parallel existence of several important Kingdoms in Java. One of these was the Budhist Sailandra Empire, which held sway for about 100 years from 750 AD and built the famous Boeroeboedoer temple in central Java. During this period, expanding communications with the outside world were bringing wealth and new ideas and cultures to the region. Following centuries saw the rise of further substantial empires and the flowering of civilisation, particularly in West Java. They also saw the advent of the Hindu religion from lndia, which inevitably led to a certain amount of strife with the Budhists. By this time, Java already had a well established civilisation of its own, manifested in: . the cultivation of irrigated rice fields; . the domestication of the ox and buffalo; o ? rudimentary use of metals; and . advanced skills in navigation

t7 The Javanese had also developed their Wajang puppet shows, the music of the gamellan and their batik textiles by then in 1025 AD, the Chotas from lndia mounted a great raid on Palembang and destroyed it's power in that region. For some reason, they made no attempt to conquer Sumatra. So the Kingdom of Djambi, a little farther North, took over from Palembang.

The 11th and lzlhcenturies saw a period of great prosperity in Java, leading to the rise of the Singhasari EmPire. This helped to extinguish the powei of the old Sumatran Empire, but the final blow came when the Thais unleashed a massive punitive raid on Palembang and Djambi in 1280. Then in 12gZ AD, Kublai Khan sent a punitive expedition to Java to avenge some insult to his Ambassador by one of the Javanese Sultans But Java bounced back and 1294 saw the start of the great Hindu Majapahit Empire, which for the first time, embraced practically the whole archipelago. However, this one didn't last all that long either. lt reached it's zenith about the middle of the 14th century and had disappeared by the end of the 1sth century under the increasing pressure of lslam. As a result of all this military, commercial, political and religious coming and going, the population of the archipelago had developed into two broad groups: . those who had preserved the purity of their race by keeping out of the problem areas and withdrawing to more remote parts. These included the Bataks of Sumatra's highlands, the Dajaks of Borneo, and the Alfoers of Celebes and the Moluccas. . The second group consisted of coastal Malays of many varieties and mixtures such as seagoing Sumatrans, Soendanese, Javanese, Madoerese, Boeginese and Balinese, with a sprinkling of lndians, Arabs, Chinese and Thais for good measure.

This just about brings us to the advent of the Portuguese early in the 16th century. We shall have a look at what happened after that shortly.

t've written all this historical stuff, not just because it is so interesting, but for two specific reasons. Firstly, to show that South East Asia was not the slumbering backwater many people probably imagine it to have been throughout these earlier centuries. And secondly, to show that it was in fact a fluid little running dogfight, long before the Europeans arrived on the scene. Such, again very briefly, is the geography and history of this beautiful archipelago.

Now we come to the activities of the five European powers in South East Asia from the 16th to the 19th century.

l8 4. The struggle for the spice trade. and then. colonies i) ln the East

For the first 80 years or so, the Portuguese had South East Asia, and in particular, the Spice lslands, pretty much to themselves, except for the Chinese and Arabs. They certainly had no competition from any other European nation until the Dutch arrived in 1596, and thus had an almost complete monopoly of the highly profitable spice trade for all this time

There was just one slight hiccup in this cosy arrangement and that was when Magellan's ship 'Victoria" appeared in Malacca in 1521, oh its homeward voyage after rounding Cape Horn.

The touchy Portuguese claimed that this was a breach of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesilas with Spain, whereby the two nations had agreed that the hemisphere West of long1ude 40o West would belong to Spain and the Eastern hemisphere, to Portugal.

When that treaty was signed, both Spain and Portugal were apparently a little hazy about justwhere the agreed demarcation line lay on the other side of the world.

So just who did own the lndies?

Anyway, the Spaniards settled for the Philippines instead, and the Portuguese hung on to the lndies. tt soon became apparent that these early Portuguese were really little better than privateers and freebooters, who antagonised the indigenous peoples of the Moluccas, whence came the most prized of the spices. And these local peoples were, in most cases, Sultanates of considerable substance, with long histories and cultures of their own - not primitive savages.

So, by the end of the 16th century, with a hostile native population and the advent of the Dutch, British and French, Portuguese influence in the lndies was already well and truly on the wane.

The Spaniards, next door in the nearby Philippines, should have been the first to capitalise on this state of affairs. lnstead, it was the Dutch - still pottering around on the other side of the world. ln 1592, Jan Huygen van Linschoten returned to Holland, after four years in Portugal and five years in Goa, with an immense fund of knowledge about trade and navigation in the lndian Ocean and the lndies, including the very significant information that Portuguese power in the area was rotten, particularly in Java, which the Portuguese seldom visited.

l9 This information he immediately placed at the disposal of the appropriate authorities in Holland. Never ones to miss an opportunity, Dutch commercial circles promptly formed a syndicate known as the Compagnie van Verre, to finance an expedition of 4 vessels, under the command of Cornelis de Houtman, which set out in 1595 via the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in Bantam on the North coast of West Java in June 1 596.

As an indication of the hardships suffered by these early explorers, history records that 145 seamen, out of a total complement of 249, perished on that outward voyage alone.

Other expeditions followed, and three years later - in 1598 - no less than five, comprising in all22 ships, set outfrom Holland. Thirteen ships chose the route round the Cape of Good Hope and nine round Cape Horn. Oliver van Noort, who commanded one of the expeditions via Cape Horn, made the homeward voyage via the Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first Dutch navigator to circumnavigate the globe.

The biggest expedition, sent out by the Compagnie van Verre up till that time, under van Neck, van Waerwyck and van Heemskerck, discovered and named Mauritius - after Prince Maurits, of Holland - on the outward voyage.

Van Neck, with four ships of this expedition, was back in Hotland within 14 months, with full cargoes of pepper from Java. The other four ships of the expedition, under van Waervrryck and van Heemskerck, went on to the Moluccas and also returned home safely with full cargoes of spices.

The profit from this expedition alone was 400o/o of the original outlay!

One reason for the immediate success of the Dutch expeditions, was the fact that the Dutch , contrary to the Portuguese, treated the native people tactfully and fairly, thus gaining their full co-operation.

With so many separate syndicates getting into the act, the Dutch Government felt it was time to rationalise and co-ordinate the Spice Trade. So, in 1602, the United East lndia Company (Vereenigde Oostindie Compagnie - VOC) was formed by an Act of Parliament (Staten Generaal), with the monopoly of the trade and virtually unlimited powers, in the whole area between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, for an initial period of 21 years. They obviously didn't believe in mucking aroundl

The VOC was actually a consortium of Trading Companies in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Middleburg, Delft, Hoorn and Enkhuizen. The Board consisted of 65 members, with an Executive Directorate of 17.

As it was obvious that the Portuguese, who had virtually had the Spice Trade to themselves since they conquered Malacca in 1511, would not surrender their monopoly without a struggle, all VOC ships were heavily armed. There were also the

20 Spaniards, lurking in the Philippines, who had already made several sorties into the Moluccas and taken a number of ports in that area. tt soon became apparent to the Dutch that an operation on this immense scale could not be properly controlled by Government or Commerce from a distance of something like 8000 miles. They were probably starting to feel a bit like the bloke who grabbed the tiger by the tail - he had hold of it, but he had no idea how to control it and what the hell to do with it!

So in 1609, Pieter Both was appointed Governor General of the lndies, supported bv a four member Council of the lndies, based in Bant?ffi,

Around this time, the British, who had spent some years after John Cabot's voyage to North America, searching for a Northwest passage to the Orient, appeared on the scene and immediately proceeded to make their presence felt.

Sir Francis Drake had called at Ternate, in the Moluccas, on a voyage around the world, which lasted from 1577 to 1580. This had aroused British interest in the Spice Trade and led to the formation of the British East lndia Company on the 31st December, 1600, with a similar charter to that of the VOC.

The first British expedition to the lndies, under Captain James Lancaster in 1601, established their headquarters in the lndies in Bantam also, so that the Dutch, portuguese and the British - and later the French as well - were all established there. This meant that,the principal centre of trade, had effectively shifted from Malacca to Northwest Java.

Before fotlowing the activities of the principal protagonists, it is interesting to note, in passing, the activities of a couple of non-protagonists in the area.

The Venetian, Marco Polo, crossed Central Asia by the overland caravan route and was received by Kublai Khan in the "Upper Court" in Shang-tu in 1275, almost 250 years before the Portuguese took Malacca.

He spent 17 years in China as an lntelligence Officer of the lmperial Court, being sent on distant missions, before leaving China in 1292 and returning to Venice by sea via palembang, in Sumatra, and completing his journey overland through the Middle East.

Another ltalian, Nicolo di Conti apparently wandered around the East for some 25 years, about 125 years later, returning home in 1444.

And another 100 years later again, St Francis Xavier showed up in Ambon.

But to get back to the commercial activities in S.E. Asia and environs.

2t Before we do, however, it is worth noting here, that all the efforts of all five nations, during the 17th and 18th centuries, were almost entirely motivated by commercial considerations - the monopoly of the highly lucrative Spice Trade - not, at that stage, by the thought of territorial acquisition. That was to come later on.

Not long after the British, came the French, but as they concentrated more on lndo- China, iney played no reatly significant part at that time in the eventual conquest of the lndies. They were, however, active in the Spice Trade for a number of years and had established factories (trading posts) in Bantam around 1650.

After the French, came the Danish East Asiatic Company, but they drifted off to Siam, where they were to remain a significant trading force right up to World War ll. So they, too, played only a peripheral part, as far as the lndies were concerned. tnitially, relations between the Dutch and the British were quite good, but as the struggle for the Spice Trade intensified, this relationship rapidly turned sour, leading to sforadic armed conflicts over the next 200 years or so. This conflict did not really end until the sovereignty of the Dutch over the lndies was internationally recognised.

During most of the 17th century and beyond, the situation in this whole area, ie. between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, can only be described as a bizarre cross between a running dogfight and musical chairs, between the Dutch, the British, the gradually disappearing Portuguese and Spanish and, to a lesser extent, the French.

Centre stage, of course, were the lndies - particularly the Moluccas, the origin of the most highly prized spices, except for pepper, which came from the South Sumatra region.

But this was a really BIG running dogfight!

It raged from the Cape of Good Hope, originally regarded as just a convenient place to replenish stores and water, but gradually being seen as a desirable potential colony, to Japan!

Within this huge arena, also lay Goa and the Coromandel and Malabar coasts of lndia, Ceylon, Burma, the Malay peninsula, Siam, Cambodia, the Philippines and China.

Flashpoints could, and regularly did, occur anywhere. And all sorts of other noteworthy events took place.

The year 1634 was the start of a long period of Dutch ascendancy in Siam.

ln 1641, after an eight year siege, the Dutch took Malacca from the Portuguese.

Also in 1641, when Japan expelled all other foreigners, the Dutch were allowed to stay.

22 tn 1042, the Dutch gained control of the whole island of Formosa, retaining it until 1661, when they were kicked out by the Chinese; and Abel Janszoon Tasman, well known in Australian and New Zealand history, was the first European to discover the Kurile lslands and Sakhalin. ln the meantime, a Spanish expedition under Torres and Prado had discovered Torres Strait in 1607.

Tasman, who had made such fantastic voyages of discovery, was also in that area a litfle later, but he failed to locate Torres Strait. He was close, as he sailed into the Gulf of Carpentaria to see whether that was the entrance to a passage right through Terra Australis. He did, however, map the whole Gulf correctly. ln 1652, the Dutch colonised the Cape of Good Hope, way out on the left wing, with Jan van Riebeeck as the first Governor General. ln 1656, the Dutch took Colombo from the Portugese.

By 1663, they had kicked the Portuguese out of the whole of Ceylon and all their trading posts in lndia except Goa, and the Spanish out of their sole remaining base, Tjdore, in the tndies. This left the Dutch, to all intents and purposes, in complete control of the Moluccas as well. ln 1684, the British, already driven out of Macassar, now had to leave Bantam and retired to Benkoelen, on the Southwest coast of Sumatra. This was eventually to be their last base in the lndies before they finally left the lndies altogether in 1824, retiring to Singapore, which Sir Stamford Raffles had founded in 1819.

But before that there were to be some unexpected developments in the area.

By 1684, the VOC had become the most powerful political, as well as commercial, force in Java, which had become the political and trading centre of the lndies.

Wth minor variations, this was to be pretty much the pattern of the best part of another 100 years.

But the Dutch had their problems - plenty of them!

As well as the, by then, usual unpleasantnesses, there was the odd unusual one as well.

The Boeginese of South Celebes and the llanos from the Sulu Sea, in the Philippines, both intrepid seamen, had always posed problems in the whole area, even as far West as the Malay Peninsula and North Sumatra. Now they had the gall to challenge the Dutch at sea!

23 This was not the usual piracy and associated mayhem, at sea and ashore. it was a full blown challenge, which the Dutch could well do without, on top of their other increasing problems.

Long, expensive wars, both in Europe and the East; the increasing cost of controlling their steadily growing empire; an increasing number of uprisings throughout the Archipelago; the growth of British power in lndia from the days of Clive, especially in Bengal, from which the Dutch imported vast quantities of textiles and opium, were all becoming serious threats to their position there; and finally, growing complacency and mismanagement on the part of the VOC Board in Holland, were all taking their toll.

ln retrospect, it is obvious that the VOC was at the zenith of its powers in the first couple of decades of the 18th century.

But the events, which brought about the most dramatic change in the fortunes of the Dutch in S.E. Asia and finally killed off the VOC, did not occur in the East, but in Europe.

So what were these events?

24 ii) ln Europe

There had, of course, also been a running dogfight in Europe since time immemorial. The partners changed from time to time, and they took time out occasionally to build up their strength again ready for the next bout, but it was all an intermittent, if not continuous, dogfight. ln 1780 and 1795 the two events occurred in Europe, which were to have the most dramatic effects on the Netherlands East lndies. tn 1780, the fourth Anglo-Dutch war broke out.

This resulted in an immense loss of Dutch merchant vessels - they lost nearly all their homeward bound ships.

As a result, the trade between the lndies and Holland came to a complete standstill and the godowns in Batavia were crammed with unexportable produce. All Dutch trading stations in lndia and on the West coast of Sumatra fell into British hands.

The Treaty of Paris of 1784, which ended this war, broke the Dutch monopoly system in the East and granted British shipping free trade throughout the whole area. And this, of course, left the way open for the British to challenge Dutch supremacy in the lndies once more.

This was the death blow for the VOC, which was eventually wound up on the 31st December, 1799.

Then, in 1795,the French, under Napoleon, over-ran Holland and the Dutch king, Willem V, fled to - where do you think? To England, his erstwhile enemy of only a few years earlier, but now his ally against the French! ln exile in England, he ordered the Government in Batavia to place all the VOC's possessions in British hands as a safeguard against French seizure, having received a solemn British pledge to return them to the Dutch when peace was restored.

Don't tell me that fact wasn't stranger than fiction in European history of those days!

The fotlowing year, 1796, the British took control of the Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope and their other possessions - Ceylon, all Dutch posts in lndia, on the West coast of Sumatra, Malacca, Ambon, the Banda lslands and the rest of the Moluccas.

But with the French occupying and controlling Holland, and from there, the Netherlands lndies, the Government in Batavia was in the most invidious position. Under the direction of the French, who had considerably strengthened their naval forces in S.E. Asia, they prepared to resist a possible attack on Java by the British! Who were the allies of the Dutch against the French in Europe and were holding a number of Dutch possessions in trust, for goodness sake!!

25 With the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, the French left Holland, Dutch possessions, except for the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon, were returned by the British and Napoleon went into exile on Elba. ln 1803, Napoleon escaped from Elba and the whole Napoleonic shemozzle started all over again and continued until that gentleman was finally penned up in St Helena after his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815.

The British promptly reconquered the territories they had only just returned to the Dutch.

How on earth did the Europeans in those days know who was who and what was what?

About this time, E remarkable young Englishman, by the name of Stamford Raffles, had made an appearance on the scene in the East, in the service of the British East lndia Company. His philosophy was apparently that the British should own everything East of Suez. ln his opinion, the first step towards achieving this desirable objective, was to get rid of the Dutch and for a while he came pretty close to doing just that.

ln 1811, Raffles, then just 30 years of age, led a British expedition of 100 ships and 12000 men against Java. The unfortunate Governor General of the lndies, Janssens - in the wrong place at the wrong time, if ever a man was - retreated to Buitenzorg and then to Semarang, in central Java, but was eventually forced to capitulate to the British in September of that year, surrendering Java and all dependent territories, including palembang, Timor and Macassar (boundaries were pretty fluid and fuzzy in those days). Raffles was appointed Lt. Governor of Java, Madoera, Palemb?ng, Bandjermasin and Macassar.

The Convention of London in 1814 restored the lndies to the Dutch.

ln 1816, Raffles was sacked as Lt. Governor of the lndies, withdrawing to the last British outpost in the lndies - Benkoelen, before founding Singapore in 1819.

ln 1824, the British finally surrendered that last outpost as well, establishing complete Dutch supremacy over the entire Netherlands East lndies.

So, more than 200 turbulent years after the Dutch first arrived in the lndies, they could at last start to develop the full potential of their hard-won colony.

On the almost totally unsettled outer islands, large areas were opened up and settlements were established.

26 Now products, such as rubber and quinine, were introduced from abroad - in this case, both from Brazil.

Coffee, tea, sisal, sugar, copra, palmoil, tobacco and other plantations were developed.

Coal, tin, and, above all, oil were discovered.

And, of course, the key which unlocked this treasure - house of riches, spread across this sprawling colony of 13,500 islands, was transport - ships!

As it happened, shipping, and consequently world trade, were then undergoing a huge transformation, following the advent of steam.

This was one of the factors which led to the formation of KPM.

So, let us now look at that unique company and the events leading up to its formation.

27 5. KPM

(i) The First Fifty Years

KpM was, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating shipping companies the world has ever seen. There will never be another shipping company quite like it again.

Well, having said that, let's now go back to the beginning and look at some of the many events and circumstances, which made KPM what it was - events and circumstances, which will never occur again.

For one thing, there are now no new lands to discover. No virgin colonies to develop, as the Dutch developed the lndies, and therefore no opportunity. for a shipping company to play a pioneering role remotely approaching that played by KPM during the last decade of the 1gth century and the first half of the 20th.

Because of these events and circumstances, almost everything about KPM unusual compared to other shipping companies, either then or since that time.

Whereas most shipping companies are solely commercial ventures, KPM was specifically formed for a triple purpose :- . Firstly, it was, of course, to be a commercial enterprise and 'make profits for its shareholders . Secondly, it was to be the vital link in the colony's trade - the feeder and distribution service for the Dutch Lines, RL (Rotterdam Lloyd) and SMN (Stoomvaart Maatschappy'Nederland"), which maintained the Holland - NEI trade. These were largely instrumental in establishing KPM and were represented on the company's Board throughout its existence. . And thirdly, KPM was to play a very significant role in Netherlands East lndies Government Administration - in effect, to be its Department of Transport and lndustry, and an integral part of the Department of Defence, and the Post Master General's Department. Its articles of incorporation actually specified "that KPM shall at all times be a viable and effective arm of Government Administration in the Netherlands East lnd ies".

Naturatly, there was a Government Contract spelling out the terms and conditions, under which KPM would carry out these de facto government functions and obviously this contract had to provide benefits for both parties.

For the hardpressed government, it meant that they would be relieved of a number of vital functions, which they were then not yet able to carry out.

For KPM, it meant that no other European shipping company would be permitted to establish a rival inter-island service; and a government subsidy for maintaining services, which were commercially unprofitable, but important to government administration. This Triple Entente - NEI Government, KPM, and the Dutch Home Lines (RL & SMN) - was to endure until the end of the Colonial Era, when the new nation of lndonesia came into being.

Until then, it promoted the development of the colony and its internal and overseas trade in many different ways.

However, except as specified in the Contract, the Government had no control over KPM, which remained a purely commercial enterprise in all other respects.

There was no Government Contract for RL and SMN as their ships called onfy at Tg. Priok (Batavia), Semarang, and Soerabaia, taking no part whatever in the inter-island trade. Later oD, they were also to call at Belawan Deli (Medan) in Sumatra, Macassar in Celebes, and eventually, by agreement with the NEI Government and KPM, at other lndies ports, but only to discharge and/or load overseas cargoes. ln any case, their ships had by then become too large and expensive to operate, to call at any more of the hundred and one little ports dotted throughout the archipelago.

As the Government gradually extended and consolidated its control over the entire archipelago, KPM's government role gradually diminished and it was able to concentrate more on its commercial expansion.

These changing circumstances were reflected in appropriate amendments to the Government Contract each time it was renewed.

Apart from these three reasons for KPM's formation, there were other circumstances which made it unique in the world of shipping :- o lt commenced operations - a little over a hundred years ago - at one of the most interesting times in modern history, in one of the most beautiful and interesting areas on earth - then still almost totally undeveloped and still largely inhabited by native hunters and gatherers, subsistence farmers and fishermen, ruled really by local sultans. \Mrat little trade there was, was largely in the hands of Chinese, Arabs and lndians who had been in these areas for over a thousand years. . At its inception, KPM operated some 8,000 miles - or 6 weeks by sea - from its Head Office in Amsterdam o Over the years, KPM, while maintaining and extending its network of inter-island services, also extended its operations to almost every part of the world, except North and Central America and Europe. ln the process, it became one of the largest shipping companies in the world and something of a self-contained empire in its own right. ln its heyday, it was to employ over 13,000 floating staff and somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 shore staff, plus a large number of commission agents.

29 o And finally - during World War ll - half of what was left of its battered fleet, after Japan over-ran Malaya and the lndies, played a crucial part in halting the Japanese advance on Australia during the critical days after Pearl Harbour. The other then surviving half of the fleet played a significant role in the Atlantic and lndian Oceans, the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Persian Gulf.

There have, of course, been larger companies, like the multi-nationals and conglomerates, but none as fascinating - in my biased opinion - as KPM. KPM was never a conglomerate. lt remained first, last and always, a shipping company, although it was forced, quite early in the piece, to establish many of its own support services, simply because the very basic services available in the lndies around the turn of the century just could not keep up with KPM's rapid expansion. More about these support services later.

Today practically all Dutch shipping has been merged under the "Nedlloyd" umbrella. The individual shipping companies of the past, with one or two exceptions, have ceased to exist as separate entities.

Moreover, pure shipping has been replaced by the concept of total transport - rail, sea, road, air, warehousing - the lot!

So, if you can regard this behemoth as a shipping company - yes, it is no doubt larger than KPM. But it has none of the romance, glamour and pioneering of the years around the turn of the century

But we seem to have got a bit ahead of ourselves, so let's go back to the early 1gth century.

I know KPM did not commence operations'til 1891, but developments in South East Asia during the preceding 70 or 80 years had a significant bearing on the trade of the colony and its developing trade war with Singapore, which was one of the factors which ultimately led to the formation of the company.

As we have seen, it was not until 1824 that the Dutch finally gained undisputed sovereignty over the colony.

The following year saw the advent of the steamship in the lndies.

These two events marked the dawn of its period of enormous development.

But the events, which really sparked this development, were to take place far away in Europe and America.

These were the invention of the internal combustion engine and the development of the soap, cosmetics and other industries.

30 The rapidly increasing demand for certain raw materials by these industries principally rubber and copra - in turn created the need for more inter-island ships in the lndies to transport these commodities from the outer islands, where they were produced, to the main ports in Java, where they were transhipped to the overseas vessels. ln 1851, the NEI Government let the first contract for an inter-island service to a Dutch ex-naval officer by the name of Cores de Vries, who started with 4 tiny steamships. This was for a period of 10 years. ln an area this size, this was a mere drop in the bucket and even the limited trade of those days still depended to a considerable extent on the Chinese, Arab and native craft.

Gores de Vries' contract was later extended to 1865.

However, his service was not altogether satisfactory to the Government, so a few years before the extended contract expired, it called tenders for the ensuing period.

There were two tenderers, one Dutch, one British.

Now, when the Dutch really put their minds to it, they can be the world's greatest penny-pinchers!

It turned out that the British tender was just one cent per contractual sea mile lower than that of the Dutch consortium - a total amount of f1.421.56 for a full year!

And that was the tender the NEI Government accepted, disregarding all national interests, such as employment of Dutch seamen, valuable business for the Dutch shipyards in Holland and the possibility of a conflict of interests between the British in Singapore and the Dutch in Batavia somewhere down the track!

The successful tenderer was a Mr. H. O. Robinson, who thought he'd better give his company a good Dutch name - the Nederlandsch lndische Stoomvaart Maatschappy - even though that was the only Dutch thing about it. ln retrospect and in fairness to this British company, it must be said that they adhered scrupulously to the terms of the Contract. So much so, that when their contract expired in 1875, it was renewed for a further 15 years.

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.) /- But that's all they did - no more, no less.

They simply carried out the subsidised contractual services, making no attempt to open up new areas or do anything else to foster the trade of the lndies.

\A/hen the NEI Government renewed the NISM Contract, it obviously still hadn't dawned on them how vital the inter-island service was to become in the not too distant future, in the development of the colony and Dutch control of its gradually expanding trade.

The relatively few contractual services covered by the NISM left large uncovered gaps throughout the archipelago during the 25 years they held the contract.

During that period and the preceding 15 years when Cores de Vries had held the contrict, Singapore - founded in 1819 by Raffles - had developed enormously, becoming the principal trading centre in South East Asia. Wth little opposition, its tentacleJ naO reached out, not only to nearby Sumatra and Borneo, but also deep into the Moluccas and the other islands to the East.

This two-way embryo trade was exploited, not so much by the British, but by the Singapore Chinese and Arabs. They had their own ships and operated on the smell of an oilrag.

So for them it was profitable to potter along the coastal kampongs and villages, trading a few imported goods for raw forest products like rattans, gums, resins and esseniial oils, gathered by the local natives. These raw products were then taken to Singapore for lurther processing and repacking before being shipped overseas in vesiels of Alfred Holt, Nord Deutsche Lloyd and Messageries Maritimes, at the expense of the NEI trade in general and the Dutch Home lines - RL and SMN - in particular.

The same applied, in reverse, to imports to these areas like rice from Rangoon and Saigon (via Singapore) and manufactured goods from other overseas ports. ln other words, these whole areas might just as well have been dependencies of Singapore as part of NEl.

This was more or less the start of what was to develop into a full scale trade war between Singapore and Batavia.

Litile wonder, therefore, that towards the end of NISM's renewed contract - around the mid-1880's - RL and SMN, supported bythe other Dutch commercial interests like the banks, tobacco growers and companies gradually becoming involved in large scale tea, rubber and coffee production in the lndies, formed a strong lobby for a National Flag inter-island service.

33 ln retrospect, this was obviously the way to go. But at the time, it took a lot of sustained lobbying, just to get the Dutch Government on side. Even then, the NEI Government was still pretty lukewarm about the whole business.

It was also far from easy to find the capital for such a National Flag enterprise.

Even after general agreement was finally reached on the over-riding importance of having this vital service in Dutch hands, there were still endless political, commercial and legal debates, both in Holland and in the East, about the pros and cons. There are always people who oppose the worthiest of proposals - particularly in Parliaments. The cons in the Dutch parliament in Holland were mostly men who had been senior Public Servants in the East and still considered themselves experts in anything to do with NEl.

Anyway, eventually the necessary legislation was passed in Holland and Batavia, and KPM was officially incorporated in Amsterdam on the 4th September, 1888.

There was then one more major, but purely commercial matter, to be resolved.

What would NISM do when they lost the Government Contract?

Would they sell their ships or divert them elsewhere, and terminate their inter-island service? Or would they continue to operate in the lndies without the Government Contract, in direct competition with the newly formed Dutch Company? lnitially they decided on the latter. ln addition, they formed a new company to compete in the Holland - NEI trade with RL and SMN, who had played such a prominent role in the formation of KPM.

However, the then Chairman of NISM - Sir William Mackinnon - a Scot - and Jan Boissevain, a Director of SMN and one of the founding Directors of KPM, established contact and eventually negotiated a mutually acceptable arrangement, whereby RL, SMN and KPM between them agreed to take over all NISM ships, including the four larger ones, which had commenced the rival Holland-NEl service, at an agreed sum. ln our present day dog-eat-dog commercial world, it is pleasant to be able to record that the two men became firm friends and that NISM actually did everything they could to assist KPM in getting their service started, once agreement had been reached between them.

The way was now clear for the new company to complete its preparations for the takeover of the inter-island service.

An able 44 year old ex-naval officer, L. P. D. Op ten Noort, was appointed Managing Agent in Batavia, where the local Head Office of the new company was to be established.

34 L.P.D. Op ten Noort

He was to control the day-to-day operations of the company, but the real power remained with the Board in Amsterdam.

Op ten Noort left Holland in April, 1890 for an extensive orientation voyage of the lndies, arriving in Batavia on the 29th May.

On the 14th August, he left Batavia in the brand new s.s. "Camphuys", more like a yacht than a working cargo/passenger ship with her sparkling white hull, single yellow funnel and beautiful sleek lines.

On this trip Op ten Noort visited the principal ports in Java, Celebes, Timor, the Moluccas, Borneo and Sumatra, conducting wide ranging discussions with local government authorities and commercial interests at each port.

This first-hand information he obtained on this trip was, of course, of the greatest importance. ln particular, the complaints of the merchants at each port about the existing, or non-existing, NISM services.

Armed with all this information, he arrived back in Batavia on the 22nd October, 1890, and set about the enormous task of preparing for the commencement of the KPM services on the 1st January, 1891.

For this, he had at his disposal 28 small ships, totalling some 29,000 Gross Registered Tons - about the size of one present-day Cruise Ship.

35 Of these, 15 had been taken over from NISM and 13 were new ships, built in Holland and sailed out to the East.

At this point, we should perhaps pause and recall that the events we are now talking about took place a little over a hundred years ago, when everything - ships, ports, lifestyles, health services and so on - were all totally different and everything was more difficult than today.

The ships of those days were nothing like the Cruiseships, Containerships, Bulk Carriers or Oil Tankers of today.

So forget all those!

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And while we're at it, we should forget, also, about aeroplanes, computers, calculators, typewriters, wordprocessors, telexes, faxes, satellite navigation, radar, sonar, even reliable sea-charts - on the commercial side, and motorcars, air

16 conditioning, refrigeration, TV, videos, microwaves, antibiotics, and so on - on the domestic side, because those didn't exist then either! Try to imagine life without all those things! ln the tropics! ln other words, let us try to imagine ourselves back in the days of Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham.

There were practically no schools, so children had to be sent to Holland for their education at a very early age, disrupting family life.

Transport in the cities was restricted to a few little primitive steam trams, rickshaws, sadohs - little ponycarts, drawn by Timor ponies - or pushbikes.

Cholera, smallpox and typhoid were endemic. Everyone had to be vaccinated and regularly re-vaccinated against these scourges from birth, oI, if born elsewhere, before going out to the East. Even rabies! Malaria was an everyday fact of life and then there were a few minor problems like dysentery, VD and constant skin irritations like prickly heat - not fatal, but very unpleasant! And no antibiotics!

Make no mistake - life in the East in those days was hard - very hard indeed! And not nearly as glamorous as it was made out to be in the storybooks! 'But everywhere throughout the East, there were enormous challenges to be met. Men burned themselves out, meeting these challenges!

Even many years later, my own father did, and many a man before him, including one of his brothers, who died of pneumonia at the age of 21 and was buried in Penang.

Not surprisingly, not many women could cope with this hard, demanding life - not only physically hard, but also mentally and emotionally tough.

So as we follow the history of KPM from those first early days, we should look at it against that background.

Well, after several months of almost superhuman effort on the part of Op ten Noort and his handful of staff, the first KPM ships - the "Camphuys" and the "Carpentier" - did, in fact, leave Batavia on the 1st January, 1891, as planned, followed the next day by the "Van Diemdn" and the "Coen".

But there were still a lot of problems ahead.

It came as no surprise that a number of ex-NISM ships were in poor shape. lt had been a calculated risk, taking over these rust buckets, to get things under way, pending the arrival of the rest of the new ships from Holland. ln any case, KPM had had little choice. Taking them over was part of the deal and KPM was stuck with them for the time being.

But they were very costly to maintain and, in some cases, fairly unreliable.

37 There were plenty of other quite ma1or problems. One of these was the inadequacy of the major port facilities. which had served therr purpose reasonably well up'til then. However, the advent of steam and other factors, were at last bringing about a significant increase in both the inter-island and overseas trade of the colony, with more and bigger ships. The ports could no longer cope, resulting in costly delays to the ships. But you can't just wave a magic wand and update ports overnight and certainly not in those days. I'm talking here of the main ports of Tg. Priok, Soerabaia and Macassar. Forget the outposts - they had no port facilities - period! There, the ships just had to anchor in secluded bays or even in exposed roadsteads and work their cargo with the aid of lighters or workboats; in some places, far off shore because of reefs or very shallow coastal shelves. Another serious problem was the lack of reliable sea charts and the almost complete absence of coastal lighthouses, beacons or buoys, particularly in the outlying islands. Many ships ran aground on uncharted reefs. Several, including the "Reynst", just out of Holland, were lost. This all resulted in frustrating loss of time and heavy repair bills.

It is, of course, axiomatic in the world of transport, that you can't make money out of vehicles which are empty and standing or lying idle, whether they be ships, trains, planes or buses. So, perhaps more than anywhere else, in transport, time is money! An immobilised ship is not only not making money, it is actually eating up money in the form of fixed overheads, such as insurance, wages, depreciation, port dues and so on. All these delays and extra costs were fairly disastrous for the new company, struggling to lay the foundation of what was to become a giant inter-island and overseas network of shipping services.

There was yet another major problem - of an entirely different nature - to be overcome. That was the unbridled and long-established competition, not only from the Chinese, Arab and native craft, but also from the British, French and German overseas Lines. ln the absence of any strong resistance on the part of NISM, these had also penetrated deep into the archipelago and were scooping up increasing quantities of cargo at will. Understandably, NISM wasn't overly concerned. There were no national interests involved for them, they were operating with old ships, which were pretty well written off in the books, and only on Government subsidised services. There is nothing wrong with normal competition. lt works wonders in maintaining high standards. Our telephone service has suddenly improved out of sight! ln shipping, this would involve better and faster ships. better customer service, more flexibility in dealing with cargo claims and so on, but at the same freight rates. lt is when a shipping company gets involved in an all-out rate war, with practices like secret rebates, for a relatively long period, that things get really nasty, with fairly disastrous short term financial consequences.

38 The fledgling KPM was more or less manoeuvred into this situation from the word go, as it was largely established for the very purpose of re-routing all that part of the colony's trade that was then flowing through Singapore, back to the Java ports. It didn't take Op ten Noort long to realise that he was not going to achieve all his objectives at once. Diverting as much NEI trade as possible back from Singapore was going to be one long-term objective! To counter the British, French and German competition, he quoted attractive rates for shipments via Java ports on through Bills of Lading and whenever possible, placed a KPM ship on the berth immediately before the foreign ship. As regards the Chinese and Arab traders/ship owners, he adopted the "lf you can't beat them, join them" principle. ln other words, he set out to put the Chinese and Arab boats out of business by providing better ships and better and more regular services at the same low rates - not at first to Java, but to Singapore. This'was particularly effective in the inter-island livestock trade - the special domain of the Arabs - as the mortality rate amongst the stock shipped in open prauws had always been very high and this dropped dramatically for shipments per KPM. Encouraged by this early success, Op ten Noort continued with his policy of first securing a sizeable part of the cargo moving through Singapore, putting at least some of these craft out of business and then gradually drawing as much trade as possible away from Singapore to the Java ports. This was eventually achieved, but not in Op ten Noort's time. Not that this hurt Singapore's trade much. lt was in the perfect geographical position - the crossroads of South East Asia. What through cargo it lost to the Java ports, was more than made up by its growing trade with other neighbouring countries, the Far East and elsewhere. But KPM, the Dutch Home Lines and the NEI Government did achieve their immediate objective. The rate war with foreign overseas lines was costly but effective and relatively short lived. Here again was an example of the Triple Entente in action - the NEI Government temporarily closed certain NEI ports to foreign flag vessels. Competition from Chinese, Arab and native craft in the inter-island trade was still a fact of life when I left the East in 1950, but it had then long since been reduced to manageable proportions.

One other early problem for KPM was the shortage of trained staff. At first, the company was largely dependent on commission agents, Dutch, Chinese, Arabs and lndians - some good, some not so good. Naturally, it took quite a while to build up a network of KPM branch offices. So, one way or another, KPM was faced with more than its fair share of problems in those first early years.

Such was the position when Op ten Noort's term as Managing Agent in Batavia came to a sudden and premature end. When he had been appointed to this position, it had been on the understanding that he would relinquish it at the end of 1893 to become Director of SMN in Amsterdam. However, as it transpired, the enormous effort of establishing KPM had greatly undermined his health and he was taken so seriously ill towards mid 1893, that he had to leave Batavia on the 28th July of that year and return to Holland to recuperate.

39 i Fortunately, after a long convalescence in Europe, he was to make a complete recovery and go on to become the most senior and highly respected of all Dutch shipping men. Although Op ten Noort had spent less than 3 years in Batavia, his value to the company was inestimable. He had correctly assessed the enormous possibilities for the future and had had the drive to lay the rock-solid foundation of this remarkable shipping company. His was always going to be a very hard act to follow and there was really no heir apparent among the tiny KPM staff, most still relatively inexperienced after only 2 1n years. This had naturally been a matter of some concern to the Board in Holland. When Op ten Noort was taken ill, the problem became critical. A Board member, Jonkheer van der Wijck, was despatched to Batavia post haste - if that is the right term for a 6 week sea voyage - to find a suitable successor. Arriving in Batavia, after a brief call at Singapore, he and the ailing Op ten Noort, reviewed the possible candidates amongst the KPM staff, but reluctantly came to the conclusion that none were really suitable. ln desperation - Op ten Noort was failing fast - they looked further afield - to some of their Commission Agents, who at least had some experience in KPM matters. With considerable trepidation, they settled on a 40 year old employee of the Dutch firm which had acted as KPM's Singapore Agents since the company's inception. Van der \Mjck had had extensive discussions about KPM matters with this man during his brief stay in Singapore en route to Batavia and been quite impressed by him. The name of the man, thus virtually selected from the bottom of the barrel, was - would you believe - Edward George Taylor. Despite his English name and the fact that he lived and worked in Singapore, he"was Dutch born and bred. His father owned a shipyard in Den Helder, the site of the Dutch Naval Base and Edward George was born there on the 1st November, 1852. Not surprisingly, with the Navy all around him, young Taylor was very keen to go to the Naval Academy, but his father insisted on him studying medicine. On his father's death, he abandoned his medical studies and at the age of 19, signed on as a sailor on a ship bound for the East. He was obviously a young man of strong and independent character, with more than the usual dash of brashness. A much later photograph shows him as a strong, handsome man with a full beard, and a facsimile of his beautiful, firm copperplate handwriting is also that of a man of strong character.

40 E.G. Taylor

The youthful brashness manifested itself in him being discharged for insubordination in Soerabaia at the end of that one voyage to the East. There were apparently a few more wayward adventures before he joined the KPM Agents in Singapore. But from that moment on, he had never looked back. So when he was selected as Op ten Noort's successor in this most demanding top job, he was a mature, experienced shipping man. However, the fact remained, that up till that moment, he had not even been on the staff of KPM and the time available for his induction was going to be cut drastically short because of Op ten Noort's steadily deteriorating health. But right from the word 'go', he proved himself to be a man of tremendous drive and great vision. Under his leadership, the company was to embark on its first period of great expansion. Scarcely had Taylor taken over from Op ten Noort, when he was confronted by yet another problem - a local insurrection - this time in Lombok, the island east of Bali. An insurrection was nothing new to the Government, but this was the first one since KPM had commenced operations. It started when the Sultan of Lombok took a dislike to the local KPM Agent - an Arab - and promptly had him murdered. Naturally, KPM took a dim view of this, but the Government, although sympathetic, didn't get too worked uP about it. However, the Sultan, having gotten away with this bit of mayhem, then proceeded to murder a few more locals, including the Government Resident.

4T This was too much for the Government, so in 1894 they requested KPM to provide the necessary ships to transport 5,000 troops and their equipment from Soerabaia to Lombok, as they were empowered to do under the terms of the Contract. Although KPM was then already struggling to keep up with the increasing trade, the ships were made available the very next day.

Other insurrections were to follow. ln 1896, there was a serious one in Atjeh, at the Northern tip of Sumatra, which was to recur periodically over the next 10 years or so. ln 1905, there was another at Boni on the island of Celebes. ln 1906, there was an insurrection in Bali, of all places. ln 1907, the last of this series of local uprisings took place at Endeh on the island of Flores. With law and order now pretty much established throughout the Colony, the Government and KPM could concentrate fully on opening up new areas and developing the Colony's huge trade potential. Actually, this development had already commenced at the very beginning of the 20th century, as a flow on from the lndustrial Revolution in Europe. As we know, this had woken Europe up and created a demand for a whole range of new commodities and had also spawned the steamship. Apart from that, it had not had a particularly dramatic effect on the lndies up to the end of the 18th century But the invention of the internal combustion engine, coinciding more or less with the discovery of oil in Borneo and Sumatra, was quite a different matter. This was followed around the early 1900's by great demand for rubber and this too, NEI could supply. A little later, the large scale development of the soap, cosmetics and edible oil industries had created a huge demand for copra and palmoil. The demand for high grade tobacco from the Deli region on the East coast of Sumatra, had increased sharply. The paint and lacquer industry had stepped up its demand for gums and resins. The furniture industry had learned to use bamboo, canes, rattans and exotic timbers. So by the time Taylor left the East in 1906, the Dutch had started laughing all the way to the bank! They were sitting on a multi-faceted goldmine! Tea, coffee, cocoa, pepper and other spices, sugar, essential oils, rice, salt, tin, kapok, sisal, ebony, sandalwood, sago, tapioca, coal, oil - you name it! Somewhere in this sprawling, underdeveloped colony, with its fertile, volcanic soils, bountiful rainfall, even climate and steadily increasing population, there was, or would be, at least one area, which could produce all these products in abundance. The native population then still consisted almost entirely of the primitive hunters and gatherers, subsistence farmers and fishermen of past centuries, still ruled by powerful local Sultans, rather than by the Dutch. What little trade there was, still consisted mainly of the simple bartering of the itinerant Chinese and Arab traders. ln other words, there was this great, underdeveloped Archipelago, just crying out for large scale development - not only a producer, or potential producer, of almost

42 everything demanded by world markets, but at the same time, itself a huge potential market! And one of the first essentials then needed to make it all happen, was an efficient inter-island shipping service! With sound government administration, large amounts of capital, a lot of ingenuity, vision, adaptlbility, a hell of a lot of dedication, sheer, sustained hard work on the part of all concerned, and booming world markets, the lndies took off in a big way! Under Taylor's guidance, the KPM fleet had increased to 43,142 Gross Registered Tons Uy fAgA - an increase of some 50o/o over the 29,000 GRT of 1891. Before his retirement, he was instrumental in building the fleet up still further, showing great vision in his shrewd assessment of the company's future tonnage requirements. This is, of course, one of the key factors in the successful operation of any shipping company, but particularlY for KPM. For many other companies - like Cunard for example - the ordering of new tonnage was relatively simple. Operating almost exclusively in the North Atlantic passenger trade during extended periods of stable world conditions, they were really only concerned with one type of ship - large, fast, luxurious and capable of carrying large numbers of passengers. ln the case of KPM in Talyor's time, with the lndies poised on the threshold of a period of great expansion, in an area as diverse and complex as the lndonesian Archipelagb, this was far from simple. lt required a thorough knowledge of the wide range of products of the lndies, the current and likely future demand for these products, and a shrewd assessment of future world political and economic trends. Even then, the invention of the internal combustion engine and the pneumatic tyre, the discovery of oil in NEI and the great growth of the edible oil industry - all of which had the most dramatic effect on the colony and KPM - were hardly predictable. The only thing, which was obvious at that time, was that KPM needed more ships. But what sort of ships? General cargo ships? Bulk carriers? Livestock carriers? Special, fast passenger ships? For cabin or deck passengers, or both? How many of each? \A/hen? For which of the infinitely diverse inter-island services? Which NEI products could expect vastly increased world demand and which would peter out, as the original spice trade ultimately did? Some of the principal commodities, like copra, were produced in coastal areas. Others, like rubber, tea and coffee thrived in inland districts, sometimes some 180 miles upriver. Almost every service required a special type of ship. How many of each type? What size, draft, speed, cargo and passenger accommodation? Except on one or two specific services, KPM carried far more native deck passengers than cabin passengers. ln those days, there were few roads, no railways and certainly no planes, so KPM was the only mass transport system. At what stage should all these different types of ships be ordered, bearing in mind the considerable lead time for a ship to be built in Holland and sailed out to the East? With the discovery of oil, should the ships be coal fired or oil fired? KPM had its own coalmine, but unfortunately no oil wells. The right types of ships, in the right numbers, at the right times, would make money. The wrong ones could prove costlY!

43 Somehow, Taylor's judgement in this regard, throughout all his years at the helm, was usually spot on.

Taylor also - . Concluded the rate war with the foreign overseas shipping companies, which had flared up in Op ten Noort's time; . met all government requests for military transports in the various local uprisings, which occurred during this time, while still expanding KPM's inter-island services; o secured for KPM the contract to distribute bulk and packaged salt throughout the archipelago, the production of which was a government monopoly; o secured a similar contract for coal produced by government-owned mines; . estabtished a KPM owned and operated technical college in Batavia, where Deck Officers and Engineers could sit for their promotional exams, thus eliminating the long and costly voyages to Holland for this purpose; o established a small KPM hospital and recuperation centre at Soekaboemi, in the mountains near Batavia; and o in every other way, built up the 2 112 year old infant company he had taken over from Op ten Noort, to a strong, vital organisation, which had already well and truly met the demanding requirements set for it, when it was incorporated in Holland in 1 888.

By the end of 1905, Taylor had spent 35 years in the East all told, having only twice been back to Holland on leave in all that time. Badly in need of another break, he left Batavia for Holland on leave on the 12th April, 1 906. He had more than justified his selection as Op ten Noort's successor, 13 years earlier! But all those years had taken their toll. His health gradually deteriorated and he died in Holland, without returning to the East, on the 31st May, 1909 at the age of 57.

\A/hen Taylor left Batavia on leave in 1906, there was no uncertainty about his ultimate successor. The obvious heir apparent was 40 year old Leendert Johannes Lambach, who had actually been considered for the position of Managing Agent 13 years earlier, but passed over because of his youth.

44 L.J. Lambach

Born in Rotterdam on the 1st July, 1866, the son of a Sea Captain, he, too, had wanted to go to sea, but his application was rejected. Atthe age of 1g,'he had joined NISM in Batavia, transferring to KPM when NISM was wound up. Lambach was a man of strong Christian beliefs, prominent in the Evangelical Church, but certainly no airy-fairy do -gooder. On the contrary, he was a brilliant, innovative leader, with a tremendous capacity for hard work. At the same time, his Christian beliefs and principles constantly showed up in his unfailing care and consideration for his staff, both seafaring and shore based. He, too, was to prove himself the right man, in the right place, at the right time. But whereas Taylor had taken over a struggling, 2 112 year old fledgling company, Lambach inherited a thriving, solidly-established organisation, on the threshold of still further spectacular exPansion. Within the constraints of the Government Contract, KPM had become something of a monopoly. But it never abused this Position. The first thing Lambach did - while he was still only Acting Managing Agent in Taylor's absence - was to reduce the cabin class fares by 13o/o and the Deck Passenger fares by 7o/o, bringing them to some 30-40o/o below those of 1892. His next step was to present the Board in Amsterdam with a detailed Staff Pension and Savings Fund. It was approved without amendment.

45 He then opened a Hostel/Social Club in Batavia, where the hard-pressed KPM Ships' Officers could relax between trips. And he was working on a whole string of other proposals to fire at the Board. With so much happening in such a short time, Lambach felt the need for a more effective liaison between himself and the Board in Amsterdam. The Board members were all prominent and influential businessmen - bankers, insurance men and others. The shipping members, were Directors of RL and SMN. But there was really no-one in Amsterdam with recent, in-depth knowledge of the inter-island trade. Lambach proposed that J. H. Hummell, another ex-naval officer, then occupying the all embracing senior KPM position of lnspector in the East, be appointed as Administrator in Amsterdam to fill the gap. Lambach and Hummell were close friends, who had worked together in the East for a number of years. Again, the Board approved.

KPM continued to grow.

ln 1907, four new KPM ships, each around 3,000 GRT - the "Van Neck", ''s Jacob", "Le Maire" and "van Spilbergen" - arrived from Holland, bringing the fleet up to 46 ships, totalling 63,188 GRT. These four ships had been requested by Taylor shortly before he left the East - one more example of his shrewd assessment of KPM's future requirements and his unshakeable faith in the future. At the time, Taylor's request for no less than four new ships, this - then large - size in one go, had rather rocked the Board. But such was their faith in Taylor's judgement, that they had placed the orders with Dutch shipyards anyway. ln 1908, the "Le Maire" and "van Spilbergen" opened KPM's Australian service - the Java-Australia Line. ln 1910, another four new 3,000 ton ships arrived in Batavia - "van Linshoten", "van Waerwyck", "van der Hagen" and "van Heemskerk". ln 191 1, the even larger "van Cloon" and "van Overstraten" - each 4,500 GRT. ln 1913, the "Houtman" and "Tasman" of 5,000 GRT, with a service speed of 14 knots, a considerable amount of refrigerated space, both cooler and freezer, and the latest in passenger accommodation. These two ships replaced the "Le Maire" and "van Spilbergen" on the Java-Australia Line service. These years - between 1907 and World War I - also witnessed a great deal of activity on the part of the NEI Government, which could at last embark on an extensive programme of public works, once the irksome string of local uprisings were out of the way. The construction of railways, extensive road systems, upgrading of seaports - mainly on the central island of Java, but also in and around the principal cities on the other major islands - resulted in a rapidly increasing volume of imports, such as steel, cement and machinery. The goods and equipment required in Java, were discharged by the overseas vessels of RL and SMN at Tg. Priok, Semarang and Soerabaia. Those destined for the other islands, were transhipped to KPM vessels at Tg. Priok or Soerabaia. All this devetopment naturally opened up a whole raft of new employment possibilities for the indigenous population, whose living standards rose accordingly.

46 t*j It all seemed to be a self-perpetuating boom without end! But an end, or at least, a serious check, was just around the corner, in the shape of World War 1. However, before we look at that, we must go back a few years and mention a few other problems, which had had to be overcome in achieving all this progress and expansion. Most of these particular problems had arisen from the very fact of KPM'S extremely rapid expansion, in that, outside contractors simply could not provide the shore based slrip support services, which a shipping company of this size and complexity, so far from the industrialised centres of Europe, demanded. There was not much KPM could do about the inadequate port facilities, absence of lighthouses and beacons, or lack of reliable charts. But there were other problems, which it could and did tackle: o There were not enough drydocks and workshops, so KPM built and operated their own. o A slipway was established to build lighters and large workboats, which most ships had to carry, as there were no wharves at most ports. o There was not enough outside storage space available at the main ports, so KPM set up its own warehousing department and central purchasing organisation to handle the huge quantities of all kinds of stores needed for the steadily increasing fleet. o .Coal supplies were unreliable, so KPM established its own coal mine on the East coast of Borneo and provided the colliers to transport the coal to stockpiles at the main ports. . A hydrographic department was set up to update the poor charts then available. o There was never enough reliable waterside labour at the main ports, so KPM, in conjunction with RL and SMN, built compounds where the workers and their families were comfortably housed, fed and provided with medical care. o A paint factory was established. You can imagine how much paint was used by a fleet this size! . The passenger ships couldn't get their laundry washed in the short time they were in port, so KPM established its own steam laundries. o A soft drink and cordial factory was established. . And last, but by no means least, a KPM hospital, staffed by highly qualified KPM doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses.

ability and By 1g1 1 , it had become obvious that not even a man of Lambach's tremendous capacity for hard work, could cope with all this, alone at the top. ln that year, the position of Managing Agent was abolished. Lambach was appointed president Director and two other Directors - M. C. Koning and J. H. Gornets de Groot - were appointed in Batavia, while Hummel was appointed Director in Amsterdam. This move reflected the gradual flow of executive power from Amsterdam to Batavia during the previous 4 or 5 Years. It would have been about this time that the eldest of three brothers joined KPM in Batavia. This was Alexander Josef Pronk - my father - followed during the next few

47 years by his brothers Jan and Rinse. Sadly, Jan was to die of pneumonia only 2 or 3 y""tr liter. Rinse eventually became a Director in 1938, while my father reached the u"ry top of the tree, being appointed a Director in 1931 and President Director 7 years later, at the age of 46.

A.J. Pronk

48 By 1913,31 KPM ships had been switched to oil fuel,45 were still coalfired and there were 2 small experimental diesel motor ships. KPM had been one of the first shipping companies in the world to recognise the advantages of oil fuel and convert a number of their ships to this new fuel. By 1 914, the KPM fleet had increased to 96 ships, totalling 164,529 GRT. ln the meantime, KPM had continued to expand beyond the lndies ln 1910, a service had been established to carry full cargoes of sugarfrom Soerabaia to Rangoon, returning with full cargoes of rice, as the colony was then not yet able to produce enough rice for the increasing population. The highly labour-intensive tobacco industry in the Deli area around Medan, on the East coast of Sumatra, had developed greatly and was very short of suitable labour. So, in 1915, KPM opened a service from Belawan Deli to China, via Penang and Singapore, to pick up large numbers of contract Chinese labour from Hong Kong, Amoy and Swatow - the Deli-Straits-China Line. To feed them, another service to Rangoon was started - more rice - the Rangoon-Deli Line. On the 1st January,1916, KPM's Government Contract was renewed. ln the same year, KPM's hospital was moved from Weltevreden to larger and more modern premises at Petamboeran, an outer suburb of Batavia. Also in 1916, Lambach retired as President Director and joined the Board in Holland - unfortunately, for a very short time only. He died in Holland on 27th October, 1917, atthe age of 51. Another KPM Chief Executive, who had burned himself out prematurely in the company's service. He was succeeded by M. C. Koning, and C. van der Linde, KPM Manager in Singapore, was appointed to the vacant position of Director.

ln 1917, KPM was faced with yet another difficult decision. The German U-boats had inflicted such fearful losses on Allied Shipping, that there was a desperate, world-wide shortage of tonnage and Charter rates had skyrocketed. KPM could have closed down a number of its inter-island services and chartered out some of its ships at enormous profits. This would have enabled the company to establish large reserves, which would have made it unnecessary to increase the inter-island rates for years to come. They elected to maintain the existing services in the lndies in the more immediate national interest. Over the years, there were to be several more instances where KPM chose to remain true to its original charter as a de-facto part of the government and loyal to its founders - RL and SMN - to its own detriment. ln 1923, the upgrading of the port of Belawan Deli was completed, enabling it to take large overseas vessels. KPM had served this difficult port since its inception, thus securing the lucrative carriage of Deli tobacco for itself and the Dutch Home Lines. ln terms of various agreements, it could have insisted on the status quo.

49 lnstead, it agreed to allow RL and SMN to call direct at Belawan Deli, thus forfeiting its share of the tobacco through rates, till then transhipped to RL and SMN at Tg. Priok. Much later, KPM lent solid support to the establishment of the NEI airline KNILM, subsequently taken over by KLM, although they were well aware that this would ultimately cost them a great deal of their inter-island passenger traffic. Truly, a company of which all of us, who were part of it, can be justifiably proud!

So far, the KPM story has consisted mainly of a succession of good years - its tremendous expansion since 1905 and the manner in which it had met the obligations imposed on it at its incorporation back in 1888, to the NEI Government, its main founders, RL and SMN, and its shareholders. There had been many problems and difficulties along the way, but with a bit of help from the NEI Government and RL and SMN, these had largely been overcome. Now came a huge problem, which none of them could do much about-World War l. Whilst the lndies were not involved in the actual hostilities, the backwash of the war posed serious problems for all, particularly the shipping companies. World shipping was virtually destroyed and normal world trade just about came to a standstill. Shades of the Fourth English War, centuries earlier! lnternational finance for commercial purposes practically dried up. Towards the end of the war, the Allies commandeered the "Tasman" and a number of other KPM ships. It became impossible to have new ships built. But the most immediate problem for KPM was the fact that procurement of the large quantities of all kinds of stores for their fleet became extremely difficult. The company sent a senior executive, C. ter Poorten, to San Francisco for this purpose.

Shipment of these stores across the Pacific was still possible - shipment through the Atlantic was out of the question. After the war, there was also a great worldwide shortage of ships' officers, many having lost their lives during the war and few having been trained in the interim. The only ones KPM could recruit then, was a handful of officers from the now defunct Austrian navy and a few more from the Dutch West lndies. All these factors resulted in sharply rising operating costs and reduced income. KPM's expansion ground to a halt and the company was forced to embark on a drastic across-the-board cost cutting drive. All salaries, including those of the Directors, were reduced by 10% and the freight rates and fares, which had remained unaltered since 1916, were increased by 25o/o. But there were no staff retrenchments. Such was the grim picture when the now fully recovered Op ten Noort and one, J. D. Brand separately visited the lndies for fairly extended periods during 1920121 to plan a recovery strategy with the Batavia Directors. It was decided to adopt a very positive approach and immediately place orders for a number of new ships, which would no doubt be needed once that difficult period gave way to a new period of expansion.

50 The tide turned about the end of 1922-early 1923.

All of a sudden, there was another rubber boom, followed a little later by a copra boom. The beautiful new Head Office building on Koningsplein in Batavia Centrum was completed and occupied in 1923. KPM was once more on the move! The livestock industry was buoyant - various types of cattle, horses, pigs and goats, from the outer islands at the Eastern end of the archipelago. Particularly pigs, for which there was a rapidly increasing demand in Singapore. KpM opened a speciat livestock service from Bali to Singapore via Java ports, known in KpM circles as "The Babi Express" (Babi is Malay for "pig"). lt did carry other livestock as well, but mainlY Pigs. These animals were shipped in individual cylindrical, open-weave, bamboo crates and stacked five or six tiers high, lying on their sides. Sounds barbarous, but they were very well tended by special native attendants, one for every so many pigs, who fed them and hosed them down constantly during the voyage. Most of them were carried in the shelterdecks and the ones on the top deck were protected by large awnings. Al thia tender loving care for the pigs was not a manifestation of the milk of human kindness, but because shippers were paid on live weight, delivered in Singapore. The renewed rubber boom, which started about that time, certainly boosted KPM's iarnings on certain services, but did nothing to alter the Singapore-Batavia trade war, one way or the other. The main rubber producing areas were the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo - both these islands being closer to Singapore than they were to Batavia. The big British firms like Dunlop, Harrisons & Crossfield and Maclaine, Watson were solidlyLstablished throughout Malaya and NEI and they naturally directed all their rubber to Singapore. So did the smaller Chinese firms, who, between them, controlled a fair slice of the trade. The Americans, like Goodyear and Goodrich, were pretty even handed. So Singapore remained the rubber centre. But the slightly later copra boom was the very thing for which the Dutch Triumvirate had been waiting for so long! Copra was produced all over South East Asia, but by lar the greatest copra producing areas were Celebes and the Dutch islands further East - that is, furthest away from Singapore. Macassar quickly became the copra centre. As quite a few of the Singapore Chinese and native craft had been put out of business by then, in those areas, KPM was able to channel the bulk of the forest products and other commodities from East Borneo to Macassar as well - well out of Singapore's reach. The strong demand for copra soon made it the largest NEI export commodity, which in turn virtually gave KPM unassailable control of inter-island shipping throughout the Eastern part of the archiPelago. There were still a number of Boeginese and Madoerese prauws operating there, but by then, these were no real threat to KPM.

5l lmportant as copra had proved to be for Dutch trade and KPM, RL and SMN, it had really done little more than redress the imbalance in the Singapore-Batavia trade war to some extent. Singapore remained by far the most important port in South East Asia and always will be, while ever cargo moves in shiPs. Trade also continued to improve on all KPM's overseas services. Still more tonnage was needed KpM started to order new ships almost as today's multi-nationals order company cars - a couple of dozen or more at a time! But whereas the ordering of new tonnage in 1922 had been a very brave shot in the dark, it was now an urgent necessi$. At the beginning of 1927 , orders were placed with Dutch shipyards for no less than 31 new snips ofall types and sizes! These included the 1 1,000 GRT "Nieuw Holland" and "Nieuw Zeeland" - the "Great \Mite Yachts" of the Java-Australia Line service - KPM's flagships until the arrival of the 14,000 GRT "Boissevain", "Ruys" and "Tegelberg", some 8 years later.

To summarise - o in 1916, the KPM fleet consisted of 93 ships totalling 161,206 GRT; o in 1923, of 107 ships - 1 97 ,387 GRT; o in 1927, of 146 ships - 276,105 GRT; ln 1g27, KpM built the Bali Hotel at Den Pasar, with an annex at Kintamani, in the nearby mountains, to foster the Tourist Trade.

52 ffiffi'tn-

New KPM Head Office Batavia Centrum (1923)

53 But once again, all this progressive activity ground to a halt with the onset of the Great Depression.

By 1g30, 15 ships -To/o of the fleet - were laid up. The company had to draw on the reserves accumulated in the good years. As in 1gZZ, KpM once again elected to tackle the existing malaise head on by taking positive action. This time, it fitted out the laid up "Houtman" as a special Trade Ship for Eastern and Australian goods and products and invited representatives from exporters in these areas to travel in this ship to South and East Africa, Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius, in an attempt to establish new markets. This was in 1931 , when there was no regular shipping service between South Africa and South East Asia. So suicessful was this venture, that it led to a regular monthly service. lnitially 5,000 ton ships like the "Houtman", "Tasman", "Bontekoe"("Spotted Cow" in English) and ,,swartenhondt"("Black Dog") - don't ask me where those names came from - these ships operated the service. ln 1937, they were replaced by the 14,000 ton, 19 knot, "Boissevain", "Ruys" and "Tegelberg". That Same year, another overseas service was established - the South Pacific Line from Saigon, through Singapore, Java, Papua New Guinea, the New Hebrides, and Noumea to Auckland, Wellington, Sydney and back. On the 1st January,1931, KPM's Government Contract was renewed for another 15 years. Also in 1931, my father, after 10 years in Sydney in charge of KPM's Australia/Pacific area, was appointed a Director and returned to Batavia with my mother and their 3 youngest chiidren, leaving me and my two other brothers at boarding school in Sydney. Ay f gdg, 17 KpM ships - 13o/o of the fleet - were laid up. For KPM, this proved to be the last and worst year of the Depression. At the end of that year, I left school, took up residence in the Clifton Gardens Hotel (long since gone) and started work with Dalgety & Co Ltd as assistant office boy to on", Derek Donecker (later a Flight Lieutenant in the Transport and Movement Office of the R/MF in Sydney and later still an Esso executive) at Dalgety's Wharf Office at Millers Point at the princely wage of 25/- per week.

From then on things Picked uP.

KpM's only peacetime maritime disaster occurred in 1936, when the passenger ship s.s "van der Vlffck" capsized and sank off the North coast of Java during the night of the l gth/20th October, with the loss of 14 European and 44 native lives. The cause of this disaster was never really established. The Chief Officer of that ill-fated voyage left the sea shortly afterwards and joined the shore staff, replacing Wentholt (whom we shall meet again) as my boss in the Wharf department at Tg. Priok, not long after my arrival in the East.

1g37 saw the arrival of the magnificent new flagships of the KPM fleet - "Boissevain", "Ruys" and "Tegelberg". "Ruys" and "Tegelberg" were built in Holland. "Boissevain" by Blohm and Voss in Hamburg.

54 This was one of those strange financial deals in the world of Holland and NEI of those days. "Boissevain" could easily have been built in Holland like her sister ships. lnstead, she became part of an international deal involving the Deli tobacco growers, Dutch Banks, the NEI Government, the Dutch Government in Holland and KPM. Basically, the deal was that KPM would agree to have this one ship built in Germany if the German Government could persuade German Tobacco Companies to buy Deli tobacco, equal in value to the cost of the ship. ln other words, a foreign currency deal via NEI tobacco. Just how the details were worked out I have no idea, but it seemed to boil down to Blohm and Voss being paid for the ship in tobacco! The wonderful world of international finance!

55 Shorly afterwards, two fast 6,500 ton cargo ships with limited passenger accommodation - "straat Soenda" and "straat Malakka" - also joined the KPM fleet. We shall meet the "straat Soenda" again a little later. just These two ships brought the fleet up to its all time zenith of 150 ships, totalling over 340,000 GRT. And this is where it stood when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, almost exactly 51 years since the Company's inception in 1891 " The original 14 inter-island services of 1891 had been expanded to 61, mostly weekly or bi-weekly, whereas the original 14 had been fortnightly or monthly. ln addition, KPM's Overseas Services now linked the lndies to - . the nearby countries in South East Asia; o China, the Philippines and Japan; . Australia, New Zealand and Oceania; o South and East Africa; . Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius; . Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil.

There was also a vast shorebased KPM infrastructure, probably unmatched by any other shipping company in the world. To mention just one part of that infrastructure - the workshops in Tg. Priok alone, employed 5d Europeans and 12OO Chinese and Native Artisans and could handle 12 Ships it time. They also turned out huge quantities of small items such as bolts and nuts," screws, portholes, ashtrays and a host of other bits and pieces in every day use on the ships.

57 Looking back on this magnificent organisation, when it was at its very peak - as it was when I was part of it and my father was its President Director - it is difficult to believe that it all started with those two tiny ships leaving Tg. Priok on New Years Day, 1891, followed progressively by the other 26, which together made up the KPM fleet in those days - all 29,000 tons of it! Of these, some were then employed in the few regular Liner services. Others wandered along the coasts of New Guinea and the other outer islands, calling at every litle port and many places where there were no ports at all - no KPM Agent or Government Resident - just anchorages off coastal native villages - picking up 10 tons of raw forest products here, a few tons of Beche-de-mer and Trochas shell, or a few head of livestock there. Encouraging the local natives to increase their a few basic tools and farm implements. 'Forproduction by small cash advances or the tiny European outposts, the KPM ship was then their only contact with civilisation. lt brought their essential supplies of food, clothing, equipment, medicines - everything needed to sustain life. But above all, it brought letters from home, newspapers, word of what was happening in the outside world! On the one day that the ship called, they would be invited on board for a Nasi Goreng, a few cold beers and a good old yarn! KPM was quite literally their lifeline! Try to imagine, for a moment, what life was like in these tiny outposts, on the very outer fringes of civilisation, a hundred years ago. The unmarked, and often uncharted, anchorages! Their almost total lack of communication with the outside world! The constant yearning of the one or two lone Europeans for that contact! The lonbliness! The privations sometimes endured by these almost totally isolated people! The'physical and psychological problems many of them had to endure! The very real fear of a serious accident or illness weeks before the next KPM ship was due! The courage and mental toughness to cope with all this! Life for the officers and crews of those first little KPM ships was not all that much better. True, they had adequate supplies of the basic essentials and they did get back to their home ports at regular intervals. But their lives were also far from easy. Hot, cramped quarters! No refrigeration or air-conditioning! No radio! No doctor! No antibiotics! Remember my uncle Jan, who died of pneumonia on board one of those little ships? And that was in a relatively civilised area! They were the ones, who provided the life-line to the far-flung outposts, so they had a number of extra responsibilities as well. First and foremost, of course, was the safety of their ship and the maintenance of their saiting schedule. And in those days of inadequately charted waters, that in itself was sometimes quite hazardous. Calling at a new anchorage for the first time usually meant sending one of the ship's boats in first to take soundings, then finding a suitable anchorage. Sometimes, not even a local native KPM Agent, not a European within miles! lf there was any native produce to be loaded, it was usually paid for out of the ship's bank, less the freight and handling charges due on it. lt had to be weighed or

59 to be written measured - sometimes repackaged. Bills of lading and manifests had out. had to be The ship was also a floating bank and post office. All these transactions to bless recorded and accounted foi without as much as a calculator or typewriter themselves with! An abacus, perhaps? go ashore to While the officers were attending to these matters, the Captain would could submit talk to the local Headman of the village and look around, so that he on the potential reports to the Company and the appropriate government department of the area for future development. meanwhile do a At outposts, where there were a few Europeans, the Engineers might tool or few small repair jobs for these lonely people - perhaps replace a broken replenish their stock of basic essentials such as nails or screws. It all seems quite unbelievable, looking back on it now! laboriously But that,s the way it all started! That;s how this mighty organisation was built up!

60 South But to get back to 1939 and the outbreak of war in south East Asia and the West Pacific Area at the end of 1941. And in particular, to the magnificent contribution, which the KPM shiPs and their officers and crews made to the Allied War effort.

68 5. (ii) KPM During World War ll

(a) 3rd September, 1939 - 7th December, 1941

As Europe and North America were the two Continents, which KPM did not service, the first nine months of the war had very little direct effect on the Company's operations. But on the 1Oth May, 1940 the full might of the German armed forces was unleashed on Holland. A week later, Holland had been overwhelmed. The Dutch Royal Family had been evacuated to England, ?S had a number of Cabinet Ministers, leading businessmen and other key figures, in order to establish a Government-in-exile and the necessary organisations to take control of the Dutch trade. After her turbulent past in earlier centuries, fotlowed by many decades of neutrality, Holland was again at war - all her available assets committed totally and unhesitatingly to the Allied Cause! Her greateit-and most desperately needed asset at that moment was, of course, her UrgJ modern Merchant Navy, the fourth largest of all Allied Nations after those of Britain, USA and NorwaY. The immediate problem, which the German occupation of Holland created for the KpM Directors in Batavia, was that they had lost all contact with their Board in Amsterdam. Worse still, was the loss of their central recruiting office for European staff, their central purchasing office, which handled the bulk of the vast quantities of stores and supplies of all kinds for the fleet of 150 ships and their supporting shore- based infrastiuctyre in the East, as well as their naval architecls office, which designed, placed orders for, and supervised the construction of new ships in Dutch shipyards in Holland (there were 8 ships under construction for KPM when Holland was invaded).

Obviously, there is never a good time for a World War to break out, but with the Japanese almost certain to commence hostilities at any time in the Far East, South East Asia and the Pacific, the occupation of Holland could not have occurred at a worse time for KPM. The already hardpressed organisation in the East was suddenly confronted with a series of additional and increasing problems, way beyond the normal extensive logistical problems involved in running an intricate and extensive inter-island and international shipping network like KPM in peacetime. . The NEI Government, Army, Navy and Air Force were all putting contingency plans into effect in case of war with Japan. These plans involved the relocation of troops and their supplies, for which KPM was contractually obliged to provide the necessary ships at short notice. . Huge quantities of emergency reserve supplies, particularly rice, were imported from Rangoon, Bangkok, Saigon and elsewhere - all carried in KPM ships. Many thousandi of tons of cement and steel were ordered, to strengthen existing defences and construct new ones. Much of the steel came from Australia, where BHp supplied it and KPM loaded it in their cargo ships in Newcastle and Port

69 Kembla, ?S the passenger liners "Nieuw Holland" and "Nieuw Zeeland", already fully booked with other cargo, had neither the time nor the capacity to load it- By the end of April 1940, 167 seagoing KPM staff and 59 KPM shore staff had been called up for mililary service in NEl. All navigation lights .and beacons had been extinguished throughout the archipelago, so ships muH no longer enter or leave many of the reefgirt outports during the hours of darkness, thus losing much valuable time. Minefields, laid by the Navy at strategic points, caused further delays- Five impounded German merchant ships, which had sought refuge in Padang on the West Coast of Sumatra at the outbreak of war in Europe, had to be towed to Tg. Priok by KPM ships in the absence of seagoing tugs; plus one from Maccassar and one from Menado. lnterned German nationals - and there were a surprising number of these - had to be transported to central internment camps, and later on, to lndia. After the fall of France and the appointment of the Vichy Government, the French colonies of Madagascar, Reunion, lndochina, the New Hebrides and Noumea became highly suspect. All these were being serviced by KPM ships. The m.s. "Janssens", under command of Captain G. N. Prass, was requisitioned by the NEI Navy as a submarine tender and supply ship on the 17th May, 1940. T-he s.s. "Rantaupandjang", commanded by Captain P. Luin, was sunk on the 22nd February, 1941, NE of Madagascar, homeward bound with a full cargo of coal from South Africa, by the German pocket battleship 'Admiral Schee/', commanded by Captain Krancke - the first KPM casualty of W\A/ll. Officers and crew were taken on board 'Admiral Schee/' before their ship was sunk, were well cared for by Krancke and his crew and spent the rest of the war in an internment camp near Bremen. KpM's Java-Australia Line cargo/passenger liners "Nieuw Holland" and "Nieuw Zeeland" were chartered to the British Ministry of War Transport to serve as troopships for the duration of the war. The former was delivered in Melbourne on the 9th August, 1940 - the latter in Singapore on the 1sth August, 1940. (The "Nleuw Holland" survived the war. The "Nieuw Zeeland", under Captain K. U. Noordenbos, was sunk shortly after leaving Arzeu in North Africa for Gibraltar, unescorted, by U-380, commanded by Lt. Roether, on the 11th November, 1942. This was the largest KPM ship lost during VV\A/ll.) The monthly cargo/passenger shuttle service from Japan to South America via South Africa had to be curtailed. Because of U-boats and surface raiders like the pocket battleship "Graf Spee" in the South Atlantic, the sector South Africa/South America was dropped. And because of the almost certain outbreak of war with Japan, the sector Japan/Singapore was also dropped. KpM's three newest largest and fastest Liners, the 14,000 ton "Boissevain", "Ruys", and "Tegelberg" (named after the Company's founders) were taken off the Souin American service to replace the "Nieuw Holland" and "Nieuw Zeeland" on the Australian service for a short time before they, too, commenced their wartime service as troopshiPs. The "Nederland" Line (SMN) could no longer maintain it's Java/Persian Gulf service, so KPM made three 4,500 ton ships available for this service.

70 to capacity, o As wharf storage at the main port of Tg. Priok (Batavia) was crammed large KpM made the s.s. "Van Waerwyck" available as a floating warehouse for quantities of rubber for transhipment to Europe and the USA' to be . And finally, as war with Japan became ever surer, contingency plans had threat made tor a port of last resort, preferably as far away as possible from the coast of from the North. The choice fell'on Tjilatjap, a small port on the mid South Java. lt had only minimal port facilities and in peacetime, was serviced once a ships of fortnight by our 260 ton "Kidoel". But it lay in a wide sheltered bay, where (which most all sizes could anchor, it had a good wharf and some shed space possible in NEl. outports did not), and itwas about as far away from Japan as qot go within a Nevertheless, it was obvious that these limited port facilities would exodus of bulls roar of coping with the frantic requirements of an anticipated: mass could not ships, supplies anO"people. lt was equally obvious that additional facilities be constructed in the short, chaotic time, which would then be available. replenish Ships would need last minute repairs and spare parts; they would have to oil or coal fuel; they would need extra fresh water and additional stores, as they would be crammed to the gunwhales with huge numbers of refugees, both civilians for these and service personnel; there would have to be emergency accommodation refugees ashore before embarkation. in the KpM converted their s.s. "Barentsz" into a floating workshop and anchored her bay of Tjilatjap. Other ships were earmarked for emergency accommodation, ships' a 75 stores, ioal, oil and fresh water suoplies, while an 8000 ton floating dock and floating crane were towed from Priok to Tjilatjap. These enabled the US cruiser ton just ,,Marblehead" - badly damaged during the Battle of the Java Sea - to carry out enough urgent repairs to escape in the nick of time.

- While all these additional problems had to be dealt with - and dealt with immediately had life throughout the Archipelago had to go on. Stores, supplies, people, livestock to be moved in and accumulating island produce, such as copra, rubber, tea, coffee could and a whole host of other commodities, had to be moved out. And only KPM do that.

More than ever it was, quite literally, the lifeblood of the Netherlands East lndies!

When I was there in 1938/9, I thought the organisation was flat out - we worked almost every day and half of only some nights.

Now everyone, at sea or ashore, must have worked every day and every night!

7t (b) 7th December, 1941 - 7th March, 1942.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on the 7th December, 1941 unleashed a savage war in South East Asia and the Pacific - on land and sea - which was to last for 3 1t2 years, cost many thousands of lives, untold millions of dollars, and signal the end of the Colonial Era in those areas.

The real Japanese objectives were Malaya and the Netherlands East lndies, rich in oil, tin, bauxite, rubber and other commodities badly needed by Japan.

They were, at that stage, not particularly interested in the Hawaiian lslands - they simply had to take out the American Pacific Fleet before overwhelming Malaya and NEI.

And that they did very successfully on that 7th December, 1941.

They also realised that they would have to take out Singapore, the cornerstone of the Allied defence of the whole of South East Asia.

So, at the same time as they attacked Pearl Harbour, they also launched two other powerful forces southward - one through the Philippines and New Guinea and the other through French lndoChina. These were the two arms of the giant pincer movement, which was to destroy all Allied forces in SEA and scoop up Malaya and NEI.

On the 10th December, 1941, just three days after Pearl Harbour, the British batfleships "Repulse" and the almost brand new "Prince of Wales" were sunk off lhe East Coast of Malaya by Japanese bombers and torpedo-carrying planes with the loss of over 2OOO lives. \Nhich, of course, pretty well took out the British Far Eastern Fleet as well.

After that, there was not much to stop the Japanese army from pouring ashore from the heavily protected transports and heading for Singapore overland (which they were not supposed to do!)

The day after Pearl Harbour, the Dutch Armed Forces had taken control of all merchant shipping in NEI - not only KPM ships, but also those of RL and SMN, which operated services from the East to Europe, the United States and elsewhere. lncluded in this lot, were the 20 German ships, which had been in NEI ports when Germany invaded Holland, back in May, 1940, had been seized by the NEI authorities, and allocated to the various Dutch companies.

(As a matter of interest, only one of these ex-German ships survived the war - the ss "Karsik, ex "Soneck" - the only one allocated to KPM. She did sterling service in the New Guinea campaign and returned to NEI in 1945. After being sold to a Chinese company based in Hong Kong in 1963, she was lost 4 years later running aground en

72 route from Colombo to Jeddah, or the Mismari Reef, 11 miles southwest of Jeddah, on the 9th June 1967).

To get back to the 8th December, 1941 - the C-in-C of all Dutch Forces in the area, wal Vice Admiral C.E.L Helfrich (whose son, Jan, later worked for KPM and now lives in Melbourne).

The Dutch Naval Forces in NEI consisted of several cruisers, 3 or 4 destroyers, some submarines and minesweepers as well as a dozen or so Dornier and Catalina flying boats.

These were supplemented by the US cruisers "Houston" and "Marblehead", and a handful of old LjS destroyers, the British cruiser "Exeter", two other cruisers and several destroyers, as well as the Australian cruiser "Perth" and nine Australian corvettes and the armed merchant cruiser "Kanimbla". lf KpM,s situation up till then had been precarious, it now became quite desperate.

As the Japanese pincers rapidly and inexorably closed in, KPM was faced with the impossible dual task of evacuating garrisons and civilians from the outer islands, which were then abandoned (except, at that stage, Ambon and Timor, where there were forward air bases and Australian Army Units) and keeping some semblance of essential trade going within an inner circle, bounded by Macassar, Soerabaia, Southern Sumatra and SingaPore. ln actual fact, the situation was then already quite hopeless, but the Dutch were not prepared to concede that. Even if they had, they would still have fought on to the bitter end, after 350 years of blood and sweat and toil and tears, expended in developing this wonderful colony.

Somehow, KpM managed to meet the impossible demands made on them throughout December 1941 and the first week of January 1942 without losing any ships.

But then, as the Japanese Naval Forces closed in for the kill, the losses started.

On the 8th January, the'Van Rees" and 'Van Riebeeck" were sunk.

On the 9th, the "Camphuys" and "Benkoelen".

On the 17th, the "Sloet Van de Beele", on her way back from Singapore.

(l used to hate this ship, when I worked on the wharf at Tg. Priok. lt brought in full cargoes of bagged cement from Padang and the cement dust smothered everything and everyone for days).

On the 1gth, the 'Van lmhoff'. (More about this ship later - a very sorry story! \Mth a very long tail).

73 On the 20th, the "Togian".

On the 22nd,the "Pynacker Hordyck" and "Van Overstaten"'

On the 23rd, the "Lematang".

On the 26th, the "BuYskes".

And on the 28th, the "Boelongan" and "Elout". just During February, KpM lost another 9 ships - two, the "Op Ten Noort" - then converted to a nospital ship - (the second largest KPM ship lost during the war) and the ,'Tobelo,', both captured ai sea; plus 7 ships sunk, including the "Rooseboom", This was crammed with over 5OO civilians and servicemen, only 6 of whom survived. the greatest loss of life on any Dutch ship lost anywhere in the world during World War ll.

All this time re-enforcements were still pouring into Singapore and Java. One of the last, in the largest troopship involved, the 45,647 ton "Aquitania", towards mid- January. Because the situation in Singapore was then already almost hopeless, the ',Aquitahia" did not go into Singapole, but anchored in the Ratai Bay at the Southernmost tip of Sumatra and transhipped troops and equipment to the KPM ;'Reael", vessels "Both", "Reynst", "Sloet van de Beele", "Van der Lyn" and "Van Swoll,,, which delivered them iafely to Singapore, just in time to fall into the hands of the Japanese.

Harbour. Singapore fell!

Many thousands of Allied troops had been captured by the Japanese (including one, Brian Chave, ex-clerk in the Accounts Department of our Sydney Office, who sadly did not survive) and all Allied resistance, except the small Naval Force, had been snuffed out.

Fifteen days later, that, too, was obliterated in the Battle of the Java Sea by largely superior Jipanese Naval and Air Forces and the Japanese army landed in East and West Java.

That was just about it!

There was then no place left to go in the whole of the Far East, South East Asia and a large slice of the Pacific, bul Tjilatjap, the small port on the mid-South coast of Java!

After the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea, KPM ship losses came thick and fast as the then surviving ships strove desperately to reach Tjilatjap. (1 survivor) and "Batak" On the 1St MafCh, the "TOfadja", "TOmOhOn", "Siage", "Pafigi" TiilatjaP to were sunk, while the "Le Maire" disappeared without a trace en route from Australia.

"Le Maire" (1908) 3,271GRT

up in On the Znd March, the "Minjak". On this day, too, I KPM ships, bottled port, were Soerabaia, with .Japanese landforces already advancing rapidly on the lncluded blown up by the defenders to prevent them falling into enemy hands. arrived in Australia among these was the "Roggeveen", in which the Pronk family had in 1922. And the "Sigli" was captured at sea' by her own On the 3rd March, the "siberoet" was sunk and the "Bintoehan" scuttled later). crew off the SE coast of Java (a little more about this little ship captured at on the 4th March, the "Merkus" was sunk and the "Duymaer van Twist" sea. including the On the Sth, four ships were blown up in Tg. Priok by the defenders, "Myer" (a little about the last voyage of this ship later)' and the end was On the 4th and Sth March, came the first heavy air raids on Tjilatjap several nigh. The supply and repair ship "Barentsz" was totally destroyed as well as other KPM ships, floating dock and floating crane.

its deaththroes! Try to picture, if you can, the awesome spectacle of Tjilatjap in

75 Counless ships of all types and sizes - the badly damaged USS "Marblehead", which had survived ine gattle of the Java Sea - other warships - tankers - great troopships and tiny coasters - a frantic and confused "sauve qui peut"!

A gigantic tragedy being enacted against the beautiful, palm fringed shores of the bay, and the majestic and serene mountains of Southern Java!

Columns of black smoke rising high into the clear blue tropic skies, as shore installations and ships, which could not make it to safety across the lndian Ocean were blown up!

Men, service personnel and civilians alike, toiling feverishly around the clock to get as many ships away as possible and destroying everything, which might be of some use to the invaders!

And women and children, some of whom had already experienced the traumas of perilous escapes from Malaya, Singapore, Sumatra and elsewhere, with little more than the clothes they stood up in, waiting in terror for that slim chance to escape once more from Japanese internment or worse!

Then, when the survivors from ships, which had left Tjilatjap only hours before and been sunk, made it back to shore, it became obvious that the Japanese Navy had thrown a. powerful cordon of submarines and surface vessels around the whole area south of the port.

Those refugees still in Tjilatjap, then had to make the avrrful choice between certain internment and possible death at the hands of the Japanese invaders if they stayeQ, or a better than even chance of dying at sea!

Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the Javanese crews of many of the remaining KPM ships, who had been through it all so far, now deserted en masse. They really didn't want to know about this crazy wat between the white men and the Japs and had no desire whatever to leave their homeland for they knew not where or for how long!

But some stayed, as did practically all the Ambonese and Menadonese petty officers.

Destruction of the smaller ships, which would have been of least use to the Allied War effort, but very useful to the Japs in the Archipelago, continued around the clock in a desperate race against time!

Finally. on the 7th March. 1942 - exactly three months after Pearl Harbour - Japanese landforces reached Tjilatjap and it was all over!

Twenty two KPM ships had died in Tjilatjap, including the "Kidoel", which used to serve the port.

76 been caPtured,2 ln addition, 26 ships had been sunk at sea, by enemy action, 6 had the defenders in Tg. had been scuttled by their own crews, 4 had been blown up by Priok, 12in Soerabaia and 7 elsewhere'

A staggering 79 ships - over half the entire KPM fleet!

And there were still 3 lt?years of war to come!

singapore fell The Netherlands East lndies had held out just three more weeks after on the 1sth February , 1942- that much It had cost this Dutch colony - and KPM - dearly. But it had bought priceless time, when the scales were tipped so heavily against us. just to enable the Did those three weeks delay the Japanese advance long enough Kokoda Trail? Or heroic handful of Australian Oigg"rr io stop them a little later on the Fleet and win give the Americans just time to regroup their shattered Pacific lhe crucial Battle of the Coral"nouI[ Sea? \Mro knows? years, let's go back a tJefore leaving the Netherlands East lndies forthe next 3112 heroic events litfle and oo[ at just a few of the more extraordinary, tragic and involving KPM ships before Tjilatjap finally fell.

Captain Let,s start with the m.s. "Myer" (181T GRT) under the command of end of January, J.W.Zuyderhoudt, lying alongside the wharf at Padang towards the Tello" for Europe' lgg1,discharging ruUder forlranshipment to the SMN ship "Poelau

padang, the main port on the West coast of Sumatra, was then already under constant air attack, but work continued, where possible, between raids. blew away the During the fifth air raid, a direct hit just behind the bridge of the "Mye/', damage amidships bridge, chartroom and captain's cabin, caused further structural and set the shiP on fire. and chief Not surprisingly, the whole crew made for the shore, except the captain the wharf on the officer, who Jri tne mooring ropes, letting the ship drift away from off-shore wind. ship and With that, the 3rd officer dived off the wharf, swam to the drifting, burning and some of climbed back on board, followed by the 2nd officer, several engineers the native crew.

77 Between them, they managed to extinguish the fires, but the ship was a hell of a mess - the helm and compass, along with all charts and navigating instruments blown away by the blast.

Fortunately, the emergency helm and (uncalibrated) compass on the stern were undamaged. And, "mirabile dictu", they were able to start the main engine.

Stormy weather and heavy monsoonal rain didn't help, yet somehow, this scratch crew managed to manoeuvre their heavily damaged ship out of the harbour, between other wrecked and burning ships and great sheets of burning oil on the water.

Once out at sea, the captain and the chief officer stood alternate watches on the wreckage of the bridge, while the 2nd and 3rd officers relieved each other at the emergency helm and compass on the stern,

Thanks to continual torrential rain, which gave them cover from the air, they were able to reach Tg. Priok without any further unwelcome attention from the enemy, the balance of their cargo still intact in the holds.

After the heroic efforts of Captain Zuyderhoudt and his crew in bringing their floating wreck to Tg. Priok, it proved to be so badly damaged that it was quite impossible to repair it under the chaotic conditions then pertaining and it was blown up on the 5th March.

What must those men have felt at that moment, having risked their lives to bring their badly damaged ship safely to port against all the odds, only to see it blown up before their eyes?

I knew the "Mye/' from my Priok days and Jan Zuyderhoudt from my schoolday trips home to Batavia. He was married to a Melbourne girl, so the company placed him on the Australian service at various times during his progression through the junior ranks.

A most likeable, good looking man, with a quiet sense of humour, and obviously a resourceful and courageous captain! He was one of the few, who got away from Java - as Captain of the m.s. "Balikpapan" - which served throughout the New Guinea campaign as a supply and troopship for the Allied Forces, as did all the KPM ships in the South West Pacific Area.

The most tragic KPM loss during the last dreadful days of NEI - in terms of lives lost - was that of the "Rooseboom", a little 1035 ton inter-island ship, mentioned briefly a little earlier. When she was sunk on the 28th February, she was under the command of Captain M.C.A. Boon.

78 larger Before that, however, she was to play a part in the dramatic salvage of a much KPM ship.

The ,,Rooseboom" left the by then heavily damaged port of Tg. Priok on the 22nd February. Her ultimate destination was Bombay, via Colombo. But first she had to call at Emmahaven (padang) to pick up a large number of military and civilian refugees, who had somehow.escaped from Malaya, crossing the narrow Malacca Strait in small coasters, motorboats, canoes - anything that would float.

They had then made their way up the large lndragiri River in Sumatra as far as they rescue could, then crossed the mountains on the West coast, and were now awaiting at Emmahaven.

No-one knows exacly how many refugees were crammed on to that little ship there, but it was probably well over five hundred.

The "Rooseboom" left Emmahaven on the 27th February.

on the 2gth, in the middle of the night, well out into the lndian ocean, she was sunk by the Japanese submarine I.59 under Lt. Yoshimatsu.

The force of the explosion destroyed all but one of the lifeboats and the ship sank within minutes. of 40' At daybreak, there were some 80 people in that lifeboat, with a normal capacity and another 50 or so floated alongside, clinging to the gunwhales.

One by one, they succumbed to injuries, sunstroke or sheer exhaustion, while the of lifeboat drifted netptessly in an Easterly direction, back towards the West coast Sumatra.

Three and a half weeks later, the lifeboat was washed up on Sipora lsland, containing four living skeletons - a Sergeant Gibson, from a Scottish Regiment, a young Cliinese wonian, Doris Lim and two native crew members. Miraculously, the Irospitable natives of Sipora lsland managed to nurse them all back to health.

Gibson wrote a book about their experiences on his return to Scotland. Doris Lim and the two native crew members disappeared'

The only other survivors of this ghastly tragedy were two other native crew members, who had been picked up two weeks earlier, clinging to wreckage in the sea, by the KPM ship "Palopo", which made it to Bombay.

79 Not long before the "Rooseboom" tragedy - on the 20th January , 1942, - a disaster of a totally different kind occurred. lt was only indirectly due to enemy action and miraculously involved no loss of life. \

At 1am on that date, the m.s. "straat Soenda", one of KPM's two newest, largest and fastest cargo ships (the other was the "Straat Malakka") under Captain J. Veldhuyzen, ran hard aground on the Catharina Rocks in Soenda Strait - ironically, the Strait after which the ship had been named.

She was bound for nearby Tg. Priok with a full cargo consisting mainly of 6,500 tons of bagged cement from South Africa. On top of that and on deck were stowed 80 6- ton Armoured Personnel Carriers and 2,500 landmines.

Repeated attempts to free the heavily laden ship under its own power at high tide failed, so with Japanese Air and Naval Forces all over the place, Veldhuyzen sent an urgent SOS to Head Office in Batavia.

Among the many KPM ship-support services, was a very efficient salvage operation. Extensive salvage equipment was stored at the four main ports of Tg. Priok, Singapore, Soerabaia and Macassar, while experienced divers were always on call. Moreover, a number of the smaller, shallow draft KPM ships, which could get close in to reefs and rocks, were ideal for all sorts of salvage jobs of this nature. Even in these last chaotic days, the organisation did not fail.

Who should arrive on the scene the very next morning but the "Kidoel", followed closely by the "Generaal Michiels" with 100 dockworkers and several divers on board and towing 7 empty lighters

Normally, the weather in Soenda Strait is reasonably calm, but on this occasion there was a rough sea, with winds gusting up to gale force 8, which ground the heavily laden ship ever harder on to the rocks.

Nevertheless, on the next high tide, an attempt had to be made to free the stricken ship, as Japanese Air and Naval Forces could be expected to arrive on the scene at any time.

But even with the two small ships towing on 5 112" steel hawsers and the big ship's engines at full speed astern, the attempt failed.

ln the meantime, the Dutch Navy Frigate "Soemba" had arrived, giving at least some cover by patrolling the Strait.

As the "straat Soenda" was obviously not going to be freed in its fully laden state and it was absolutely essential to get out of there before the Japs discovered them, an immediate start was made to transfer as much cargo as possible into the lighters, the "Kidoel", the " Generaal Michiels", and another little KPM ship, the "Rengat", which had also arrived in the meantime.

80 Just to manoeuvre the little ships and the lighters into position, free of the rocks, yet able to reach the big ship's lee side, under those conditions, was quite brilliant seamanship! That they managed to transfer some of the 6-ton APC's and the landmines, so that they could get at the bagged cement, then get their now deeply laden little ships safely out again, was little short of a miracle!

There's no doubt about it! The KPM seamen were good!

As soon as the "Rengat" was full, she took off for Tg. Priok. Rather than wait for her to be discharged there, her Captain came back with another little empty KPM coaster - the "Dajak". \Nhen that was full, he headed for Tg. Priok again and came back with the now empty "Rengaf'. He repeated this performance once again, returning this time with the considerably larger "Silindoeng".

I wish I knew this man's name! ln between his trips, discharge of bagged cement continued into the lighters, the "Kidoel" and the "Generaal Michiels".

The "Rooseboom", mentioned earlier, on her way from Tg. Priok to Emmahaven to pick up the refugees from Mataya and Singapore, had also arrived in the meantime and also took over as much cement as she could before proceeding on her way, cement and all.

By that time, who cared whether the cement finished up in Tg. Priok or Emmahaven, as long as it *": out of the "Straat Soenda"!

But what an extraordinary quirk of fate, that this little ship, which was, herself, to die under such tragic circumstances only a matter of days later, all alone way out in the lndian Ocean, ihould spend some of her last hours trying to salvage her much larger KPM sister!

I have never been to sea, except as a passenger, and I have never witnessed a grounding such as this, but even I can visualise that dramatic scene!

The boisterous seas! The howling gale! The creaking and groaning of the ship on the rocks! And hanging over it all, the threat that at any moment, Japanese planes could appear overhead and blow them all to Kingdom Come!

lf anyone were to make a film about this dramatic episode, it would leave "The loss of the "Titanic"" for dead !

Finalry at high tide, around mid-day on the 26th January, the "Straat Soenda" was towed free of the rocks and crawled into Tg. Priok under her own power shortly afterward, heavily damaged.

8l With around the clock arrivals, many other damaged ships awaiting urgent attention and KpM's workshop partly destroyed, there wasn't a hope in hell of effecting any meaningful repairs to the "Straat Soenda".

All they could do was weld steel plates over the worst tears in her hull, plug other serious leaks and send her on her way to Golombo towards the end of February.

Some ships were lucky - others weren't!

The "Straat Soenda" made it to Colombo. As Colombo couldn't handle a major repair job like this either, there was no alternative but to send her on to Bombay, where she arrived on the 4th March, 1942.

ln drydock at Bombay, it was obvious that repairs could take anything up to six months, ?s the hull proved to be even more extensively damaged than anticipated. But they couldn't handle that.

ln desperation, it was decided to fill some of the damaged double bottom tanks with 2,000 tons of bulk cement, which would set as solid blocks of concrete. This would mean, of course, that she could load 2,000 tons less cargo and would roll viciously in bad weather, but there appeared to be no other solution

Via Goa, Capetown, Freetown, on the West African Coast, and Liverpool, she finally arrived in Belfast on the 20th December, 1942. From there, she was sent to Sunderland for repairs.

Needless to say, getting 2,000 tons of solid concrete out of double bottom tanki posed an unusual problem. They eventually brought in coalminers to do the job!

Another six months later, the repairs were finally completed and she could at long last take up her wartime service.

This valuable unit had been "lost" to the Allied cause for 18 months at the very time when ships were desperately needed.

When Velhuyzen had entered Soenda Strait 18 months earlier, he had been following the standard anti-submarine procedure of zig-zagging.

To continue to do so at night in more confined waters in bad weather, with all coastal lights extinguished, had proved to be very unwise.

Veldhuyzen, who survived the war, serving the last two years in the SWPA on a much smaller ship, was known ever afterwards as "Zig-zag Bob".

82 t There were, of course, many, many more dramatic incidents involving KPM ships during January, February, and March 1942, but I simply can't list them all.

There are, however, a few more which deserve a mention for various reasons.

One of these involved the 1021 ton "Bintoehan".

\Nhen war broke out in the Pacific and S.E. Asia, she was long overdue for drydocking as the heavy marine growth on her hull had reduced her maximum speed to about 5 knots.

But there was just no opportunity to dock her, neither, amidst all the chaos and confusion, could a Captain be found for her.

So she went to sea, headed for Australia, under the command of the 34 year old 2nd officer H.J. Van Dyk, who had been acting Chief Officer.

On the 1st March, the day after leaving Tjilatjap, she was overtaken and stopped by the Jap destroyer "Arashi" (by this stage, the Japs had switched from wanton destruction to seizure, os it had finally dawned on them that all these inter-island ships they had sunk, could have been very useful to them).

The acting Captain was ordered to proceed to Bali and surrender his ship there, but incredibly no Jap officer was placed on board to make sure he did. The "Arashi" then went off to look for other victims.

As soon as the'destroyer had disappeared, van Dyk held a council of war with his officers. lt was decided to scuttle their ship to prevent her falling into Jap hands, Anything which might float was secured, So that the ship would vanish without a trace.

As night fell on the 3rd March, when they were 70 miles off the Java coast, the sea cocks were opened, the crew took to the boats and shortly afterwards the "Bintoehan" disappeared beneath the waters of the lndian Ocean as planned.

An extremely courageous act on the part of this young 2nd offficer and his crew, when at any moment a Jap plane, sub or destroyer could have appeared out of nowhere and blown them all to smithereens!

I suppose that in every barrel there will probably be one rotten apple.

I know of two in the KPM barrel.

Let me say here that I realise that it is very easy for me, never having been faced with such life or death decisions, to sit in judgement on men, who cracked under

83 unbelievable strain. That is not my intention - I am simply trying to present a cross section of the whole picture, warts and all. tn any case it is not my judgement. These next two incidents are matters of historical record, and the two Captains involved have long since been judged by others, well qualified to do so.

On Tjilatjap's very last day - the 7th March 1942 - Captain D.J.W. van Geest of the m.s. "Siberg" was ordered to sail for Colombo. lnstead, he and his whole crew deserted their ship and fled inland - probably straight into the arms of the oncoming Jap land forces.

That van Geest deserted his ship was one thing. Under those impossible circumstances, knowing that there was a strong Japanese naval force just off the port, he can be forgiven for that.

Making no attempt to destroy his ship first, was unforgivable.

The "Siberg", renamed "Sumerusan Maru", later blew up while loading explosives and ammunition on the 16th April, 1943.

The one really infamous incident in the otherwise proud history of KPM, involved the 2980 ton "van lmhoff', and more particularly her Captain, H.J. Hoeksema.

This unsavoury incident, which was to give rise to a strange international aftermath, which dragged on for something like 10 years, requires some explanatory introduction.

After the Germans invaded Norway, Holland, Belgium and France, the most hair- raising stories of Fifth Column activities in those countries circulated world wide and grew as time went on.

Now, as mentioned earlier, there were a surprising number of Germans living in NEl, augmented by the crews of the 20 German ships seized by the Dutch authorities in NEI ports. ln addition, there were a number of Dutch citizens, who were members of the National Socialist Bond and, as such, German sypathisers.

I guess you always have crackpots like these in every country.

All in all, Germans and NSB members totalled about 3,000.

84 the doorstep of the lndies, When the Japanese entered the war, bringing hostilities to custody, would exaggerated fears arose that this grorp, although already in Allies, the Japanese' somehow break out and operate as a rittn Column for their security camp in so first, they were all shifted to a specially constructed, maximum not happy - they wanted Northern Sumatra. Even then, the Dutch authorities were them out of the country altogether' accept them if the After a lot of diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing, lndia was prepared to Dutch could get them there. But it was decided not to So arrangements were made to transport this lot to lndia. considered the send them all in one ship, but in ihree separate groups, those greatest security risk first, and so on down the line' about 2,500 The first two groups went in the KPM ships 'Plancius" and "Ophir", of January altogether. Tne last lot were to go in the "van lmhoff' about the middle 1942. High Command were By this time, some of the orders emanating from the Dutch and explicit as they becoming, let,s s?y, a litfle hairy and, in retroipect, not as rational guess British High rhight have been. Not surprising really, i suppose. I the Command in Singapore was not doing any better by then! orders in Padang to on the 15th January , 1942, Captain Hoeksema received tell him who or proceed north to Sibofua to embark evacuees, but nobody bothered to what these evacuees were and where he was to take them. were the almost 500 On his arrival in Sibolga the next day, he discovered that they military detachment to German and NSB internees. He also had to embark a62 man ,'dangerous" 100 tons of barbed wire to secure them guard these prisoners, load *nirc on board and transport them to colombo. ,,van KPM's oldest, she was Now, the lmhoff'was not a very big ship, she was one of all of which fitted out with limited lifesaving equipheni, and she was unarmed, Hoeksema radioed to C-in-C.

The reply was short and to the point - "Embark them anyway"' were So he scrounged a few bamboo rafts ashore and took off. The internees and the military securely locked in a couple of the holds, fenced off with barbed wire detachment on guard. of this third ln retrospect, some of this seems somehow faintly ridiculous. Many in the group of lowest risk prisoners were middle aged business men who had lived and the lndies for years, running camera shops or little import and export businesses like. But there were a few aggressive young German seamen off the impounded ships amongst them" The next morning - the 19th - out in the lndian Ocean they were bombed by Jap planes and the shiP began to sink.

Hoeksema panicked!

He immediately ordered the lifeboats launched and the crew and military guard into them. One lifeboat, which could not be launched in the panic, was left hanging in the davits.

The sergeant of the guard released the prisoners and requested that as many as possible be picked up by the lifeboats.

But Hoeksema would have none of it. ln his opinion, the prisoners were the "eneffiY", there were ample lifejackets and the few bamboo rafts and they would just have to take their chances. Wth that, he ordered the lifeboats to row away from the sinking ship!

They made it to shore, but many of the Germans drowned.

But that was not the end of this affair.

Many months later, news of it trickled through to Germany, whereupon the German authorities in occupied Holland arrested a number of KPM staff and transported them to German labour camps. They also forced KPM to pay 4 million guilders compensation to the relatives of the drowned men.

Even that wasn't the end of it.

For another 10 years or so, sensational articles bobbed up in international newspapers, questions were asked in Parliament, a W article was produced but not actually shown, and a group of relatives and survivors of the tragedy attempted to institute criminal proceedings against Hoeksema, who survived the war.

A most unsavoury affair.

On a happier note, let me tell you a story about the adventures of one of the very little KPM ships in those dark days just before the fall of NEl.

ln any other place, at any other time, this would have been sheer comic-opera and happily this incident involved no loss of life.

But at the time, it was all for real and not very funny at all!

86 The ship involved was the 574 ton motorship "Kampar" - not much bigger that a Manly ferry. She operated the regular 8D service between Singapore and Pakan Baroe, an inland port in the centre of Sumatra about 180 miles upriver from the mouth of the large, navigable Siak River, just across Malacca Strait from Singapore-

As well as a significant trading centre, Pakan Baroe was also the site of an important Dutch Air Force Base.

When the Japs had already landed on the East coast of Malaya, this little ship was under the command of the wiry little Acting-Captain - M.C Motta.

During my priok days, Motta was Chief Officer on one of our crack "Sneldienst" (express service) Java - Singapore - Belawan Deli (Medan) liners.

As Chief Officer on this liner, he was quite an important little man, which l, as a greenhorn, just out from Holland, was not, even if my father was the President Director of the whole outfit.

Motta didn,t hesitate to make the difference in our respective stations in the Company quite clear to me, and I'm afraid we didn't like each other much!

However, this in no way reflects on his ability as a very competent Chief Officer or, as subsequent events were to prove, his courage and initiative as an Acting-Captain under the extreme circumstances of those last weeks when every inch of the 8D service had suddenly become very unhealthy indeed.

So it was not unreasonable that Motta suggested that his little ship should be armed with a couple of decent, heavy calibre machine guns.

What he got was 2 rifles and 200 rounds of ammunition!

Not much use, really, when you're 100 odd miles up river and can take no evasive action and you're siiting on a cargo of bombs and highly volatile aviation gas in 44 gallon drums! The war time equivalent, you might say, of being up the creek with no paddle!

Motta decided, that if he couldn't get proper anti-aircraft protection, the next best thing was to make his little ship as nearly invisible from the air as possible. So he had her painted all over with flat, non-reflecting camouflage paint, chopped off the single mast and covered her from stem to stern with large leafy branches from the treJs growing along the river. As the leaves withered and dropped off, they were replaced.

As the ship's bridge was naturally very exposed and had little protection, he had a special shelter constructed in the centre castle, below the bridge.

ln this, the engineers mounted the spare compass and rigged up a Heath Robinson emergency steering system. They also rigged up an ingenious system of mirrors,

87 which enabled them to see forward, ?ft, to Port and to Starboard from their shelter in the enclosed centre castle.

As a final touch, Motta had a few buckets of tar, cans of petrol and waterproof matches scattered around the deck.

Thus equipped, the "Kampaf' continued to potter up and down the river and across Malacca Strait, looking, from a distance and from the air, like a little wooded island.

On one of these trips, at 8pm on the 16th January,1942, she left Bengkalis, at the mouth of the river for the open water of the Strait, heading for Singapore.

By 1Opm, monsoonal rain had reduced visibility to zero, forcing them to anchor till day light, when they resumed their voyage, despite intermittent patches of heavy rain.

At 6.05am, just as the ship was about to head into another heavy squall, Motta was astonished to see a submarine surface, just ahead and a little to port.

As its flag was hanging limp and sodden from the flagstaff, he couldn't determine her nationality, but he wasn't about to waste time finding out.

\Mthout hesitation, he signalled "Full speed ahead".

Two minutes later, the "Kampa/'smashed into the crash-diving sub!

Motta took off on a ztg-zag course for safer pastures.

A little later, he had an avvful thought.

"Oh God! \A/hat if I've sunk an Allied sub?"

At 8am, he reported the incident to a passing British patrol vessel from Singapore.

About half an hour later, three Allied bombers flew over the ship towards Bengkalis.

A couple of hours after that again, they met a British destroyer, which hoisted the signal "Congratulations".

That made Motta feel a lot better!

But their adventures were not yet at an end.

Some days later, about to enter the mouth of the Moesi River, a little South of the Siak, around midday and headed for the large upriver oil town of Palembang, they saw two Jap cruisers racing through Berhala Strait at high speed.

Their camouflage worked and they were not detected.

88 convoy proceeding slowly At 10pm, search lights in the distance lit up a large Jap South. over, also headed for Next morning, still en route up river, 40 Jap planes flew Palembang. of Jap parachutists Shorly afterwards, they picked up a radio message that hundreds river from the town of had been dropped on the refineries at Pladjoe, across the Palembang and the adioining airfield' listing heavily to port on coming in sight of palembang, they saw a llrge ship They also heard heavy alongside the wnJrr and the Jap n"g flying over the Refinery. to be no sign of life' mortar fire in the distance, but otheitnan inat there appeared the Harbour Master Motta went ashore, where he tracked down the KPM manager, and the NOIC (Naval Officer in Command)' Palembang/Pladjoe, the As it was pretty obvious that there was little hope of holding "Kampar" was ordered back down river at once. learned that the exit channel Halfway down the river, they met two British tugs and so they would have was blocked by a ship which had been sunk a few hours earlier. tb go out the channel and risk a head on collision. "ntr"n"e river, with its many ln the meantime, night had fallen and to navigate that winding sandbanks, in pitch Jarkness, seemed an absolute impossibility.

But they were a pretty resourceful group on this little ship. and worked out exactly Motta and the chief officer studied the charts very carefully at a predetermined how long each leg of the twisting, winding course should take officer in the blacked speed. With the Captain on the pitch dark bridge and the Chief out chartroom with a stop watch, they set off downriver. here and there, but, They scraped a few sandbanks and slithered through the mud incredibly, the $azy scheme worked! nose - literally! Just on midnight, they hit the unlit outer buoy right on the started flashing all Then, just as they were easing out into open water, searchlights over the place revealing a large, well protected Jap convoy' risk getting picked up They naturally weren't too keen to get too close to that lot and channel in a hurry! by the searchlights, but they certainly had to get out of that "Kampa/' was Fortunately, the searchlights were suddenly switched off, before the detected.

89 Slowly, she eased out of the channel, ever closer to the slowly moving convoy, until she was actually tagging along behind the last ship.

After an hour or so, the convoy turned off in a wide sweep and headed back on the reverse course. The "Kampa/' peeled off and anchored as close as possible to the shore.

Twice the odd searchlight swept across the little ship, but all that foliage, that close in shore, was obviously taken for a small island.

At day break, the convoy was out of sight and the "Kampa/' made a dash for a heavy rainsquatl and a bank of thick black smoke, drifting out to sea from the burning oil installations at Pladjoe.

Just before she reached it, a single enemy aircraft flew over the ship and dropped a bomb, which missed.

Now this was exactly what those buckets of tar were for. These were ignited, a colurfln of thick black smoke rose above the 'Kampa/' and the Jap pilot, obviously satisfied that he had accounted for the little ship, went happily on his way.

Motta wisely resisted the temptation to high-tail it for home in daylight. lnstead, he repeated the island trick by day and took off again after dark, reaching Tg. Priok at 7pm on the 1gth February, 1942 - four days after the surrender of Singapore - without a scratch!

The 'Kampar" was immediately sent on to Tjilatjap, where she was blown up just before that port, too, fell to the Japs.

Motta survived the war, was decorated and mentioned in despatches.

It seems appropriate to end this section of our story with the voyage of one of the last KPM ships to escape from Tjilatjap, survive 3 112 years of war in the South West Pacific Area, and in the process, even feature in a well known American film!

This was the 2071 ton m.s. "Janssens", commanded throughout by the tall, thin, unflappable Captain G.N. Prass.

At the end of 1 941, when the Japanese were already well on their way down the Malay Peninsula towards Singapore, the "Janssens", under charter to the Dutch Navy as an accomodation and supply ship for Dutch submarines, was heading for that port with torpedoes for the subs.

90 what Having delivered those, she stayed in the area and delivered ammunition to was left of the British fleet at sea another fairly unhealthy occupation at that particular time and Place.

Although under charter to the Navy, she still carried her regular KPM crew.

Her total armament consisted of two twin machine guns, scrounged from a wrecked Catalina! 'Prince She then left Singapore for Soerabaia with survivors from the "Repulse" and of Wales". personnel From there, she was sent to Tjilatjap to evacuate some 450 Dutch Navy and civilians. At the last moment, a group of wounded survivors from the heavily damaged USS "Marblehead" came aboard, under the care of the US Navy Dr. Wassell.

After the war, Wassell related his experiences to the American author James Hilton, who wrote a book about this episode. This was later made into a film - "The Story of Dr. Wassell", starring Gary CooPer.

Anyway, the "Janssens" left Tjilatjap at 7pm on the 3rd March, 1942, in heavy rain, short of severat officers and 14 of the native crew, and without a pilot to guide her through the minefield off the port. ln pitch darkness and heavy rain, Prass managed to get his shiP safelY out to sea.

To avoid the Japanese Task Force just south of the port, he headed due East, as close in shore as possible. The elements were on his side, the heavy rain reducing visibility to a minimum.

The next morning, the rain had cleared and the ship was attacked by Zero's, which caused many casualties and smashed all but one of the lifeboats.

prass decided to make for nearby Patjitan to land the wounded and take on extra provisions, fresh water and life saving equipment.

After the unnerving attack by the Japanese planes earlier, many of the Naval Officers, realising htw slim their chances of survival were now that they had been discovered by the enemy, sent their wives and children ashore. Others also preferred to iake their chances on land, while the entire native crew deserted, iogether w1h several of the junior engineers. Altogether, some 250 left the ship at Patjitan.

That, at least, was no problem. There were plenty of Naval Officers and ratings left on board to make up a full complement, while the remaining women took over the cooking.

91 Miraculously, the "Janssens" reached Fremantle safely, without sighting another enemy plane or ship!

She served with distinction throughout the New Guinea campaign and was one of several KPM ship to take part in McArthufs recapture of the Philippines, which she also survived.

Some KpM Captains, being only human and under constant heavy stress, caused me the odd headache during those war years.

Gerrit Prass was not one of them!

"Janssens" (1 935) 2,07 1 GRT

92 (c) 7th March, 1942 - 15th August, 1945 last ship had When all Allied resistance in SE Asia was finally crushed and the 3 ll2years' escaped from Tjilatjap, KPM, as such, virtually ceased to existfor office and the ln Holland, the central pur.'h"ring department, the central recruiting naval architects department - gone in May, 1940. - gone! The Head office in Batavia, the nerve centre of the entire organisation wharves, go downs, Dozens of large and small branch offices, workshops, drydocks, lighter fleets, warehouses titt of spare parts, technical and other stores, slipways, stevedoring steam laundry, cordial factory, furniture factory, salvage department, nautical and technical departments, iivestock stablet, norpital, hydrogiaphic branch, ships, with many of their college, hostels, the hotel in Bali, labour compounds, and 79 officers and crews - all gone! in Sydney and All that was left of thiJ mighty organisation were the branch offices Durban and some 60 odd ships, their officers and crews! Spare a thought here for these men. receding in the How must they have felt at that moment, watching the Java coast distance, perhaPs for the last time? parents mostly in Their wives and children now in Japanese hands and the officers' German-occuPied Holland ! under them, who was W1h their shore-based support services suddenly shot out from completely going to look after their many needs, now that they were at war at sea, unarmed and defenceless? of that last frantic Being suddenly alone, oh an empty sea, after the utter confusion to bear! exodus from rtintjap, these thoughts must have been very hard of weeks Then their tong trip'from Fremantle to Sydney, followed by the frustration armed and fitted out and, in some cases, months of enforced ldleness, waiting to be for war service. KPM ships took up But such was the Japanese threat to Australia, that some of these as they were' their war time task almost as soon as they reached sydney, unarmed "Cremer", "van On the 6th April, 1942, barely a month after the fall of Tjilatjap, the ,,Tasman" with the first Heutsz,,, and "Maetsuycker" left Sydney for New Guinea American troops, which had arrived here in the "Queen Elizabeth". played in the New Before I give you some idea of the crucial role the KPM ships wartime shore Guinea ."rp"ign and elsewhere, let's have a quick look at KPM's organisation. men happened when Holland fell, back in May 1940, a couple of top Dutch shipping to be in London on business. These and a few others, who made it to London, together with the nucleus of what was to become the Dutch Government-in-exile, Company Ltd to immediately set about forming the Netherlands Shipping and Trading take controi of most Dutch ships and Dutch commerce in general. whose ships Until Java fell, this body was not of great importance to KPM, most of with the NEI were still controlled from Head Office in Batavia, in close collaboration Government and NavY. Once Singapore and then the lndies fell, the position changed completely. Naturally,-KpM had made contingency plans for that possibility.

93 Broadty, these plans were that half the KPM ships, which might escape, would head for Australia, the other half for lndia. One Director would be evacuated to each area. When that time came, the President Director, my father, A. J. Pronk, was in occupied Holland, convalescing after an operation for a brain tumour. Sadly, this later proved fatal and he died in Holland during the war' The Acting President, A. F. vas Dias, to his undying credit, decided that he should stay in Batavia with the bulk of the KPM staff- I knew "Vas", as he was always known, as he had had a spell in Sydney office under my father before they both became Directors. I also knew his charming wife and their four children, Mies, Karel, Winnie and Freddy. Looking back to those prewar Java days, I realise I probably owe "Vas" my life. When lwas working at Head Office early 1939, I received a transferto Singapore. A couple of days before I was due to leave, "Vas" called me into his office and told me I would be going to Sydney instead, as they were badly understaffed there. As it turned out, not many of the Singapore staff made it through the war, most dying on the Burma Road or at sea in Jap transports, sunk by the Allies. Everyone in the Sydney Office (except Brian Chave, who had joined the Australian 8th Division) did! "Vas", a handsome, witty and brilliant man - and obviously a very courageous one too - did survive the war. After recuperating from his 3 112 years of internment, he was appointed President of the Netherlands Shipowners' Federation in Holland and died there in 1966. The only member of the Vas Dias family I ever saw again after the war was \Mnnie; during our visit to Hong Kong in 1970, on our trip around the world. She was then married to Hans Pasteuning, the local Bureau Veritas surveyor.

lncidentally, the Governor General of the lndies at that time, was also a very courageous man, as he, like "Vas", elected to stay. His name was Jonkheer (Dutch Nobility) Meester (signifying a Law Degree) A. W. L. Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer. I know this has nothing to do with this story, but I just had to put that name in!

The KPM Director selected for evacuation to Sydney was my uncle, R. Pronk: the Director destined to go to lndia was H. B. ter Braake. The fifth Director, D. H. de Jong, stayed in Batavia with Vas Dias. All senior Branch and Departmental Managers also stayed at their posts. The long established Sydney KPM office was the obvious base for the South West Pacific Area. But we had only Commission Agents in lndia as KPM ships had called only occasionally at lndian ports in peacetime. Calcutta was the closest port. But as the need for a base in lndia would only arise if Singapore was lost, KPM realised that would then be well within reach of Jap Naval and Air Forces and therefore very unhealthy in more ways than one.

94 so ter Braake moved in of the west coast ports, Bombay was the best equipped, - and proceeded to set with our Bombay Agents - Forbei, Forbes, campbell and co necessary expanded organisation' up the ,a,^- ?-^-^-^ did set up their It is interesting io recall that the British Ministry of War Transport office in Calcutta, but very smartly moved to Bombay' moved from Sydney to As most KpM ships were charteied to BMWT, my uncle soon where he could be in the Netherlands shipping and rrading company in London, direct contact with that Ministry. in the South West With our 5 troopships operating world wide and the rest either the Durban pacific Area or in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and lndia/Burma, minimum office became virtually useless and was reduced to a bare - London, Sydney and Bombay' Such then, was the KpM wartime shore organisation largest cargo ships London controlled the five large KPM troopships and the two roving ,,Straat Soenda,, and "straai Malakka", all of which had wideranging commissions. Area for the Allied We in Sydney operated the KpM ships in the South West Pacific under General Douglas Macarthur' Forces the Red sea, the Bombay minded the rest, icattered all over the Mediterranean, British Ministry of persian Gulf and the lndian Ocean, mostly at the directions of the War TransPort. smallest cargo ships, ln all areas, the KpM ships, from the largest troopships to the of out of arrvi.g ,*initions, avgas, vehicres ano Jtner military equipmel! to all sorts "Melchoir Treub" in the the way places; to the four KPM hospital ships - "Ophir" and - were to make an Bombay area, and "Tasman" and "Maetsuycker" in our area invaluable contribution to the Allied War effort! "oranje" - was not a KPM (The largest and best known Dutch hospital ship - the m. s. (SMN), although ship. She belonged to the Stoomvaart Maatschappy "Nederl?nd" Australian waters)' we converted her-in Sydney and serviced her when she was in theatres of war' Or I can,t possibly list all the exploits of all our ships in these and Bombay, describe all the many problems we, ashore in London, sydney and setting up the experienced in having them all fitted out for their wartime service these very difficult vasly expanded organisation needed to keep them going under conditions. (The staff of the sydney office alone increased from 40 to 162\. just mention the So I shall concentrate on our South West Pacific Area and briefly most interesting incidents involving KPM ships in the other areas' _,_a:_..^. to fly one thing I should point out here, is that ait xpvt ships in all areas continued throughout the war' the Dutch flag and remained manned by KPM officers and crews of the Royal lndian Even the litfle 1331 ton "Blinjoe", which officially became a unit Chittagong. navy and served as a mothership for motor torpedo boats in But now back to the SYdneY Office. up in Sydney Apart from my uncle, R. pronk, three other KPM characters turned wentholt. about the time Java fell - J. van scheyen, c. E. Kroese and s. same time in Van Scheyen, Kroese and I had joined KPM in Amsterdam about the 1937. transferred to Van Scheyen went to Accounts at Head Office in Batavia and was Sydney at the last moment, in early 1942'

95 Wentholt was the Wharf Manager at Tg. Priok and my first boss on my arrival in the East. Not long afterwards, he was appointed Manager at Ambon. He was evacuated from there in the nick of time together with an Australian Army Unit, and made it to Sydney. But Kroese was the one who really did it the hard way. After a spell in Macassar, where he was posted on his arrival in the East, he was appointed Manager at the small port of Endeh on the island of Flores. \Nhen the Japs closed in, he and a couple of mates requisitioned a lugger, loaded it with stores and fresh water and took off for Australia, which they knew was "down there somewhere". But before that, he had already had to make another hard decision. His wife had just had a baby and as he felt that they would have a better chance of survival if they stayed in Fiores, he had taken them to a Mission Station, high in the mountains in the centre of the island. I doubt if Kroese and his mates had ever been to sea in a small boat before, but they made it, landing somewhere near Broome. Later on, as the New Guinea campaign got under way, Kroese went on to Townsville, where he established a forward base. His boss there was Captain Herman Koning, who had been in command of the "van der Capelle" when she was sunk in the Bay of Bengal on the 6th April,, 1942. SincL my posting to Sydney in 1939, we had been flat out. Not only did we have to look after the regular KPM Java-Australia Line and the South Pacific Line, the Holland-Australia Line Agency and all other Dutch ships, we also had to service a string of additional KPM tramp ships, loading steel and cement in Newcastle and Port Kembla for Malaya and NEl. We were beat! But we just had to keep going with war looming in SE Asia. Early December, 1 941, someone dropped a personal telegram on my desk. I opened it, to read i'The British Air Ministry regrets to inform you that your brother, P/O Hendrik Willem Pronk, has been ki||ed...... " I just freaked out! After a while, t ambled into my boss's office and showed him the telegram. He took one look at me and told me to take a few days off right away. The next day, Joy and I went down to her mother's cottage at North Avalon with our 3 112 month old son. She was exhausted, too, because he had been born 2 112 months premature and had spent that long in an incubator at "Tresilian" at \Mlloughby, and she travelled from Warrawee to \Mlloughby every day by public transport to feed him - with an eyedropper! We slept for the best part of a couple of days, waking only for his feeds and to have something to eat ourselves. No phone, no radio - nothing! Just complete beautiful rest! Then we sat on the beach for a few more days and relaxed. When our supplies ran low, I ambled the half mile or so to Stan \Mckham's store, where I also bought a paper. What I read, just about sent me through the roof! "Pearl Harbour bombed! "Repulse" and "Prince of Wales" Sunk!" I phoned the office.

96 have for a long time! That was the end of our litile holiday - the last one we were to Back at work, the pressure steadily increased. arriving in sydney, Then, after the fall of Tjilatjap, thl homeless KPM ships started more urgently needed followed by 6 more, which n"o escaped to colombo, but were here.

put extra ships, over Our most immediate problem was, of course, where to all these and above the port's wartime Naval and commercial traffic? today let alone in Just try to nnd 25 ertra berths and anchorages at short notice "Aquitania", "Nieuw wartime, with ships like the 'Queen Elizabeth", "Queen Mary", Amsterdam" and others also in port' and We had them everywhere - at berths from Woolloomooloo to Glebe lsland no troopships in port) anchorages from Rose Bay and Athol Bight (when there were Park, once we to lron Gove, usually doubled up. We even had three abreast at Luna there, by taking our had proved to the harbour Master that there was enough water own soundings! And every ship had a hundred problems! They had already Remember, these were not ships on normal routine voyages. unequipped. They come through three months of a war for which they were totally \AM/ll, many had escaped in the nick of time from one of the great debacles of without even a chart of the approaches to their next port. pounder guns on the stern, They all had to be armed - machine guns, HA/LA twelve bridge protection, degaussing, paravanes' for dry Some needed urgent repaiis or spare parts. others were long overdue (we didn't have a clue docking and/or regular maintenance. Sick seamen - wages had scrambled what their salaries or wages were). Some of the officers and crews a hail of Jap bombs - on to a ship at the last moment at ilitatlap or somewhere, under the clothes they others coming straight from a torp-edoed ship with little more than papers. stood up in, sore even having tosi tneir passports and other all were All were badly in need of a break, after all they had been through and or Macassar or desperate for mail or some word of their families in Java or Sumatra wherever. loaded, from Then there were those shiPs, which had been on their way, fully Australia to MalaYa and NEI and been turned back bY the NavY. What about their cargoes? banks and The Australi"n had negotiated their documents through their who were now been paid, so technically"rpo-,t"r, these cargoes belonged to the consignees, in Jap hands. What on earth were we to do with all that cargo? this flood of Needless to say, we were still hopelessly understaffed to deal with instant new Problems! and We had no crew department - we're talking here of some 300 Dutch officers We had one 1500 native crew - no technical department - no medical department.

97 providore and a girl. How on earth were they to handle the deluge of requisitions for spare parts, deck and engine room stores and provisions? Take on extra staff, of course! ln wartime? With every able bodied man and woman in the services? With the Japs on our doorstep? All we could do at that stage was rob the ships. Many of these would have to wait some time to be equipped by the Navy anyway. And those doubled up at berths or anchorages, didn't need a full complement of officers for a while. Captain J. M. van Noorden and his Chief Officer, A. Stramrood, were taken off the "Maetsuycker" to set up a Crew Department. Chief Engineer Frank Bandsma was taken off another ship to set up a Technical Department. A Chief Steward off another, to assist the Providore. Three doctors - Dr. J. P" van Leent off the "Tasman", Dr. C. A. Adamse off the "Maetsuycker" and Dr. J. van den Berg off the "Cremer" - took over the medical and general health needs of all those 300 officers and 1500 native seamen. We rented "Belvedere", a big old mansion at Kings Cross to serve as a temporary hostel cum clinic. Van Leent was the brains of the Medical Department. A stout, balding, dark haired, moody, introspective character, with a quirky sense of humour. Not only a damn good doctor, but also a brilliant organiser. One of my many jobs, was to go round all these ships, find out their particular needs and organise it all. Sounds simple, but it kept me flat out, anyruhere between 10 and 16 hours a day, usually seven days a week! I remember being on the "Tasman", anchored abreast another ship at lron Cove, about lunch time one day and having a quick drink with the officers. Everyone had plenty to say, except van Leent, who was slumped in his chair and looked as if he was in a coma - which he wasn't. A couple of days later, he came into my office with a sheaf of papers. "That's how we will have to set up our Medical Department. Can you get this typed out for me and make a few extra copies, please." Out of that came our own KPM "Princess Juliana" Hospital (now a Retirement Village) about half a mile from where I now live at Turramurra. Mind you, there was no hospital or anything else at that moment. We had to buy a large block of land and get our contractors, Beat Brothers, to build us a hospital to van Leent's specifications. That's the way we had to improvise - and in a big hurry! ln retrospect, it was all very interesting, but we didn't get much sleep for a couple of years and I wouldn't want to do it again! Then it became even more interesting when many of the native crews began to have second thoughts about all this war business far from home, which they didn't understand and didn't really want to know about anyway. lf the ships could have been armed immediately and kept moving this problem would probably not have arisen. The ones that were, didn't have this problem. As it was, it took forever to get all the ships fitted out and armed. The long period of enforced idleness, coming straight on top of the Japanese occupation of their homeland, took its toll on these loyal but simple people.

98 Finally, As the weeks and months dragged by, they became more and more edgy. ship by ship, theY refused dutY. just couldn't see They weren't on strike. There was a difference in their case. They in the point in going through endless weeks of routine duties on a ship at anchor -when in Java Sydney harb6ur, they should have been back home in their kampongs long ago. we tried to explain to them that the ships couldn't go back to Japanese occupied Java. They were not imPressed! ,,Duich colony! Japanese colony! What's the difference?" "Mau poelang' (We want to go home) That was it - we couldn't budge them! from the To leave them on board, oi." they had refused to obey a lawful order no matter Captain, was impossible. What they had done was tantamount to mutiny, how understandable their reason. KPM loyally It was very sad, because simple native seamen like these had served and we1 for S0 years, alongside the Dutch officers and Ambonese and Menadonese petty officers. But there was a war on! It is impossible to describe the dramas and problems which followed. just one or As each crew downed tools, we had them picked up by the Police. Not were not two individuals, but about 50 at a time. As you can imagine, the Police amused. Then they had to appear in Court to face the charge of refusing duty. As none of them could speak English, I rang Dr. Montecone, the Government lnterpreter, for an interpreter, who could speak their lingo. "l haven't got one!" To my horror, I was elected! the Wharf at Now, I had picked up quite a bit of waterfront Malay during my time on Tg. Priok. But legal jargon? in office or on For the next corfe of weeks, I spent more time in court than I did the the ships, and my working days lengthened accordingly' -had been seen ln court, no-one the iaintest idea what I was saying, but protocol had to be observed. Pure comic opera! Or was it? weeks, The penalty for refusing duty was then three weeks in jail. At the end of three back to their ships' I would get a ring from Long Bay to get them picked up and taken and going, So in no time flit, we hadl steadfstream of Javanese seamen coming like huge swarms of ants on the march. We soon swamped Long Bay and every Police cell in the Metropolitan area. And still they came! The Police went off their brains! prison So in desperation, we rigged up the "Both", fitting out at Glebe lsland, os a ship, comPlete with guards. Maintenance on thelhips suffered and their fitting out stagnated. passed, making Eventually - Allah be praised! - emergency wartime legislation was the penaity for refusing duty in time of war, internment for the duration. To everyone,s immense relief, the whole lot disappeared to Cowra or somewhere. But that was only Act I of this drama! none! Where were we going to find replacement crews? Good question! There were

99 The Australian naval ratings for one - Australian Merchant seamen for another' the philippino crew off the "Mactan" for yet another. All totally strange to our ships, KpM ioutine on board and working under Dutch officers. for Lascar Right at the start of this drama, ile had sent an urgent sos to Bombay wait crews. But there was not a hope of getting them all out by air and we couldn't for them to arrive bY sea.

Japanese forces were closing in on Port Moresby! made has been Hence a few scratch crews, and the important contribution they largely overlooked. stage of the NG Without them those ships could not have sailed at this very critical ten ships later campaign, when every single ship was probably worth more than any on. euite a few of the native crews stayed - here, in Bombay and London. These decorated' rendered sterling service throughout the war and several of them were

As the ships received their armament, they swung into action - some even made their first urgent voyages totally unarmed' which there They were the first ships into Milne Bay (code "Fall Rived') for _named coconut was not even proper chart. They just-had to feel their way in, tying up to palms and discharging" onto makeshift pontoons, knocked together on'the spot. then fn"y spearheaded-the forward movement to Oro Bay and all points North and Aitape, West (you couldn't really call them ports at that stage) - Buna, Finschhafen, Saidoi, Hollandia, Biak, Morotai, Manus and a few others' For months they were almost the only ships' KPM' Even twelve months later, two out of euery three ships in the front lines were ships. They also carried out special missions to Noumea, Darwin, Exmouth Gulf and flew Merauke in Dutch NG - the only place in this area , where the Dutch flag throughout the war. and a Let me mention just a very few of their experiences during the NG campaign few other events, which also occurred during that period: o Towards the end of February 1942, not long before the fall of Tjilatjap, the last port in South East Asia still in Allied hands, three KPM ships - "KarsiK', ".s Jacob" and ,,swartenhondt" - were approaching Java with full cargoes of construction equipment and other badly needed supplies, es@rted by HMAS "Perth". With Singapore already lost and the fall of the lndies obviously imminent, the her three Kp-M' ships *ere sent back to Fremantle, while "Perth" continued voyage North - io be lost a few days later in the Battle of the Java Sea. o From Fremanile, "Karsik" was sent to Port Moresby, where she arrived on the ships i SId M"y 1B42 and discharged her very welcome cargo. The other two were diicharged at Australiin ports and were then fitted out for further wartime service by DEMS.

100 o Several days after "Karsik" arrived at Port Moresby - on the 18th May 1942 convoy ZK-9, consisting of "Bantam", "Bontekoe", "van Heemskerk" and "van Heutsz", escorted by HM "Tromp" and HMAS "Arunta", left Sydney for Port Moresby, arriving there at the end of the month with 4,735 troops of the Australian 14th Brigade and their equipment. . On the 17th June 1942, during Port Moresby's 61't air-raid, Burns Philps "Macdhui" - one of the very few non-KPM ships in the area - was badly damaged and sank next day. Her 3'd Engineer was my brother-in-law, Ron Murison, who was repatriated to Sydney in the KPM ship "Swartenhondt". o Elsewhere, during 1942, something like a dozen non-KPM ships were sunk or very badly damaged by Japanese bombers or submarines on the East coast of Australia and at Darwin. . ln the meantime, back in NG, an advance detachment of Australian and American troops had been landed at Milne Bay and had a precarious hold on that area. With their numbers and supplies at a dangerously low level, they were re-enforced just in time by the first Milne Bay convoy ("Boston") consisting of "Karsik" and "Bontekoo", escorted by the corvettes "Warrego" and "Ballarat", arriving there on the 25th June 1942. o Also during that time, Japanese forces had landed at Buna and Gona. From there, they launched continued air and naval attacks on Milne Bay. During the day, these were repulsed by the Allied planes, but at night, Japanese - naval vessels re-entered the bay, making life very hazardous for the Allied convoys. This bitter struggle continued for some time without either side gaining a decisive advantage. The main objective of this Japanese drive - masterminded by Admiral Yamamoto from his base in Rabaut, which they had captured on the 23'd January 1942 - was still Port Moresby. But first they would have to dislodge the Allied force holding Milne Bay. o On the 1 1th July 1942, "Tasman" (later to be converted to a hospitalship), escorted by "Warrego", landed the Australian 7th Brigade, under Brigadier J. Field at Milne Bay. The 7th Brigade consisted of the gth, 25th and 61't Militia Battalions, raised in SE Queensland and the Darling Downs. o On the 25th August 1 942, two Japanese cruisers, three destroyers and a transport carrying 1,200 troops and several tanks, enterred Milne Bay, forcing "Tasman" and "Arunta" to seek shelter in another part of the bay. A second Japanese force ot775 troops was landed several days later. ln fierce fighting, Allied troops inflicted considerable losses on the Japanese and the survivors were then withdrawn from Milne Bay. . On the night of the 6th September 1942, a Japanese naval force again entered Milne Bay and sank China Navigation's "Anshun" alongside the pontoon jetty. o On the 29tn, Burns Philp's "Malaita" was torpedoed and sunk off Port Moresby. o With all these losses and still no sign of any US Liberty ships in this area, the full burden of keeping the supply lines open during this most critical stage of the NG campaign fell evermore on the KPM ships and the Australian corvettes.

"Lilliput" - "Accountant" - and other operations!

101 "RAN 1942-45" (P268) states: "Almost *p6sut exception, the merchant shlps of Lilliput were Dutch. Not untit the final stage, in June 1943, did the first American Libefty ship - "Key Pittman" (7,181 tons) - enter Oro Bay." and again (p281):'remained "Liiiput-itsetf a monument to the fine seruice of the Dutch shrps, which, almost without exception, constituted it's transport side. Their contribution was invaluabte and during the peiod of Lilliput, they were ineplaceable"

Not to forget "Arunta" and the corvettes, which were also irreplaceable at that time!

As were Commander Eric A. Feldt's Coastwatchers, the DEMs guncrews, and the US Small Ships, manned largely by Australians of all ages, from 15 year old boys to veterans of 70, many unfit for service in the Army, Navy or Air Force! These miscellaneous little ships also did an incredible job in NG! They distributed, piecemeal, to every little beachhead, the troops and supplies brought up in bulk to the main bases by the KPM ships. Their fascinating story is told in graphic detail in "Forgotten Fleet", written by two veterans of the Small Ships, who were 15 year olds at the time - well worth reading!

102 Hospitalship "Tasman" entering Sydney Harbour

How many of us know anything much about the day-to-day work of the hospital ships? I certainly didn't

But as luck would have it, my only surviving KPM friend and colleague of those days - here in Sydney - does. This is Jaap Huizinga Bruins. After some 16 months as Chief Steward on the "van Heutsz", he served out the rest of the war as Chief Steward on the "Tasman", after her conversion to a 44O-bed hospitalship in Sydney at the end ol 1942. "Tasman" was commanded throughout by Captain Witlem Eleveld, one of the old school KPM Captains - straight as a die and always totally dependable. He brought "Tasman" out of the Singapore/Battle of the Java Sea debacle and he took her home again after the Japanese surrender and a refit in Sydney.

Here are a few of Jaap's recollections of those days:

"As a hospitalship, "Tasman" was in the vanguard of the Allied push to the Philippines - bombers, naval vessels, assault troops - then hospitalships. Leapfrogging up the NG coast, via Cape Gloucester, to Hollandia transformed in no time flat into a base for 30,000 troops and Navy and Air Force, with an enormous hospital. But stores and supplies at first were very difficult to obtain for 440 patients, the ship's crew and the medical staff - something like 650 all told. Biak - almost a disaster, when Japanese landed re-enforcements on the North side of the istand and caught the Americans napping! Anchored off just recaptured airstrip - still strafed by Jap planes. Moved to anchorage further out.

103 Embarked casua/fies from barges at night - sh,p fully illuminated - Would the Japanese bomb us despite the Geneva convention? This nagging fear always there - everyone slept in their underwear, with their life-jackefs beside them, iust in case. Great many stretcher cases, loaded by ship's derricks - two stretchers to an open crate. Oe-aa flaced in coffins, stowed in tween deck of No. 3 hold. With armed escort, out to sfores dumps in jungte in 4 trucks and a Jeep - worked 36 hours, sorting out and toading sfores - /osf one truck on way back to ship. Back to Hottandia - no escorf - to land patients and dead. Later on enormous invasion fleet assembled in Hollandia. Arrived Tacloban in heavy monsoonal rain - naval battle still in progress in Leyte

Gulf . o Back to Hottandia with maximum number of patients, again without escod. First of a number of simitar trips without a break. One, in particular, with shockingly wounded sotdiers - Japs had stampeded a herd of waterbuffaloes into US /ines, i nflicting ghastly iniuries. o Japanese Kamikaze aftacks on invasion fleet - US hospital ship collected near misg but made it back to the Sfafes. Nearby US destroyer hit - crew saved, except for some, who had jumped overboard and were killed by sharks before they could be saved. o Watking wounded loath to surrender rifles on embarking. o When US CO of Hospitat lJnit thought he would take a hand in the ship's navigation, Captain Elevetd politety told him - "Major, you look after your hospital and I will take care of the navigation." o Then a trip to the partty tiberated Subic Bav/Manila area - Japs still holding out in "lntramoros", the old walled city. . Embarked survivors from "sanfo Tomas" POW camp. The appalling condition of fhese survivors another never to be forgotten horror. . another Japanese atrocity - a monastry set alight - priests and nuns incinerated. . A nightmare voyage through San Bernadino Strait with several is/ands still in Japanese hands. o Another memory of "Tasman's" service in the Philippines - US surgical staff operating non-stop around the clock in bloodspattered gowns.

Enoughl Hospita/ shrps certainty had their own special problems and a few additional traumas as well.

Finally, after the Japanese surrender, back to Sydney for a much needed break and refit. . Sh,p stripped of atl US equipment - operating theatres, catering equipment, cutlery, steam boilers, Coca Cota plant, ice cream plant, film equipment - the lotl Reptaced, somehow, during refit by Nock and Krby, despite drastic shortages of everything at that time, thanks to a contact of mine.

104 o "Tasman" had retained her native crew throughout the war. But in Fremantle, after her refit in Sydney, en route to Java fo assist in the rescue of thousands of women and chitdren from the Japanese pison camps, the maritime unions talked them into deserting. They a/so placed a total black ban on all KPM ships bound for the lndies! This was apparently their way of expressing their appreciation of all the KPM shrps, their officers and crews had contributed to the Allied war effort! Pilots and tug crews joined in, refusing to assisf "Tasman" on her departure with a scratch crew. Unbelievable; it could only happen in Australia - my adopted country! o Tandjong Priok was utter chaos! Trucks arrived alongside half full of starving women and children. But Captain Eteveld's wife and 2 sons, who had spenf almost 4 years in one of fhese camps, were not amongsf them. He gave the authorities an ultimatum! He would not sail until they were on board! When they did eventually arrive, he was waiting for them at the foot of the gangway. One of the boys was limping. "Oom Willem" cried! "What have they done to you, son?" Chief Officer Piet Buechner's wife and two children had a/so been imprisoned in 1942. His wife and one child arrived on board. The other child had died in the . prison camp - something Piet had not known till that moment! Piet was totally devastated! he had dreamed of this moment for almost 4 years!

Again - enough!

Probably the most hazardous and important of the many missions carried out by the KPM ships during this most critical period - 19942143 - was the transport of B Squadron, 2/6 Australian Armoured Regiment with 15 Stuart tanks from Milne Bay to Oro Bay in December, 1942, when the Allied advance had stalled at Buna.

Wth the Japanese planes and naval vessels based right next door, "Karsiku., under Captain J I de Vos, landed 4 tanks and crews at 6ro Bay on the 13th/14th December and "Japara", commanded by Captain W G van Zeggeren, landed another 11 tanks and the remainder of the Squadron at Oro Bay on tne 25thl26th December - both KPM ships escorted by the corvette "Lithgora/'.

Here again, the irrepressible Small Ships had a finger in the pie, towing the barges carrying the tanks to the locations where they were needed.

105 ln this mission to Oro Bay - and indeed throughout the entire NG campaign - it was a most fortunate circumstance that of all the ships, which might have been in this particular area at this particular time - but weren't - it was the KPM ships that were. KpM Captains had all pottered around the countless islands and reefs of the lndonesian Archipelago forsome20 years and were said to be able to "smell" an unmarked or submerged reef - even at night. And all these smaller to medium sized KPM ships had been specifically designed for such waters. Rnoiher factor, which contributed to the success of this particular mission to Oro Bay, was the presence of Lt. G. D. Tancred of the Hydrographic Branch of the RAN, who had surveyed this part of the coast and was therefore able to pilot "Karsik" and "Lithgow" into and out of the bay. After the war, George Tancred headed the RAN Hydrographic Branch for a number of years.

I must include here, just a couple of comments from my friend, Bill Thurston, a young deckhand in "Karsik" on this mission to Oro Bay in December, 1942.

"We tet go soon after daylight, and about lpm were high-level bombed by g Mitsubishi Befty twin-engined planes, somewhere off Tufi or Porlock Harbour. /f ts a funny feeting when the ack-ack opens up on the coruette and you realise, this time it is real. Brief darkness, then great geysers of salt water collapsed all over us! The empty ship putsed tike a great dntm, the timber boards were thrown off in the hotds, chunks of timber and concrete off the side bilges; a black cloud of cinders rose from the bunkers. We had wooden decks and fhese were peppered with jagged pieces of hot steel."

A funny feeling, alright!

The names of many of the other KPM ships in the South West Pacific Area during the war - like the "Patras", for instance - are practically unknown here in Australia, except to those who were directly involved in

106 the NG Campaign. Yet each of these ships played a vital part in the Allied victory. So they should be remembered - they were part of our Wartime history!

"Patras", for example, with 4 other KPM ships, had probably been the first KPM ships in our general area, to carry Australian troops, embarking a special force and their equipment at Darwin and landing them safely at Ambon, escorted by HMAS "Adelaide". On the 13th December 1941, just 6 days after Pearl Harbour. After surviving a near fatal submarine attack at Banjoewangi and the fall of Singapore and the lndies, "Patras" made it to Colombo. From there, she was sent to the South West Pacific Area, surviving the entire NG campaign without any further damage or casualties.

At the end of the war, "Patras" and the other surviving KPM ships returned to the lndies to take up an equally arduous - if less hazardous - task of rebuilding that shattered colony. Some, like "Tasman" and "Janssens", having first taken part in the recapture of the Philippines. But undoubtedly their most valuable contribution to the Allied War effort in the South West Pacific Area, was keeping the supply lines open during those darkest days, when there were not too many other ships around.

Nobody wasted too much time on unnecessary paperwork or statistics in those days, but it is estimated that during the most critical period of the NG campaign - 1942143 - the KPM ships delivered about one million tons of military supplies to the front lines - tanks, trucks, lighters, explosives, munitions, avgas in drums, bombs and what have you. Also about 100,000 troops.

ln peacetime, there were stringent regulations for the handling and carriage of explosives and inflammables. lf you wanted to load a couple of sticks of gelignite, you could only do so at a designated "explosives anchorage" and this dangerous stuff had to be stowed in a special magazine. Passengers' cars had to have their petrol tanks drained before they could be loaded. I was standing on the bridge of the "van Spilbergen" at Glebe lsland about 5:30 one morning, talking to hertall, thin, laconic Captain,Tj.Zuidema, and watching US army personnel filling the last remaining space in No.2 hold with jeeps. They landed these on top of a couple of tiers of highly volatile avgas in drums, revved up their engines and roared up to the front of the hold. I said to Zuidema, "When you think of all those stringent peacetime regulations, it makes you think we were being hoodwinked then, doesn't it?"

t07 He smiled. "Either that, or we're being hogdwin[ed now.' A terrific guy! Like most of our Captains and officers! lncident"ffy, you will recall that that ship.started our Java-Australia Line service in 1ggg, togitner with the "le Maire" - the ship that disappeared without trace after leaving Tjilatjap on the 1st March, 1942 forAustralia. The fortunes of wart One ship makes it through 3 1 12 years of frontline war service without a scratch - her sistership doesn't!

But not all the KPM ships in our area were as lucky as the "van Spilbergen".

There was a price to be paid for all this!

Some ships sustained serious damage and 5 were lost during this campaign. Many lives were lost! "van Heemskerk" received a direct hit in No.1 hold in Merauke in Dutch New Guinea, but managed to make it back to the mainland. Three native crew members dead! Another terrific Captain - J. D. Thumann, who, even under these conditions, had the compassion and consideration to organise - and attend - a dignified funeral for these men according to lslamic rites, attended also by his officers and the entire native crew.

And the "van Heutsz" (Captain F. Prass, elder brother of Captain G. N. Prass of the "Janssens"). At Oro Bay, she collected a 5001b. bomb on a sling of ammunition, just being hoisted out of No.2 hold, and was then machinegunned by Zeros. Nevertheless, she, tbo, made it back to the mainland, but it took nearly 5 months to repair her at the Newcastle State Dockyard under the supervision of my brother-in-law, Alan Murison.

You know, memories grow dim. Fifty years on, all this probably sounds pretty ho-hum. During that time, a couple of generations have grown up, who wouldn't have a clue about what went on then, and probably wouldn't be interested anyway. But 50 years ago - ho-hum it wasn't! Neither was the Japanese threat to Australia. Today, that is probably dismissed as a figment of some historian's imagination. But 50 years ago, one of my top priority duties was to ensure that our m.s. 'Maetsuycker'was at all times fully provisioned and always had enough fuel on board to reach Panama non-stop. This was the ship, which was to evacuate KPM staff and their families, if the Japs over-ran Australia.

108 did lose Apart from having several of our ships seriously damaged, but not lost, we another five in this area. . The first to go was the "'s Jacob", sunk by Jap bombers off Milne Bay on the 8th March, 1g44. Her Captain was the tall, handsome and supremely confident (arrogant?) Jan Jacob Rudolf Hendrik Zomer. Some did consider him arrogant and referred to him as Jan Jesus Rudolf Hendrik o The next ship lost was the "Bantam", commanded by Captain J. A. Bolhuis. The .Bantam" was sunk by Jap bombers at Milne Bay on the 28th March, 1943. The burned out wreck was later salvaged and towed to Sydney, but then abandoned as a constructive total loss and scuttled outside the Heads. . The third to go was Captain Thumann's "van Heemskerk", which had been lucky earlier at Merauke. But on the 14th April, 1943 her luck ran out and she was sunk in Milne Bay, also by Jap bombers, despite the desperate efforts of her escorting corvette "Wagga" to save her. This, Milne AJy'r 24th Air-raid, was one of the heaviest - 40 to 50 bombers and some 60 fight"tr. During the raid, "van Outhoorn", under Captain H. Reinders, sustained considerable dimage and 8 dead , 20 wounded, despite concentrated anti-aircraft fire from her escorting corvette, "Whyalla". But she was also able'to make it back to the mainland for repairs unaided Blue Funnel Lines' "Gorgon" was also badly damaged in this raid, taking several "Kapunda" " direct hits and being r"ion fire - 6 dead,28 wounded. The corvette "Gorgon" came alongside, helped extinguish the fires and eventually towed back to the maintaiO for repairs, assiJteO by the Small Ships tug, "James Wallace". . Four days after this raid - on the 18th April 1943 - Admiral Yamamoto was killed when his plane was shot down near Buin by US Lightning fighters. His death marked the end of the heavy Japanese air and naval attacks on the Milne Bay/Oro - Bay area. o Onthe 31't May 1943 - abizarre change of scene! Three Japaneie midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour and sank a ferry, HMAS "Kuttabul", at Garden lsland. A lot of choice Eastern Suburbs real estate suddenly going cheaplyl . ln the meantime, in New Guinea, KPM's "van der Lyn" had been attacked at Saidor by Japanese bombers and driven aground by several near-misses. Unable to free herself or proceed under her own power, she was salvaged by the CMSB tug "Caledonian Salvor"'and towed to Sydney for repairs via Cairns. My friend, Bill COUrt, was a member Of the "CaledOnian SalvOr"'S CreW. o The next KpM ship lost was the "Cremer", commanded by Captain H. J. Ahler?, who had been on the point of retirement when NEI fell. The ,,Cremer" was not lost through enemy action - she ran hard aground on St Bees lsland, off Mackay, in heavy rain with poor visibility, on 5th September, 1943. you might say this was very careless of Captain Ahlers, and perhaps it was. But in his deflnce, it should be noted that this passage through the Barrier Reef is a very difficult one. ln fact, in peace time, it is compulsory to take a Torres St. Pilot, unless holding a dispensation. But this was not peace time - there were no Torres St. Pilots - the coastal lights were extinguished and unCer the never ending pressure on all our Captains,

109 Ahlers considered that he could not afford the luxury of anchoring to wait for improved visibility. o The last ship we lost in this area was the "Sibigo", which foundered in a cyclone in Trinity Passage off Cairns on the 16th March, 1945 Her Captain, J. W Koster, and Chief Officer, J. H. Koeiemans, were good friends of mine. Both were drowned. The 7 survivors included my friend Douglas Macdonald. We lost many other good men during this savage war, but I haven't even mentioned them. Nor will I dwell on all the rest of the slogging relentless efforts of our ships, their officers and crews right up to VJ Day in August, 1945. For us, far away from the war zone, it all became an endless blur. \Mat must it have been like for these men who were continually in the front lines? I'm no historian and therefore not qualified to analyse the circumstances, and events, which finally tipped the scales in our favour. I've already mentioned the 3 weeks won by the Allied forces after Singapore fell and wondered how crucial these 3 weeks proved to be. It seems to me, that the two turning points, which saved Australia, were the Battle of the Kokoda Trail and the Battle of the Coral Sea. But what if there had been no KPM ships to keep the supply lines open and keep the desperately needed supplies and re-enforcements coming? Maybe we would now be speaking Japanese! Whatever - it is impossible to overestimate the contribution of these KPM Officers and crews during the war years in the SWPA! They deserve the very highest praise and appreciation! Such as this extract from a US Army communique - "Thank God for the Dutch ships. Their Officers and crews gave the utmost co- - operation, working at high pressure for 24 hours on end; we would have been nowhere at all without them."

Unfortunately, there is a sickening sequel to this inspiring story of courage and grim determination. After the Japanese surrender, British forces moved into Malaya and the lndies. Those KPM ships, which were in a fit state to do so, returned to their old home ports. But some half dozen or so, were badly in need of dry docking and maintenance, which they obviously would not get in NEI for some considerable time. These ships came to Brisbane. \A/hile they were being overhauled, the gallant Waterside Workers Federation and a few of their commo mates - few of whose members would have seen a shot fired in anger throughout the entire War - nobly took up the quest for independence by the poor downtrodden I ndonesians. They placed a black ban on these few KPM ships. The guiless Australian Government of the day did nothing! They stood idly by and allowed it to happen!

110 Moral issues aside, the stupidity on the part of the Government deprived Australia of a golden opportunity to get straight back into the lucrative market, which KPM, with some assistance from Burns Philp, had carefully built up since 1908! There are over 185 million lndonesians and they're right next door! As the KPM ships, bottled up in Brisbane, were urgently needed to help rebuild the lndies, we devised a little plan to free them. First, we tucked the "Japara", commanded by Captain Pim van Zeggeren away at an anchorage in Athol Bight. Then we enlisted the help of our good friend Walter Armstrorg, a Director of H. C. Matthews & Co, who supplied our ships with bunker coal. As each collier came in from Newcastle, it tied up alongside the 'Japara" in the middle of the night and discharged a couple of hundred tons of coal into her. Laboriously, we built up the quantity of bunkers we needed. The "Japara" then slipped her moorings in the middle of the night and headed for Caloundra. No tug! No pilot! Black ban! At the same time, we alerted our Brisbane ships to be ready to move down river to Caloundra. It wasn't too difficult for Pim van Zeggeren to get out of Sydney, but the Brisbane River, in the middle of the night, was another matter. Fortunately, all our Captains had been in and out of Brisbane often enough during the war years to know the river pretty well. As usual, we had also taken the precaution of berthing them all "head out to sea". But a couple of these Brisbane ships didn't even have enough coal left in their bunkers to reach Caloundra. These had been quietly collecting dunnage and any other wood they could lay their hands on. When the time iame, all this stuff, furniture - anything that would burn - went into the furnaces and they raised steam in a sort of a way. Quietly, again in the middle of the night, and again without pilots and tugs, they slipped their moorings and crept down the river to Caloundra. One by one, they tied up alongside the "Japara", took on their bunkers and headed for home. They all made it. But, of course, the black ban on our ships remained in force, so that we could not resume our Java-Australia Line service. Neither could Burns Philp. More Australian export trade going begging! About the time I got my first leave - in January, 1948 - after 10 years, including the last two in Singapore, the black ban was finally lifted and we resumed our Java- Australia service. By that time, our Sydney office had dwindled to just about nothing - just enough to service the Holland-Australia Line ships, which were not affected by the ban.

So much for KPM in the South West Pacific Area between the fall of NEI on the 7th March, 1942 and the end of the war on the 1sth August, 1945.

111 Now just a few words about the experiences of the other KPM ships in the London and Bombay areas.

Remarkably, there is not a great deal to tell about the five big KPM troopships, operating under the supervision of the NST Co in London, except the loss of the "Nieuw Zeeland" under Captain K. U. Noordenbos - sunk on the 11th November, 1942, off Arzeu by U-380 (lt Roether) after landing troops taking part in the Allied invasion of North Africa. But by then she had already had her share of the action as a troopship. o On her first voyage, she left Melbourne on the 1't October 1940. with Australian troops for the Middle East o She then left Alexandria on the 11th November, 1940 - the first Allied Troopship into Piraeus. o ln February , 1941, she was bottled up in the Suez Canal for 10 days, when the Luftwaffe dropped magnetic mines along the Canal. o ln May, 1941, she carried British and NZ troops and their equipment, including 25- ton tanks, from Alexandria to Crete, arriving at Suda Bay in darkness - no lights, no pilot, and a number of burnt out ships aground in the harbour. And, of course, a warm welcome from the Luftwaffe. After disembarking the troops and discharging the tanks and other equipment, she left Suda Bay for Port Said with 2,500 Greek, British and NZ casualties on board. o On the following voyage, she rescued 183 suvivors from the "Georgic", on fire and badly damaged in the Gulf of Suez

The other four big ships survived four years of war at sea. Each covered some 250,000 sea miles and between them they carried hundreds of thousands of Allied troops and their equipment, German, ltalian and even Japanese POWs, and right at the end, French troops from Marseilles to French lndo China. They crisscrossed the Mediterranean, the North and South Atlantic, the lndian Ocean and just about every other sea or ocean, except the Murmansk route. They took part in the Allied landings in North Africa, ltaly and Normandy under constant attack from enemy subs and aircraft. The "Tegelberg" was rammed by a British ship in one of the North African convoys and spent three months in dock in the UK. Of the five, the "Ruys", commanded by Captain P. M. Verstelle, was the ship involved in the most dramatic incident . She was part of a 23 ship convoy from the UK to Alexandria when the Mediterranean was at it's very unhealthiest. Between Gibraltar and Alexandria, she picked up an SOS from the SMN ship "Marnix van St. Aldegonde", which had been torpedoed further back in the same convoy. Captain Verstelle at once requested and obtained permission to leave the convoy to go to their aid. lmmediately the "Ruys" reached the stricken ship, she took aboard the first of the surviving troops and crew. Verstelle, realising that speed was of the essence, with enemy subs and aircraft all over the place, launched all his own lifeboats to speed things up.

rt2 Halfway through the rescue operation, the escorting British destroyer instructed Verstelle to leave the scene in a hurry as he had just made close contact with a U- boat. Four thousand troops on board and not a single lifeboat! Next morning, the "Marnix" was still afloat but sank soon after. The "Ruys" returned and picked up the rest of the survivors and retrieved her lifeboats. They made it safely to Alexandria. A pretty courageous effort on the part of Verstelle and his crew under the circumstances. Piet Verstelle, who was a very small man with a very large nose, was naturally known as "nose" Verstelle or Uncle Piet. The last time I ever saw him was when he was Captain of the "Nieuw Holland", in Woolwich Drydock in Sydney, just before she was delivered to the BMWT on the 9th August, 1940 Always a very nervous little man, but a good Captain, he was naturally not looking forward to years in the worst of the war zones; "What is going to happen to us? Who will look after our interests?" The thought crossed my mind that he could well go to pieces, when the chips were down. But he didn't!

-. There is not much to tell about the "straat Soenda" and the "Straat Malakka" either. They ran the same risks as all other ships. They did their job. They survived.

But there was one other KPM ship in that area, whose story is worth relating.

That was our 5,658 ton bulk carrier "Ombilin", under Captain H. Ellens, which sort of got into that area by mistake. 't ' ' '' ' ': j'., i ., ... : i.,.. :::,._. . .. l

i*F i!3r {al"^. I'd} ,i"o ii. *$ ..; t '{,

ss "Ombilin" - 5658 GRT

113 ln retrospect, there is a touch of comic opera about this one, too - something pretty rare in war time. And no lives were lost. When the Japs attacked Malaya, the "Ombilin" had just arrived in Singapore with a full cargo of rice from Tegal, on Java's North coast. Because of the constant air raids, it took just on2 weeks to discharge her. Then someone had the bright idea to send her to Poelau Bintan in the Riouw archipelago, right next door, to load a full cargo of bulk bauxite for America, of all places. Miraculously, there were no air raids. Via Padang for bunkers, she took off for Bunbury (more bunkers), Wellington, Panama and through the Caribean - then a happy hunting ground for U-boats. Ships were sunk all around her, but the "Ombilin" plodded sedately through it all at her impressive speed of 9 knots, arriving in Portland (Maine) on the 1Oth Apr,a, 1942. There she discharged her cargo of bauxite. For the next 6 months, she was employed as a collier between Sydney (Nova Scotia) and Montreal. With the onset of winter, that trade ceased. The "Ombilin" was armed and received a thorough overhaul in Montreal in October, 1942. From there to Halifax. She then took on a mixed cargo of locomotives, farm machinery, heavy artillery, ammunition, newsprint, sawn timber, flour and light globes for Capetown. With the North Atlantic crawling with U-boats and several German surface raiders loose in the South Atlantic, you just didn't make a beeline from Halifax to Capetown. From Halifax, via New York, to Trinidad, which she left on the Sth December, 1942 tor Capetown. On the 12th December at 4pm, just about in the middle of the Atlantic, she was torpedoed by the ltalian sub, "Enrico Farroli", commanded by Lt Commander Fecia di Cossato. The torpedo struck the watertight partition between No.4 hold and the starboard spare bunker, just forward of the boilerroom (The "Ombilin" had her engineroom aft, like a tanker). Water gushed into all three compartments and it was quite obvious that the ship was doomed. As a matter of fact, she disappeared beneath the waters of the South Atlantic, by the stern, within 12 minutes. One lifeboat was smashed by the explosions, but the other 3 plus several life rafts were quickly launched. As soon as the gun on the stern sank below the surface, the sub surfaced nearby. The excited ltalian crew poured out of the conning tower to photograph the sinking. Di Cossato, who spoke English, ordered the lifeboats alongside. After checking that the lifeboats were undamaged, had charts, food and water on board, and that no-one was injured, he ordered Captain Ellens and Chief Engineer T. H. C. Geenemans on board the sub, wished the others a safe journey and left the scene to continue his patrol.

rt4 One lifeboat was under the command of Chief Officer H. J. Scheffer, the second under the 2nd Officer, H. J. Visser, and the third under the third Officer, H. G. Hanewinckel. When the sub had disappeared, the "Ombilin" people took stock of their situation. They were in good shape, but they were a very long way from land in an area where there was very little air or surface traffic. As a rather bizarre touch, they even had music of a sort from thousands of tinkling lightglobes, which had floated out of the shattered No.4 hold. Now, Captain Ellens had done two very clever and innovative things before leaving Nova Scotia. He had specially designed canvas awnings fitted to each lifeboat for two reasons. Firstly, of course, to protect the men from the ferocious tropical sun. As an added refinement, he had had them fitted with a short length of hose pipe, so that any rain water collected by the awnings could be drained into containers. His other briltiant idea, was to order a number of new 44-gallon drums, half fill them with freshwater, paint them white and stow them, loosely lashed, at various points on deck" ln the event of the ship being sunk, the lashings could simply be cut, the drums would float on the surface, and could then be recovered by the men in the lifeboats. Both these ideas were later adopted by many other ships, including a number of naval vessels. The crew of the "Ombilin"? The Chief Officer's boat was picked up on the 18th December by the "City of Sydney" and landed safely at Norfolk. The 2nd Officer's boat was picked up also on the 18th December, by the Argentine ship "Santa Cruz" and landed safely at Recife. The 3rd Officer'd boat reached the Brazilian coast on the 22nd December. The Captain and the Chief Engineer? Well, they celebrated Christmas on board the "Enrico Farroli" together with the sub's crew and a few other nonpaying passengers she had picked up in the meantime. They eventually arrived in Bordeaux on the 1st February, 1943, were sent to an internnent camp in La Spezia, then to a Monastry cum internment gamp in the Apenines. After the Allied forces landed in Sicily, they were moved once more, this time to Bologna. There they heard that ltaly had signed an Armistice, whereupon the Italian commandant turned them loose along with some 600 others, each with a packet of provisions, courtesy of Mussolini. Unfortunately for them, just as the Germans moved into the area! They finally finished up in a camp near Bremen, from which they were released by the advancing Allies at the end of April, 1945. They probably didn't enjoy all this, but they certainly couldn't complain of a laqk of variety in their war!

Bombay no doubt had much the same problems we had in Sydney and probably more of them We at least had an established KPM office to build on - ter Braake didn't. And whereas the Sydney based KPM ships operated in a fairly compact area and were all

115 chartered to BMWT and allocated to McArthur's command, theirs, although also under BMWT charter, came under several different allocations or commands. Also, they were scattered over a much wider area and therefore more difficult to service. As it turned out, their losses were about twice those in our South West Pacific Area and they started much earlier. The "van der Capellen", "Batavia" and "Banjoewangi" - three very handy little modern multipurpose motorships - were sunk by a strong Japanese surface force in the Bay of Bengal on the 6th April, 1942, co-incidentally, the same day our first four ships left Sydney for New Guinea with the first American troops. The "de Weert" was torpedoed between Mombassa and Durban on the 1st July,1942 with the loss of her entire crew, except the Gaptain, G. J. B. Crone and a Goanese steward. The "Sawahloento", on the 14th December, 1942 off Durban, also with heavy loss of life. Others were to follow. But first, let's have a look at some of the strange things these KPM ships did in all the strange places, so far from their home waters. Some I've already mentioned in passing, like the two hospital ships, "Ophir", and "Melchior Treub", which co-incidentally and a propos of nothing at all, together operated our No.7a express service - Macassar, Bali, Java ports, Palembang. Usually, when we had two ships operating a service, they were identical sister ships. But about all these two had in common, was that they could carry a lot of passengers and were fairly fast. Then there was the "Blinjoe", the quasi Royal lndian Navy mothership for motor torpedo boats in Chittagong, with her officers sticking to their civilian KPM uniforms. The pint-sized "Tinombo" was a supply ship for the R/MF in the Persian Gul[ carrying unpleasant stuff like bombs and Avgas in drums out of Basrah and Abadan. She was doomed, but we didn't know it at the time. The slightly larger "Generaal van der Heyden" did much the same thing in the same general area for the Royal Navy, carrying H. E. Shells and torpedoes. She was also doomed. Her sister ship, "Generaal van Swieten" was for most of the time, a waterboat in Bombay Harbour supplying freshwater to ships at the anchorages. She, too, was doomed. All three were to be lost on the same day - at exactly the same time! The third sister, "Generaal Michiels" worked as a Salvage ship till the end of 1943, salvaging ships which had been sunk or run aground around Colombo and the naval base at Trincomalee. Early in January, 1944, she moved to Calcutta as a supply ship to the Burma Force and pottered around all sorts of strange ports like Chittagong, Cox Besaar and Maungdauw. She survived. Actually, w€ had five of these sister ships. The "Generaal van Geen", also went right through the war in the Bombay area and the "Generaal Verspyck" in the South West Pacific Area. And while we're talking about five sisterships - we had another five of a slightly different type - the "PA" ships, only two of which survived the war.

ll6 The "Pasir" didn't even make it out of Tjilatjap - the "Parigi" did - just! She was sunk almost within sight of the port with horrendous loss of life. Actually, 36 of the crew did survive that sinking and were picked up by HMAS "Yarra" under Lt.Commander R. W. Rankin. But when the "Yarra" went down shortly afterwards, fighting to the end against the same Jap force of 3 heavy cruisers and 2 destroyers, all the rest of the crew of the "Parigi" went down with her, with the sole exception of the 4th Engineer R. C. Berends. The other three little sisterships - they were about 1200GRT- "Palima", "Palehleh" and "Palopo" escaped to Bombay. I saw a lot of these three when I was at Tg. Priok and I always loved the beautiful, melodious names of the first two. I don't know about the "Palopo" - that always sounded a bit like a stone dropping into a bucket of water. I was never too keen on seeing them come into Tg. Priok, though. ln those days, they operated a weekly service from a fishing port called Bagan-si-api-api, on the East coast of Sumatra, carrying full cargoes of dreadful stuff called Trassie - bales of half dried fish and prawns. This service - Line 7c - was euphemistically known as the "Caviar Express". When they first got to Bombay, they did a bit of everything, carrying anything from anywhere to anywhere around that area. The first two of them went to the Mediterranean and the "Palopo" to the Red Sea and Fersian Gulf. "Palima" worked the Eastern end, from Alexandria around to Cyprus, carrying troops, ammunition, avgas - you name it - until she was torpedoed in the middle of the night on the 12th June, 1943, between Haifa and Beirut, with heavy loss of life - all alone, without escort or air cover. "Palehleh" had one hold fitted out for the carriage of frozen meat for the military hospitals behind the front lines in the Western Desert, as far West as Tripoli. Originally based in Alexandria, she moved early in 1944 to her new base in Malta. After the Allied landing at Salerno, she moved up to Taranto, going as far North as Naples and wandering all over the Adriatic. This little ship had a truly charmed life! When bigger, faster and better-armed ships were being picked off like fish in a barrel, "Palehleh" plodded through it all at 9 knots without a scratch. The British Navy reckoned she had the best crew in the Med, and this was still pretty much the original crew she had when she left Java - Dutch Officers, Ambonese and Menadonese Petty Officers and lndonesian seamen. At the end of the war, she and "Palopo" made their way back to the lndies - probably to carry more trassie from Bagan-si-api-api to Tandjong Priok.

Even in port, ships and crews were not safe.

On the 14th April, 1944, a British ship - the "Fort Stikine" - blew up while discharging ammunition and explosives in Bombay, reducing the three little KPM ships, "Generaal

rt7 van der Heyden", 'Generaal van Swieten" and "Tinombo", lying in the same dock, to so much scrap iron. A 6,000 ton ship lying behind the "Fort Stikine" was blown out of the water and dumped on what was left of the wharf, while adjoining suburbs were flattened by the blast and the rubble consumed by a sea of fire.

And so on, and so on for 3 112long hard years in all!

118 That, as far as KPM in wartime is concerned, was just about it. As this part of our story started in the South West Pacific Area, it seems appropriate to end it there as well. Strictly speaking, this little post script actually relates to the immediate postwar (after the 15th August, 1945) period. One of our oldest ships, the s. s. "van den Bosch", probably built around the turn of the century, carried what I believe was the last contingent of Australian troops to our fonruard area. But this time, things were a little different. This contingent consisted of 700 Tasmanian Diggers, who embarked at Darwin for Koepang in Timor to be present at the local Japanese surrender ceremony and take over that part of the island. Leading the Allied flotilla of 15 ships into Koepang, was the Dutch mine sweeper H. M. 'Abraham Crynssen". Then came the H. M. A. S "Moresby" and the troopship "van den Bosch", followed by the others, including our s. s. "Thedens". The ceremony duly took place on board the "Moresby" on the 11th September, 1945. At last, this rotten war was over for these KPM men, who had contributed so much to the Allied Victory!

But there was still one more part of the KPM organisation which I have not yet mentioned, and that is our Amsterdam Office. Obviously, they were unable to take an active part in the Allied War effort after Holland was occupied by the Germans in May, 1940. But that didn't mean that they had then just given up the ghost! ln fact, they played a very important role in internal KPM matters and, in particular, in preparation for the company's post-war reconstruction. One of their immediate tasks was to continue to look after the KPM staff, which happened to be in Holland on leave - there were 59 deck and engineroom staff and a number of shore based personnel - also to continue to look after the relatives of those, outside Holland, now cut off from parents, student children and other family. And, of course, the retired KPM people. That doesn't sound too difficult, does it? Well, in peacetime, it wasn't - Amsterdam had been doing it for almost 50 years. But, of course, these people didn't all live in Amsterdam. They were scattered all over Holland, from Groningen to Limburg and from Rotterdam to the German border. Almost immediately, petrol became unavailable for private and most company cars, the excellent rail system was reduced to the merest trickle and the censored mails became risky and highly unreliable. The only way to maintain contact with all these people was by pushbike! Moreover, the Germans immediately introduced a whole series of financial, travel and other restrictions. These forced the KPM contact network to go underground, with all the risks and dangers that brought with it. Two members of the network - a third officer and a fourth engineer, on leave in Holland - fell into German hands and were shot for "subversive activities"!

120 But the underground network continued to function throughout the war, fortunately without any further casualties. Right from the start, Amsterdam realised that the inevitable heavy losses of shore and floating staff would have to be made up as quickly as possible if the KPM organisation was to be rebuilt after the war" So in all sorts of ingenious ways, they set about recruiting and training a large group of young men. Again, that was much harder than it sounds, because the Germans were doing quite a lot of recruiting of their own - for forced labour in the Third Reich. Having got over the recruiting hurdle, the next thing was the training part. Training engineers was hard enough, but at least that could be done in factories, public utilities and so on, where these young men were "hidden" from the Germans. But how do you give trainee deck officers practical experience in navigation at sea? Well, a few could go on and do their theory exams for third and then second mate's tickets, leaving the required practical experience for later. These also had to be "hidden" from the Germans, of course. How successful these clandestine training programmes proved to be, became apparent at the end of the war. Ninety one junior engineers and fifty nine junior deck officers were ready for service in the East - a little short on practical experience, but quite capable of replenishing the depleted ranks with the necessary guidance and supervision. But there was nothing Amsterdam could do about training replacement shore based staff for service in the lndies after the war, except, perhaps, accountants. There is simply no way you can learn how to run a shipping company out of books - certainly not one as huge and complex as KPM. You have to develop a "feel" for shipping, an indefinable thing, which only comes with years of practical, on the job, experience - preferably in as many different departments as possible, like stevedoring, inward and outward freight, claims, traffic and so on. And in as many different branch offices as possible - large, small and preferably Head Office as well. When Holland fell in May 1940, there were 8 new KPM ships on order with Dutch shipyards. Construction of some of these had not yet started, but others were nearing completion. There was no way you could hide these, of course, but they had to be minded in some way. Not that Amsterdam could do much about that. On the 26th July, 1941, the Germans seized the almost completed "Reyniersz" and towed it to Nakskov in the second half of 1942 to be completed. Right at the end of the war, she struck a mine and sank off Kiel. The "van Riemsdyk" was seized on the 9th October, 1941, but not moved from the shipyard until the 7th April, 1945, when she was towed to Ymuiden, Amsterdam's outlet to the North Sea, to be sunk as a blockship in the navigation channel. However, it was not the Germans who actually sank her there, but the Allied Air Force. She was salvaged in October, 1946, rebuilt and sent out to the East. The "Baud", still not completed, was towed from the shipyard in Rotterdam by the Germans and sunk near Maassluis in the middle of the Nieuwe Waterweg, Rotterdam's outlet to the North Sea. Because of the urgent need to re-open the port of Rotterdam after the war, a lengthy salvage operation could not be contemplated, so the "Baud" was blown up in situ.

t2l So even in German occupied Holland, KPM lost three ships, although one was later salvaged and rebuilt. ln addition to the ships under construction, there were in Holland hundreds of thousands of guilders worth of equipment, ranging from complete 4500 HP Sulzer marine diesel engines to anchors and drums of paint, ready for installation in the new ships or shipment to the'East. Most of this stuff, KPM and their loyal suppliers were able to hide from the Germans throughout the entire occupation. One supplier of part of the inventory for the new ships had the whole lot bricked in in his factory with false walls, which were never detected. After the war, he demolished these walls and delivered the goods - a little later than originally planned, but intact and still in good condition. By April, 1944, the Germans were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for everything forming part of the usual ships' inventories. They mounted a huge drive to flush out what they suspected was squirreled away in Dutch ports. Some of the equipment was located and carted off to Hamburg. A large self-propelled lighter full of KPM goods, which had been lying unobtrusively in one of the many canals, was also found and sent off to Hamburg. However, en route, it grounded at Emden, where it was recovered complete with contents after the war. That was about all the Germans found. Most of this equipment remained hidden to the end and was duly installed in the new ships. Except for the 2 Sulzer engines, stowed in the hold of another large lighter. Those they discovered right at the end of the war, in a little canal right beside one of their own army posts! Even at their last gasp, they sent this lighter off across the Yssel Lake (what was left of the Zuyder Zee after most of it had been reclaimed years earlier) to Harlingen en route to the "Heimat". Unfortunately for them, the draft of this heavily loaded lighter was such that it couldn't get into Harlingen. So it was anchored off this little port. Soon afterwards, the advancing Allies drove the Germans out of this part of Holland and the lighter with it's valuable cargo was recovered. So the KPM people in Amsterdam, too, did what they could during the war.

Here endeth the story of KPM during World War ll. The postwar KPM story brings to mind a couple of lines from a Kipling poem -

"lf you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, ...and lose, and start again at your beginnings; and never breathe a word about your loss;... lf you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to them: "Hold on!..."

r22 That's how KPM tackled their postwar reconstruction. But this time, it could not claw its way back from near disaster, ?s it had done on more than one occasion in the past.

r23 (d) KPM ships which serued beyond the Netherlands East lndies during WWll

UK Area GRT "Boissevain" 14,134 "Ruys" 14,1 55 "Tegelberg" 1 4,1 50 "Nieuw Holland" 1 1 ,066 "Nieuw Zeeland" (lost 1111111942) 1 1,069 "Straat Malakka" 6,439 "Straat Soenda" 0,439 "Ombilin" (lost 121 121 1942) 5,658

Bombay Area GRT "Bandjermasin" 1,279 "Banjoewangi" (lost 6141 1942) 1,279 "Batavia" (lost 6141 1942) 1,279 "Blinjoe" 1,331 "Van der Capellen" (lost 61411942) 2,073 "Generaal van Geen" 1,290 "Generaal van der Heyden" (lost 141411944) 1,213 "Generaal Michiels" 1,282 "Generaal van Swieten" (lost 141411944) 1 ,300 "van Goens" 1,032 "van der Hagen" 3,033 "Melchior Treub" 3,242 "Merak" 1,848 "Ophir" 4,115 "Palehleh" 1,208 "Palima" (lost 121611943) 1,179 "Palopo" 1,178 "Reael" 2,561 "Sawahloento" (lost 1 41 121 1942) 3,085 "Sidajoe" 1,788 "Tinombo" (lost 141411944) 872 "Toba" 983 "Valentyn" 2,074 "de Weert" (lost 1nn942) 1 ,805

121 Svdney Area GRT Captain "Balikpapan" 1,279 J. W. Zuyderhoudt "Bantam" (lost 28131 1943) .3,322-J. A. Bolhuis "Bontekoe" 5,033 W. B. H. Strubbe "van den Bosch" 2,354 G. Altona "Both" 2,608 A. C. M. Hofman "Cremer" (lost 51911943) 4,608 H. J. Ahlers "El Libertador" 1 ,713 ? "Generaal Verspyck" 1,213_G. Rutgers "van Heemskerk" (lost 141411943) ?,996_ J. D. Thumann "van Heutsz" 4,552 F. Prass ".s Jacob" (lost 81311943) ,839 J. J. R. H . Zomer "JanSSenS" 2 ,071 G. N. Prass "Japara" 3,323 W. G. Van Zeggeren "Karsik" 3,057 J. l. De Vos "Khoen Hoea" 1,238 B. Poeder "van der Lyn" 2,464 ? "Maetsuycker" 4,131 L. lngelse "van Outhoorn" 2,069_H. Reinders "Pahud" 2,075-o. W. Vasbinder "Patras" 2,065 W. Dykstra "Reynst" 2,462 A. H. W. Crap Hellingman "Sibigo" (lost 161311945) 1,594 J. W. Koster "van Spilbergen"' 3,237 Tj. Zuidema "Stagen" 2,539 ? "Swartenhondt" 5,084_J. K. F. Keuker "van Swoll" 2,147 _J. Veldhuyzen "Tasman" 4,992 W. Eleveld "Thedens" 2,071 J. J van der Starre

Later "Fort Amsterdam" "Foft Rensselaar" "Fort Wilhelmus"

* Chartered from KNSM ** Owned by KPM subsidiary - operated by KPM

t25 6. Post War - The Final Years

For the Allies, the 8th of May, 1945 - VE Day - was a day of wild rejoicing after more than 5 long years of war! Particularly for the occupied countries and for Britain, which had borne the full brunt of it. Some of their forces were still locked in the bitter struggle against the Japanese in the Far East, but in Europe, the war was over! For KPM, it was much the same pattern. The four large troopships, the "Straat Soenda" and "Straat Malakka", the hospital ships "Ophir" and "Melchior Treub", and the smaller ships in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf and lndian Ocean, were no longer subject to constant threat of attack by enemy submarines or dive bombers. And....the Amsterdam Office was back in business! For the latter, together with the two KPM Directors, who had "minded" the "free" KPM ships throughout the war, it was the start of a huge reconstruction job. They were the ones, who had to start gathering up the scattered remnants of the fleet and putting the shattered Company back together again! New shorebased and seagoing staff to be employed. Hundreds of tons of all sorts of stores and equipmentto be purchased. Preparations to be made for the recovery and recuperation of the KPM staff, still in Japanese hands. And above all, new ships of all types and sizes to be ordered The surviving KPM ships in the European and Bombay areas still had a lot of cleaning up work to do - repatriation of troops, internees and prisoners of war, both Allied and Enemy - salvageable equipment to be recovered, and so on. After that, they had to be stripped of their armament, drydocked, overhauled and refitted for their peacetime roles before they could go home. On the 1sth August, 1945, the war in the Pacific finally came to an end after Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now came the real reconstruction. Tandjong Priok, the main port, was a heap of rubble and other ports had not fared much better. The extensive shorebased support infrastructure was virtually non- existent.

As Kipling put it:- "Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;"

When I arrived in Singapore at the beginning of 1946, many KPM men, who had survived over 3 years of internment, were already back on deck again after only a brief period of recuperation in Holland. The manager, Gerrit Stroobach, was one. His no.2, Piet van t'Pad, was another. So was Andre van den Bosch.

t26 These men and others like them did a fantastic job under very difficult circumstances. Equally remarkable were the achievements of the floating staff, who probably had even more problems to cope with than their colleagues ashore. My friends on the ships told me that when they first returned to the lndies, they received a most enthusiastic welcome from the native population wherever they went. Not surprising, really. For 50 years KPM had been a familiar and important part of their lives too. lt had been the supply line for those in the outer islands. lt had been their inter-island transport system, hundreds of thousands of native peoples having travelled on KPM ships throughout the Archipelago over the years. And generations of lndonesians had found permanent employment with KPM, ashore and afloat After 3112 years of Japanese occupation, the return of the familiar yellow funnel, the Dutch flag and KPM house flag, was forthem indeed an occasion for rejoicing. But not all the native peoples were happy to see the Dutch back. The Japanese appointed puppet, Soekarno, and a few others of various races, loyally supported and encouraged by their trusty allies and mentors, the Australian Waterside Workers' Federation and others of the Communist persuasion, immediately started plotting against the re-establishment of Dutch rule. To digress for a moment - the efforts of this mob in Australia and the lndies during and after the war, are proudly chronicled in a scurrilous publication - "Black Armada" - written by an Australian Communist journalist, Rupert Lockwood, one-time associate editor of the communist rag, "Tribune". As a rnatter of interest, I lent a copy of this book to English friends, who were both with the Allied Forces in Java immediately after the Japanese surrender. He was with the British Force in Soerabaia and she was in Batavia on the staff of Admiral Helfrich, the Dutch C-in-C. This was what they have to say about it:- o "ln the first place, badly written. Where did he learn his English? o A completely ignorant account of the events in lndonesia (l have no way of knowing whether the account of what went on in Australia is accurate) [it wasn't] o He conveniently omits a great deal, including the appalling behaviour and the atrocities of the lndonesian Revolutionaries. He fails to mention that the role of the British Forces was to disarm the Japanese and maintain law and order and also to rescue 40,000 Dutch women and children in the internment camps, who would otherwise have been slaughtered - (some were) - by Lockwood's friends. lt was to defend these women and children that Japanese soldiers were used at one stage (See further reference on p301 to Japanese soldiers being used against the Republic!). . p215 : There is mention of the actions of General Spoor and Admiral Helfrich on 20-21 July, 1947. lf I remember rightly, General Spoor died suddenly around October, 1946. I was in Batavia and remember the funeral and by that date Admiral Helfrich had long since returned to the Netherlands o pages 3212331235 : This section is full of utter rubbish! Mountbatten's "motley army" (Lockwood's scathing description) included, at Soerabaia, the sth lndian Division. These highly experienced and "battle toughened" soldiers (including Allan's Regiment, 211 Punjabi) had over 3 years fought the Japanese back throughout the length of Burma and were poised to invade Malaya when the Japs surrendered"

127 They had already fought in Sudan, Abysinnia, Eritrea and North Africa. Allan was at the later Soerabaia battles - by then ADC to General Mansergh. Had there been one single lndian desertion, he would have known about it" There was not! ln fact, lndian soldiers, as well as British and Ghurkas, suffered very heavy casualties fighting the "Permoedas" to rescue camp inmates. Lockwood mentions that Brigadier Mallaby was killed - not that he was murdered in cold blood whilst negotiating with the moderate lndonesian leaders. o pages 2951296: Re Landing Craft etc, and Field Marshall Alexander. He says this is largely inaccurate, if not rubbish! This book is a typical communist exercise - ie. ignoring or distorting facts when it suits. But I suppose a lot of people have read it and been taken in by it."

Despite mounting opposition from the "Revolutionaries", the NEI Government set about re-establishing control of the Colony, while KPM gradually rebuilt it's shattered prewar shipping network, both inter-island and overseas. But with no continuing support from their former Allies, it soon became evident to the Dutch that they were very much on their own. The United Nations' Atlantic Charter decreed that henceforth all "oppressed" peoples should be free, meaning, in effect, that the Colonial Era was at an end. How this noble philosophy has worked out, has been only too painfully obvious over the past 48 years in places like Uganda (ldi Amin), Eritrea, Nigeria, Mozambique, Angola, Somalia, lndo-China (Vietnam war, Cambodia), the Philippines, New Guinea and elsewhere. With an exhausted Britain under Attlee's Labor Government obviously determined to divest itself of it's Colonies, encouraged by America, which had no colonies anyway, the Dutch soon began to see the writing on the wall. The French were in the same boat in lndo-China. But neither were prepared to give up just yet. The Dutch did, however, begin to think in terms of an eventual withdrawal from the colony they had founded 350 years earlier. With this in mind, the NEI Government in conjunction with KPM devised a scheme to encourage the local peoples to take an active part in the vital inter-island shipping. They acquired 20 new 500 ton coasters, which would gradually be made available to native entrepreneurs. During the transition period they would remain government- owned and managed by KPM for the would-be native owners. The response was dismal, only three small native entrepreneurs showing any interest and then only for a few years. Looking back over those years, this is understandable. The large European, British and American companies had always controlled the estates and big business, while the Chinese, Arabs and lndians had cornered the retail trade, which really left nowhere for the local peoples to go. Moreover, this was a time of uncertainty and change - not particularly conducive to completely new trading p.atterns for the inexperienced. Anyway, this particular scheme was then abandoned and the coasters sold to KPM. Again with an eye to the future, KPM merged with the Java-China-Japan Line, based in Hong Kong, or the 1st January, 1947, forming the new company KJCPL. All the

128 larger KPM vessels were transferred to KJCPL on that date. This later became Royal lnterocean Lines, eventually part of the Nedlloyd Group like most other Dutch shipping companies. By then, the KPM fleet of 45 ships had increased to 67, including 13 fairly battered small KPM ships, recovered in the lndies after the war. ln 1949, 12 new ships joined the separately operated KPM inter-island fleet. As a precaution, these were registered in Amsterdam instead of Batavia.

On the 27th December, 1949, sovereignty over the Netherlands East lndies, except for West New Guinea, was transferred to the Republic of lndonesia The KPM coal mine in East Borneo, all stevedoring operations and the Bali Hotel were sold. By the beginning of 1950, the KPM fleet totalled 107 ships, most of the larger ones operating under charter to Royal lnterocean Lines out of Hong Kong. And there were 9 more on order. But this time KPM was fighting a losing battle! By 1953, it was clear that there was really no longer any future for the Company in South East Asia. So, with the larger of it's surplus ships and several newly acquired tankers, it formed a new company - Nederlandse Tank and Paketvaart Maatschappy - on the 30th March, 1953. The general cargo ships were operated by the sister company VNS " (also part of the Nedlloyd Group) and the tankers by Royal Dutch Shell. As the lndonesians had proved themselves quite incapable of operating even a modestly efficient inter-island network, KPM battled on for a few more years in this rather lopsided manner, in the forlorn hope that it might yet be called upon to take over this essential service again. However, on the 2nd December, 1957, the erratic lndonesian Government suddenly demanded that the entire KPM organisation - ships, offices, workshops - the lot - be handed over to them lock, stock and barrel! Naturally, this outrageous demand was flatly rejected. But ever more clearly, the writing was on the wall! There was really nothing KPM could do to prevent the lndonesians sooner or later seizing offices and shore installations by force. There was no longer an NEI Government, Army or Navy, except for a couple of Dutch corvettes and a small army detachment in New Guinea. But they were determined to get as many ships as possible out of lndonesia. And they hung on to the Head Office building in Batavia. Very tense and confusing times for what was left of the embattled company! The next day - 3rd December, 1957 - 34 KPM ships left lndonesian ports with only skeleton Dutch crews, all native seamen having deserted. Of the ships then remaining in lndonesian ports, 3 subsequently escaped from Menado to New Guinea, while another was seized at sea by the Dutch corvette "Drenthe" and escorted to New Guinea as well. KPM lodged a claim for 117 million guilders with Lloyds of London! This so startled that august body that it promptly sent a delegation to lndonesia to lodge a strong protest with the government against the seizure of the KPM ships still remaining in lndonesia.

t29

) Presumably as a result of their efforts, lndonesia finally agreed, or the 20th March, 1958, to release the remaining KPM ships, providing they left lndonesian ports by the end of that month. By this time, some of these remaining ships were suffering from neglect and vandalism. Skeleton Dutch crews were immediately sent to recover these last ships, again, oo lndonesian seamen. Those ships, which were unable to sail under their own power, were towed by other KPM ships, which were. Through all this, a besieged KPM staff had continued to occupy the Head Office building in Batavia, but on the 30th April, 1958, that, too, finally had to be abandoned. The remaining staff was evacuated to Singapore, which then became the KPM Head Office. For another 9 years, a fragmented KPM continued to exist in a sort of way outside lndonesia through it's half share in Royal lnterocean Lines and several other joint ventures. But on the 1st January,1967, all remaining KPM assets were transferred to RlL, thus bringing to a close the 76 year history of this remarkable shipping company.

For me, that is very sad! I think back over my KPM years - of the many good friends and colleagues I worked with, on the ships and ashore - many of them lost during the war. ln particular, I think of two ordinary middle-aged battlers, who were never really going anywhere in the company. We worked together at Tandjong Priok during my first year with KPM. We munched our sandwiches together at lunchtime - we kidded each other - they were my mates and mentors!

The relative entries in the "History of KPM during World War ll" state simply:-

WILLEM BUYS, employee, died 27110143 at Chungmai (Thailand) JAN HAMBURG, employee, died 918145 at Batavia

Six days before the end of the war. for crying out loud!

That, too, is sad - very sad indeed!

130 7. The PRONKs in Holland. the Netherlands East lndies and Australia

According to the Pronk family tree, my father, Alexander Josef Pronk, was born on the 15th January, 1892, in Arnhem in the Province of Gelderland, the eldest son of Lieuwe Pronk and Catharina Wilhelmina van Thiel.

I never knew my grandfather, who was a Regional lnspector'of Trade of the Royal Dutch Mint (assay master), as he died before I was born.

My grandmother was a remarkable and beautiful lady, who was left to bring up four young children on her Pension.

At various times during my very early years, I saw a little of her, when my parents were on leave in Holland, but I didn't really get to know her well until I went to Europe in 1g35 to gain some shipping experience and study Dutch (then a foreign language to me), German and French.

At that time, already into her eighties, and living alone in a terrace house at 22 van Oldenbarnevelt Straat, in Leiden, she was still a beautiful lady, full of fun and interested in everything that went on around her and the world at large. She really Was the epitome of everything that everybody's grandmother should be!

Oma Pronk - 1936

On my arrival in Holland, I went to work with the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Scheepvaart Maatschappy (United Netherlands Shipping Company), Westplein, Rotterdam, and lived in a boarding house on the Eendrachtsweg, nearby.

131 When that closed down, soon after my arrival, my boss, Wim Goudriaan - a friend of my father's - invited me to come and live with him in The Hague, as his wife had shot through to ltaly with her art teacher.

t"vftt

Wim Goudriaan, his close friend Hein Willemse and myself

That proved to be a very happy time of my life and I shall tell you a little more about it later. Wim, although not that much older than me, was like a second father to me.

Yes, I am coming back to my grandmother!

With the onset of winter, I had joined the Rotterdam hockey club "Victoria" and one of my greatest pleasures was to visit my grandmother in Leiden, after a quick beer with the guys after each match.

Wim felt I should see as much of her as possible in the relatively short time I would be in Holland and insisted on lending me his Mercedes convertible sports coupe to make it easier for me to get to wherever we were playing, from there to Leiden and then back to The Hague.

There are not too many friends like that around, and, if it comes to that, not too many grandmothers either! I was exceptionally lucky to have known both.

She would have a beautiful meal ready for me when larrived. Afterwards, there would be a couple of hours with lots of laughs and lots of tales of the old days and the family. Wonderful times, that all the money in the world couldn't have bought!

This beautiful old lady was a very important person in our ancestry!

My father had two brothers - Jan and Rinze - and one sister, Tiene, the oldest. From the little lever knew about her, it appears that she became a professional invalid, spending most of her later years in a Sanatorium in Switzerland.

t32 The three boys all joined the Koninklyke Paketvaart Maatschappy (Royal Packet Navigation Company) and went out to the Netherlands lndies in their late teens or early twenties.

Jan became a ship's deck officer. Sadly, his career with KPM was to be a very short one. He died of pneumonia at the age of 21, just after I was born, and lies buried in penang. At the time of his death, he had already reached the rank of 2nd officer.

My father and Rinze both joined the Shore staff. I would imagine that mY father would have arrived in Batavia early in 1912-

About the same time, an attractive young school teacher from Middelburg, in the Province of Zeeland, would also have arrived at Batavia. Her name was Lucia Johanna Carolina Bor.

On the 4th August, 1913, they were married and lwas born on the 21st December, 1914.

Before going on with the story of our immediate family, just a few words about Rinze, the youngest of my grandmother's four children.

Like my father, Rinze also had a fairly meteoric rise in KPM; became a Director in t938; was evacuated to Australia just before the fall of the lndies; then to London, where he was appointed a Director of the Netherlands Shipping and Trading Company - a joint GovernmenUCommerce body formed by the Dutch shipping and trading interests immediately after the fall of Holland.

After the war, he returned to Batavia. I was then in Singapore. When Royal lnterocean Lines was formed to take over the ships of the Java Ghina Japan Line and the larger of the KPM ships, the Operational Head Office of this new company was in Hong Kong and Rinze was appointed it's first Managing Director.

After his retirement, he lived in Sydney (Seaforth), Switzerland and England (Romsey), where he died on the 14th December, 1980.

Rinze had four children - two girls and two boys - the youngest of whom, Robert, born on the 22nd February, 1929, was evacuated from Java, educated at Geelong Grammar School, and became a Director of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.

But to get back to our branch of the family.

My father was another classic case of "the right man, in the right place, at the right time".

By 1919, my father was head of the company's Secretariat and Confidential Secretary to the Directors. ln early 1921, he was manager of KPM's SingaPore

r33 office, one of the company's most important branches, with four young children, the youngest Lucy, a baby.

Towards the end of 1922, he, and his family, arrived in Sydney as KPM Manager for Australasia in the KPM ship s.s. "Roggeveen", later blown up by the Dutch navy just before the Japanese took the Netherlands lndies early in 1942. Our first night in Australia was spent in the old Wentworth Hotel in Lang Street.

He was just 29 years old.

i -r+ He found the KPM office, between the Quay and Bridge St, closed, the previous manager having deserted to the Wilhelmsen Line Agency" ln 1928, w€ went to Holland on leave.

We lived, for the best part of a year, at the Palace Hotel in Hilversum in the beautiful district of 't Gooi. By this time, there were 8 of us, including our parents, Betty and Peter having been born in Sydney. I have happy memories of long walks in the nearby Pine woods in Summer, ice skating on the canals and lakes (1928 was amongst the coldest winters on record up till then - the last year the Zuyderzee froze over before it was reclaimed) and going to watch 't Gooi play soccer on Sunday afternoons. That year 'tGooi were the champion club, with several lnternationals in their team, including Gerritsen, the right wing and Gorel, I think, left back.

Funny, how you can remember names from 64 years ago, but you can't remember what you did yesterday morning!

At the end of my father's leave, we returned to Sydney via Batavia. ln 1931, my father was appointed a Director of the Company at Head Office in Batavia. We three eldest children were left at boarding school in Sydhey, but Lucy, Betty and Peter went to Batavia with our parents.

From that time on, my mother, who was a very gentle person, was torn between her husband and youngest children in Java and her other children in Sydney. ln 1933 she made a trip on one of the KPM ships to Sydney, to spend some time with her three eldest children. While she was in Sydney, Peter, who was being cared for at home in Batavia by a Eurasian Nanny, contracted meningitis and was not expected to live. He did, however, survive that, only to contract polio, which left him a paraplegic until his death from pneumonia in Sydney on the 13th March 1953. During the last few years of his life, he lived with Tony and Topsy Vermeulen (who had no children of their own), also KPM people, who ran a wholesale poultry business as a sideline, just across the road from where I now live.

With no airline operating between Australia and the lndies in those days, my mother had to wait for the next KPM ship to Batavia.

It was all too much for her gentle nature and she suffered a nervous breakdown. She blamed herself for leaving Peter in Batavia.

On her 14 day voyage back to Batavia, she was accompanied by a trained nurse - Wyn Stott, married name, Weaver - in whose private hospital in Boomerang St, Turramurra "Strathallan", Mick and Tony were to be born many years later. Wyn now lives in "Lindfield Gardens" and is still in close touch with Lucy.

136 peter,s illness was the start of a long sad period for my parents. They took him to many specialists without any success and in the end, to Sister Kenny's polio clinic in Sydney, also without success.

My mother never really recovered, and as only limited treatment was available in Jjva, my father, at his wits end, sent her to Holland for specialist treatment, on the "Nederland" Line's s.s. "Johan de Witt" in October 1937. She never made it, being lost overboard in the Red Sea -probably not that far from where Mick is now based - on the 23rd October 1937.

She was just 45 Years old.

Throughout this whole dreadful period, my father not only coped with his extremely demanding task as a Director of one of the greatest shipping companies in the world; in 1938, he was appointed President of the company!

Here is another ancestor, of whom we can justly be very proud!

At the end of 1938, not long after his appointment as President, I arrived in Batavia to start my KpM career, afteia 3 1t2 year stint in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Marseilles and Amsterdam.

We lived, just Dad and l, in a lovely home on the Madioenweg.

It is almost impossible to imagine the sorrow and loneliness he, as a wonderful family man, must have suffered in that year between my mother's death and my arrival in Batavia! What kept him going was his ever increasing workload.

My first job was in the stevedoring section at Tandjong Priok, the port of Batavia and some 5 or 6 miles distant. I would be picked up at home, shortly after 5 o'clock every morning, when my father would already be up and plowing through mountains of reports. When lcrawled into bed, exhausted, around 9 pm, he would be at it again, probably well into the night.

Some months before I left Batavia for my new posting to the Sydney office, my father went on leave to Europe and while there, met and married a Scottish widow -Anne Karnachan Easson, a doctor.

Eventually, back at work, all the strains, stresses, overwork, loneliness and tragedy of many years caught uP with him.

He collapsed in his office.

The KpM medical department realised at once his condition was very serious indeed - a brain tumor. He was sent to Holland to seek the best possible specialist treatment available in Europe, arriving there just before the German occupation in May, 1940.

r37 Despite two operations, he died in Holland on the 22nd January, 1943 - exactly one week after his 51st birthday.

What a tragic end for such a brilliant man!

When he had first been appointed a Director of the company, he had had such wonderful plans for the future. Separated from his children for such long periods, his dream was to retire early, become honorary Consul General of the Netherlands in Sydney and live out the remainder of his life with my mother, surrounded by all their children and grandchildren.

Not - one would think - an impossible dream.

But it was not to be!

Of the Bor family, I know very little.

That grandfather, I never knew either. He must also have died at a fairly early age.

Grandmother Bor, I remember vaguely as a rather stout old lady with white hair and pince-nez glasses, living in Batavia.

I know my mother had two brothers, Henk and Alexander, known as Sander or Tieuw. Whether she had any other brothers or sisters, I don't know.

I can't remember Henk at all, but Tieuw and his wife Meta, I got to know very well and over the years our paths crossed at various times. He was one of the most delightful,. jovial men I ever met - short and stocky, with a wonderful head of wavy hair and a pair of twinkling blue eyes - a keen sportsman, fisherman and traveller, with a lovely sense of humour.

To my knowledge, | first met him and Meta in Sydney in 1934, just after I left school, when they were on a holiday trip by KPM ship from Java, where he worked for an insurance company, based in the beautiful mountain city of Bandoeng.

They went on from Sydney in the "Nieuw Zeeland" or "Nieuw Holland" - I forget which - to Melbourne and Adelaide, where the Java Australia Line service terminated, then back to Melbourne. ln Melbourne, he had a rush of blood to the head and bought a beautiful little metallic pale blue convertible Vauxhall sports tourer to take back to Java.

138 Tieuw's little sportscar - 1934

Then he had a second rush of blood to the head. lnstead of just loading the car onto the ship in Melbourne, why not drive it to Sydney and load it there!

There was only one small problem - neither he nor Meta had an international driving licence and the ship wouldn't be in Melbourne long enough to get one.

ln those days, you couldn't just get an international licence off the shelf, as you can now.

But a little thing like that wouldn't worry Tieuw. He simply phoned me in Sydney and said - "Hop on a plane to Melbourne and drive us to Sydney in our new car".

The fact that one didn't just "hop on a plane" at short notice in those days or that I had just started my first job - assistant office boy at Dalgetys Stevedoring and Wooldumping at Millers Point, at 251- a week - and lucky to have a job, not long after the end of the depression, obviously didn't phase him either.

So t went to Melbourne - on a few days unpaid leave - and we had a fabulous trip back to Sydney, through Albury and Canberra, then still a pretty raw old, or young, town, with one little Civic Square and nothing much besides.

ln Sydney, Tieuw had his third rush of blood to the head. Why not drive on to Brisbane, and catch the ship there?! Oh boy!

So we did - more unpaid leave for me, which didn't leave much out of my 25 bob! But that, too, was a beaut trip, although I can't remember whether we took the Pacific or New England Highway.

Anyway, with Tieuw, Meta and the car safely on board, the ship left Brisbane for Macassar, Soerabaia, Semarang and Batavia

Some years later, Tieuw and Meta were divorced - they had no kids - but when Tieuw found out Meta had terminal cancer. he remarried her and cared for her until her death.

r39 Not long after the outbreak of V\A/Vll, but before Pearl Harbour, probably mid 1941, Tieuw came back to Sydney for another holiday. He rented a small flat at No 7 Elizabeth Street, in the City, but spent most of his time with us in Warrawee.

He never seemed to eat anything much, but consumed vast quantities of beer! He never missed a single hockey match in which Eastern Suburbs was involved and drowned out all the other barrackers combined. That team, incidentally, which included the Bastows, Bert and Chris Ritchie and myself, finished as runners up in the First Grade to Randwick, which beat us 1-0 in the final.

Tieuw returned to Java just in time to be taken POW by the Japs. We were quite sure that once his supply of beer was cut off, he would die" But against all the odds, he survived almost four years as a Jap POW, was repatriated to Holland, where he rapidly recuperated; married lda, the widow of a Dutch Army officer; went back to Java, where he started an import and export business with two Chinese partners; eventually retired and returned to Holland, where he divided his spare time equally between a bit of gentle gardening, fishing in the canal at the bottom of his garden and terrorising the local residents in a bright red, updated, souped up version of the beautiful little sportscar of 1934.

Towards the end of his life, he and lda moved into a large block of serviced apartments in a Retirement Village in Soest, where Joy and Lucy and I visited them on our world trip in 1970.

He died in Soest not long afterwards.

One really delightful little guy!

Having now given you a rundown on my paternal grandmother, my parents and the' two uncles I knew well, I should probably tell you a little about my brothers and sisters.

140 Hendrik Willem Pronk Born in Batavia on the 14th November, 1917 and named after my mothe/s brother. \Nhereas I was very fair, with my mother's blue eyes, Henk was much darker, with an olive skin and our father's striking brown eyes. Both of us and Jan were at boarding school at "Tudor House"", in Moss Vale, and later at "Shore". Henk had a go at everything, but did not really excel in study or sport. The Shore Centenary Register has this to say about him :- "Entered 1930. Boys Club subcommittee 1935. 2nd XV 1935. 3rd crew 1935. Left 1935." He passed neither his lntermediate nor Leaving Certificate. On leaving school, he joined Dalgety and Co Ltd and was posted to their Stock and Station Department in Wagga, where he joined the local Aero Club and learned to fly. At the outbreak of \ M/ll, hotding a Private Licence, he volunteered for service in the RAAF, the day war was declared. To his utter disgust and astonishment, he was told that foreigners were not needed in fhs RAAF - he was officially a Dutch citizen.

This made him all the more determined to get into the action, one way or another. So he resigned from Dalgety's and signed on as a gunner on an armed merchant vessel bound ior England. ln England, he was welcomed into the RAF with open arms and after his basii training, was attached to one of the Dutch fighter squadrons. I think Mick has his log, showing his RAF service record, which was sent to ffi€, as his nearest relative, after he was killed in a night flying exercise in the Midlands on the Znd November 1941.

He is buried, not in a war cemetery, but in the churchyard of a lovely little church on a hill at Hawarden, Wales -not far from where Betty lived for many years in Sale, Cheshire. To go back a litfle - while still at "Shore", Henk, like John, Lucy and l, travelled to Bativia on the "Nieuw Holland" during the Christmas holidays - no airlines in those days. lt was on one of these trips that he met the Markells and, of course, Joy Murison. At that time, I was still in Europe. ln fact, I was the last of all to meet Joy and the Markells, when I was posted to the Sydney office. Despite the 7 year difference in their ages - the wrong way - Henk and Joy believed themselves to be in love and presumably had ideas of marriage some time in the future. This is not as silly as it sounds, all these years later. Henk had a most sincere and endearing quality about him and was very good looking. Everybody, male and female, liked Henk. However, that was not to be.

r4t Jan Pronk Born in Batavia on the 12th March, 1919 Named, of course, after my father's brother, who died in Penang just after I was born. With brown hair, blue eyes and a stocky build, he rather resembled Tieuw and had much the same outgoing nature and the same love of sport. Not much of a student, he excelled at football, played inside centre for the Shore 1st XV for two years and in 1936 was selected for the Combined GPS 1st XV. After that match, the Sports writers hailed him as a coming star, with the potential to play for Australia. He was also a good cricketer and \ /as awarded Shore Cricket Colours in 1936, when he was wicket keeper for the 1st Xl. He left school at the end of that year. Because there was, in those days, no air service between Australia and the Netherlands lndies, we had to make other arrangements for the May and September school holidays. On one of our Christmas trips home to Java on the ss. "Nieuw Holland", we had met Mrs. Una Falkiner, wife of Otway Falkiner, then head of the family grazing company, F. S. Falkiner & Co., with extensive properties in the Riverina. At her invitation, we spent the short holidays at the Falkiner family homestead "Widgiewa" - otherwise known as "Boonoke North", not very far from Urana on the branch line from Narrandera, for several years. Otway Falkiner didn't take kindly to having his homestead cluttered up with a lot of useless schoolkids, so we were sent out, immediately on arrival, with the jackeroos, to help with the usual jobs of fencing, shifting stock, crutching, castrating, dipping, etc. And this, the smallest of the Falkiner properties, was 60,000 acres, so there was always plenty of work. We loved it all! lf we didn't have an innate love of the bush born in us, years at "Tudor House" at Moss Vale, Christmas holidays with our parents in the beautiful Southern Highlands, before they went back to Java, and the working holidays at "Widgiewa", certainly instilled it into us. So when John left school, he got a job as a jackeroo on one of the other Falkiner properties - "Boonoke", near Deniliquin. After 2 or 3 years at "Boonoke", he felt he was about due for promotion to Overseer on one of the properties. But there seemed to be an endless supply of Falkiners and they were the ones who got these jobs. ln the end John got fed up with this and quit. With my father's help, he then got a job with the Anglo Dutch Tea Estates at Soebang, in the West Java mountains, around the end of 1940learly 1941. This proved to be a disastrous move, as the Japs entered the war with their attack on Pearl Harbour on the 7th December 1941 and at once moved on Malaya and the lndies. John was called up for military service in the NEI army and when Java fell at the end of February 1942, he was taken POW. From Java, he was sent to the Burma railway and from there to the coal mines in Japan. Having survived all that, he was eventually repatriated to Brisbane in 1946. There he married Joan Margaret Foley on the 31st August, 1946.

142 From Brisbane, they came to Sydney, where John drifted into the motor business. His first venture in this field was in partnership with two locals - Heaton and Marles - rrCrr who ran a little hole-in-the-wall garage with a class Renault franchise on the Pacific Highway at North SYdneY. Despite his 4 years as a Jap POW, John had plenty of get up and go and it was not long before he managed to get himself a GMH franchise at Bulahdelah, north of Newcastle. Even as a kid, he was a real wheeler-dealer. When we got our weekly pocket money of threepence, Henk and I would buy threepenny icecreams, which would be gone in a couple of minutes, but John would come out of the shop with a big bag of 8-a- penny lollies like all day suckers, which would last him for days! He obviously applied the same approach to business. He never missed a trick. No more time for frivolous nonsense like sport! From Bulahdelah, he moved to a better GMH franchise at Springwood in the Blue Mountains and from there to an '4" class GMH franchise in Dubbo. For a change, luck was with him. He struck a series of wonderful years. Wool and wheat prices skyrocketed and the cockies were awash with money, which they were only too pleased to spend on new cars, farm machinery and knicknacks like chainsaws and other power tools, which John was only too pleased to sell them. The fact that he and Joan never had any kids to educate, also helped considerably. Besides being relieved of Education expenses and everything else that goes with raising a family, Joan was able to work full time in the business. After a few years in Dubbo, they retired to the lsle of Capri on the Gold Coast, probably with the first bob he ever made on his return to Australia. And there they sat for many years. They never went for trips, either in Australia or overseas.

They subsequently moved to 77 Canal Rd, in Ballina, where, I believe, Joan had a sister, and where they still live. Sadly, John has lost the sight of one eye through glaucoma and the other is on the way out as well. We don't get to see each other too often these days. But we keep in touch by phone.

t43 Lucia Johanna Carolina Pronk Born in Batavia on the 28th April 1921. Named after my mother. Lucy was still a baby when we arrived in Australia, and grew up, like her 3 older brothers, in the Mosman/Clifton Gardens area. When my father was appointed a Director of KPM and my parents had to return to Batavia, Lucy went with them, along with Betty and Peter, while we three eldest boys remained as boarders at "Shore". ln 1934, my parents went to Holland for 6 months leave, again taking Lucy, Betty and Peter with them. After returning to Batavia, Lucy went on to Sydney where she was enrolled at "Abbotsleigh" as a boarder. ln 1937, she passed her lntermediate Certificate and left school. From there, to Switzerland early in 1938 to enter the "Pierremont" Finishing School for Girls in Lausanne. At the end of 1938, Lucy enrolled at a teaching hospital for specialised children's nursing in Geneva. She completed that course at the end of 1939. Early in 1940 she left Europe to return to Batavia, but never reached it. My father had collapsed in Batavia and was on his way to Europe for Specialist treatment. Lucy left the Eastbound mail steamer at Medan, in Sumatra and joined the mail steamer carrying my father in the opposite direction. By the time they reached Holland and my father had had his (first) operation, the German invasion was obviously imminent. Lucy left Holland on the z7thAprit, 1940, less than two weeks before the Germans actually invaded the country. She travelled by train to Genoa, where she joined yet another Java bound mail steamer, connecting with a KPM steamer, bound for Sydney. By the time she arrived in Sydney, I was to all intents and purposes, the head of the family. Neither of us had any money - I was on a very low starting salary with KPM, and was married on the 29th June, 1940 - so Lucy had to find a job in a hurry. Her first job was with a Wahroonga family - the Draffins. Her next job was with a Cronulla family - the Kopsens. Mr. Kopsen was a ships chandler, a friend of our parents and a supplier to the KPM ships. It was while she was working for the Kopsens, that she met Donald Stanley Mc Connell. On the 18th June, 1941, they were married, with the consent of the acting head of our family - me! They had three sons - John, Philip and Grahame - and one daughter - Anne. Don died of cancer on the 16th January, 1967, not long after Joy and I had gone to New Guinea, where I had just taken up the job of Shipping Superintendent for Burns Philp (NG) Ltd. Joy flew back to Sydney from Port Moresby to attend Don's funeral. Sadly, Lucy never remarried.

t44 Betty Pronk Born 3rd February, 1924 in Mosman hospital. Good at swimming, diving and riding. Fond of animals, flowers and Plants.

Went to live in Java in 1931, a most magical place to be a child. Much excitement when the three boys came home for Christmas, although I must admit to being quite frightened of them. They were so big and teased me constantly.

Life was exciting and we had every kind of animal from ducks to rabbits, birds in a very large aviary, cats, tropical fish, dogs and a little Timor pony with a mind of his own. Lucy and i always had jars of stick insect eggs hatching and caterpillars waiting to turn into butterflies.

Daddy grew beautiful orchids, his only hobby. When our mother took Peter to Australia in 1935 and Lucy was sent to boarding school I stayed with Daddy in Java. He decided I should swim in the 1940 Olympics and I spent countless hours doing laps at Mang arai swimming pool under the watchful eye of the instructor. However the war put paid to that.

We had a house in the Poentjak where I spent wonderful weekends walking my dog in the tea plantation nearby and in the jungle behind our house. lt was full of little creatures and orchids - a great place for exploring, and completely safe in those days.

Came back to Australia, Christmas 1937, and I lived with Topsy, Tony and Peter in Wahroonga, where I had a horse. I went as a day girl to PLC Pymble. The discipline came as a rude shock after my life in Java and I didn't like school much, except for the sports. Won some prizes for swimming and diving, and I just scraped through the lntermediate. Left school in 1940 and did about 6 months nursing at price Alfred Hospital but nursing was not for me. Did baby nursing and then went to live with the McConnells in Cronulla helping Bet look after her twins in 1942.

Joined the Dutch Army towards the end of VVlA/ll and went to Camp Colombia in Brisbane to learn to salute! Came back to Sydney for a time.

Went to Colombo early in 1945 on the s.s. "Maloja" with 6 Dutch nurses and 27 Dutch officers. The rest of the ship was full of Australian and English soldiers. Stayed in Ceylon about 6 weeks, very interesting and a beautiful place to see. Then on to Singapore by Sunderland flying boat. The only time I have gone to bed on a plane. We helped get breakfast the next morning before landing in Singapore. From there the nurses and I flew to Padang in a Dakota, which was very exciting as one engine caught fire! lt was very strange to see Japanese soldiers walking around but we were very glad to have them look after us as soon as the lndonesian uprising got underway and the Japanese guarded the hospital and escorted us back and forth to our living quarters. We were very popular as nobody had seen such healthy girls for a very long time. We lived in a lovely bungalow but the first day we hung our washing on the line, an enormous wild pig emerged from the overgrown garden and pulled it down. I got a soldier to shoot it and a Chinese to cook it and we had a party

r45 for some of the Dutch people still living in the camps. The hospital was a sad sight, I worked in the TB wards and there were no medicines yet and not a great deal we could do for the very ill patients.

Met and married Tom Price, War Correspondent, on board HMS "Persimmon" in Padang, 16th October, 1945. Went to Singapore while Lou was there. lt was a great time - everyone happy the war had ended.

Returned to Sydney where Tom worked for the Wool Board making instructional films. Did many country trips in and around Dubbo.

Went to Canada, via England and Europe early 1954. Tom worked for CBC Television in Toronto. We enjoyed our stay there and saw as much as possible of the country.

Went to live in England in 1957 where Tom worked for Granada Television as a cameraman and then head of the Camera Department. We loved living in England - it was so small and easy to explore. Did many trips to Europe and loved it all, especially Holland, seeing where our parents came from.

Tom died on the 26th April, 1985 and I returned to Sydney 30th June, 1986 to live with Lou at St lves.

Looked after Peta Hammill and then Catherine and Suzy Downing.

Met Burn again. We were engaged when I was 20. We were married on 26th November 1988 at the Kings School. We now live in Wahroonga, which looks exactly the same as it did when I went to school.

There have been sad times in the Pronk fami[, as with all families, but there has been a lot of excitement and much fun as well.

(Mrs. Betty Underwood, nee Pronk)

r46 Peter Pronk Born 27thApril 1928 at Mosman hospital. A kind, always happy person in spite of his handicap. Went to Java where he caught polio in 1933 or 1934. Went to Holland with our parents, Lucy and Betty, for medical treatment. Also to Sister Kenny in Brisbane in 1935, where he enjoyed the company of other, similar children, but nothing could be done for him and he never walked again.

He lived with Topsy, Tony and Betty in Wahroonga and had private lessons at home. He was extremely clever and did most of Betty's homework while she went riding. He had lots of friends who came to play every afternoon and could get around in his wheel chair as fast as they could run. He enjoyed going to the movies on Saturday afternoon with Betty.

When he was old enough he got a driving licence and helped Tony with the poultry farm. He bought a delivery van specially fitted out to enable him to drive it, and delivered the poultry to restaurants all over Sydney and made many friends.

On the weekend he filled the van with neighbourhood children and took them for picnics to Bobbin Head. They all loved him very much. He later bought a Morris Minor and joined a Club for disabled motorists. They used to meet at a small abandoned airstrip where they held all kinds of trials. Peter could fling his car around better than most and won many events. He loved it all and lived life to the full.

Sadly he died in 1952 at the early age of 24 from pneumonia.

r47 Lieuwe Pronk Born in Batavia, Java, on the 21st December 1914. Eldest son of Alexander Josef Pronk and Lucia Johanna Carolina Pronk (nee Bor). Named after my paternal grandfather. ln 1921, my father was appointed KPM Manager in Singapore. A year later, he was appointed Sydney Manager. My brothers, Henk & Jan (now John), my elder sister Lucia Johanna Carolina (now Lucy) and I had been born in Batavia. My younger sister Betty and youngest brother, Peter were to be born in Sydney. I attended Mosman Preparatory School in 1922123 and Tudor House in Moss Vale as a boarder from 1924 to 1928. Towards the end of 1928, my father took the family to Holland for 6 months on his Long Service Leave, returning to Sydney mid 1929. Term 2 of 1929,1 spent at Barker College, transferring to Sydney Church of England Grammar School for term 3. I left "Shore" at the end of 1933: in all, 8 years at Boarding School. ln the meantime - in 1931 - my father had been appointed a Director of KPM at the Company's Head Office in Batavia. Henk, John and I remained at Boarding School in Sydney - the three youngest children went to Batavia with our parents. With no airlines in those days, we three spent our May and September holidays at "Widgiewo", near Urana, in the Riverina - one of the properties owned by the Falkiner family. During the Christmas holidays, w€ travelled to Batavia and back on KPM's "Nieuw Holland". This gave us just 10 days at home.

I failed my Leaving Certificate at the end of 1933, but with a little intensive coaching and a lot of heavy swotting, passed the Matriculation Exam early 1934. Stupidly, I declined my father's offer of tertiary education and went to work with Dalgety & Co Ltd (KPM's Sydney stevedores) instead. Some 12 months later, I metWim Goudriaan, a Directorof the Holland Australia Line, for which KPM were the Sydney Agents. He offered me the opportunity to spend two or three years in Europe as a Volontair - a sort of unpaid office apprentice. With my father's approval, I accepted. ln April 1935, I left Sydney for Rotterdam in the Holland Australia Line's m.s. "Aagtekerk" via Melbourne, Suez, Port Said, Algiers, Bordeaux, Dunkirk and Antwerp.

After some 12 months in the HAL office in Rotterdam, during which time I relearnt my forgotten Dutch, I moved on to Hamburg for a year, working in the office of H. W. Pott and Koerner, the HAL Agents, and learning German. Then a year in the office of Ruys and Co., the Marseilles Agents for a number of Dutch Shipping Companies, learning French. With a sound knowledge of 4 languages and 3 years of all round shipping experience, my father considered me good enough to join KPM. I joined KPM in Amsterdam mid 1938. Three months later I was on my way to the East in the Rotterdam Lloyd Liner s.s. "Slamat".

My first KPM posting was to the Stevedoring Department at Tandjong Priok, the port of Batavia.

r48 After 6 or 7 months there, I was transferred to the Outward Freight Department for another 6 months, then to the Overseas Services Department at Head Office in Batavia. Just a few months later, I was transferred to KPM's Sydney Office, where I was to remain throughout the war. On the zgth June, 1940, I married Joyce Evelyn Agnes Murison - undoubtedly the best thing I ever did, or was ever to do in the future. s

Joy

Our eldest son, Lieuwe Alexander (Mick) was born on the 14th August 1941, our second son, Anthonie, on the 28th September, 1943, and our third son, Hendrik Ross, on the 31st August 1945. Early 1946 I was transferred again, this time to Singapore, then still under British Miltary-2 Command. Atler years in Singapore, and almost 10 years with KPM all told, I was finally granted my first leave, which I spent with my family in Sydney. Even then, my leave was interrupted for some 6 months, when I was appointed acting Assistant Manager of the Sydney Office, responsible for re-establishing KPM's prewir Australian and New Zealand services, which had not been resumed earlier due to pro-lndonesian lndependence Union black bans. At the end of this spell in the Sydney Office and the rest of my leave, lwas transferred to the Traffic Department at Head Office in Batavia, in charge of KPM's 30 or 40 vessels operating on Tramp basis, as distinct from regular Liner Services.

149 As conditions in the lndies were then quite chaotic and not safe for women and children, I had left my family in Sydney. After 12 months in Batavia, it was quite obvious to me that the days of the Dutch in this colony they had founded 350 years earlier, were numbered. I resigned from KPM and returned to Sydney in 1950 to rejoin my family. As senior shipping jobs were few and far between, I spent the next 10 years rna variety of other jobs. No doubt one or other of these would eventually have led somewhere, but the pay was poor, compared to Eastern salaries, and after 17 years in shipping, I found it virtually impossible to derive any satisfaction in these other fields. We even bought a sub-news and mixed business on Dee Why Beach, which I ran for 4 years with my cousin Henk Bor, who had come out to Australia in the early fifties. Joy established a good little business designing and making good quality doll's dresses for stores like David Jones. She also started a Doll Hospital, both of which she ran from home. As her business grew, she took on several piecework machinists, also working in their respective homes. These were very difficult years, but thanks to Joy, we survived them without a drastic lowering of our living standards. Without her fantastic efforts, our three sons would certainly not have had the Private School education they did. At long last the tide finally turned. ln 1964, I was offered the position of secretary of the AustralialMalaya and Australia/lndonesia Shipping Conferences. lt was not the same as actually running ships, but I was back among shipping men, talking a language I could understand. Two years later, I was offered the position of Shipping Superintendent for Papua and New Guinea for Burns, Philp Ltd., based in Port Moresby. There were pros and cons. ln our early fifties, we would have to uproot ourselves and start an entirely new life again. We would have to leave our beautiful home and garden for at least 2 years. And PNG was rapidly heading for independence. After our experience of lndonesian independence, this was somewhat ominous. On the other hand, our two eldest sons were then working in PNG. Our eldest had been bitten by the flying bug, had quit his job as a junior industrial chemist with the Colonial Sugar Company and was flying light aircraft for Territory Air Lines out of Goroka. And Tony had just joined his brother at TAL as a Traffic Officer. I accepted the job. Tony, Mick & Henk ln

Joy got herself a job in BP's store, in charge of the Jewellery and Cosmetics Department. Later, she switched to the Administration as Receptionist at the nearby Dental Clinic. And our no. 3 son, doing a part time Economics degree at Sydney University, spent one Christmas Vacation in New Guinea, working 2 weeks on/2 weeks off on the Oil Drilling Rig "Glomar Conception" in the Gulf - and his time off with us in Moresby. Towards the end of my 2 year contract with BP, I was offered the position of Director of the embryo Austratian Chamber of Shipping in Sydney. Decisions, Decisions! We had enjoyed the free and easy life in Moresby and didn't particularly want to leave the Territory just Yet. On the other hand, the day of the Expatriate in PNG was coming to an end, and in this backwater of shipping, in my mid-fifties, I was not likely to be offered another comparable, prestige Position. I accepted the Chamber job, and we returned to Sydney. As my predecessor had already left, I could not then take the 4 months leave due to me at the end of my BP contract. That carne two years later, in 1970 - a 4l12months wortd trip starting in Hong Kong, then an 1 1,000 mile trip through England, Scotland and Europe in a Campervan, followed by a week with our old friends Phil and Janet Morris, in Freeport in the Bahamas, and a homeward leg via Miami, Guatemala, an unplanned overnight in Mexico City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and Fiji. Apart from a couple of weeks in England, Lucy was with us all the way. They say two women cannot live in harmony under the one roof for any length of time. Joy and Lucy must have been the exceptions, because at the end of the 4112 months, we were all still the best of friends. With our 3 sons now making their own way in the world and me settled in a senior shipping job, much of the pressure of our entire married life was off at last. The Chimber of Shipping developed rapidly, becoming the undisputed voice of the entire shipping industry in Australia. As such, we established close contacts with the

151 Federal and State Governments, port authorities, other Chambers and industries and the media. So my work as Chief Executive was varied, interesting and rewarding. Joy and I made another trip to Europe in 1972 and again in 1975, despite the fact that she was suffering from advanced leukemia by that time. She had her last birthday in Paris and died in Sydney Hospital on the 30th April 1976. My beautiful Joy, who had carried the family all these years, could carry us no longer! I retired from the Chamber the following year, and sold our Wahroonga home soon afterwards, moving to a smaller house at St lves. Two of our sons had moved interstate and Tony was married and living in Hornsby Heights, so the Wahroonga house and garden were then much too big for me on my own. With the unfailing support of Tony, my sisters Lucy and Betty and our longtime friend and near neighbour Flora, widow of Noel Cameron, I got through the next few years. I took on various part time jobs from time to time and was for 5 years a Telephone Counsellor for "Lifeline" at Hornsby in my spare time. Eventually - in 1991 - I moved into "The Cotswolds" Retirement Village at Turramurra, where I still live. Although two of our sons are now interstate - Tony having moved to Mackay some years ago - and the third now lives and works in Saudi Arabia, we keep in close touch by phone and an occasional visit. The strong bond - the love and caring - is still there! So is the love of my two sisters, my 7 grandchildren and great granddaughter, Flora and other wonderful friends, including the best man at our wedding in 1940 - Tom Nelson.

Looking back on my life, I realise I have been singularly blessed!

I had wonderful parents. I had a wonderful childhood and youth, despite 8 years of Boarding School. I have had the most wonderful wife, children, grandchildren and brothers and sisters. I have enjoyed excellent health. I had almost four fascinating years in Europe in my early twenties. I have travelled extensively, lived in many interesting places and known many beautiful and interesting people. I worked 25 years in the most interesting of all occupations - shipping. I have loved sport - cricket, tennis, hockey, rugby union.

One of the most memorable days of my life, was my 80th birthday. As usual, I spent that day and another week or so with Henk and his family at Toowoomba. What made this birthday so special was the fact that Lieuwe (Mick) and Tony travelled all the way to Toowoomba as a surprise! And Flora, too, organised a very happy Birthday party for me in Sydney.

There have, of course, been good years and bad.

But all in all, I have been a very lucky man!

1.52 ILLUSTRATIONS

Jennifer, Age 4 lndonesia Map 12 Cores de Vries services about 1864 NISM services about 1888 L. P. D. Op ten Noort s.s. "Camphuys" (1891)712 GRT. E. G. Taylot: 41 L. J. Lambach 45 A. J. Pronk 48 New KPM Head Office Batavia Centrum (1923) 53 m. s. "Boissevain", "Ruys" & "Tegelberg" (1937) 14,150 GRT 56 m.s. "straat Soenda", "straat Malakka" (1938) 6,439 GRT 58 Weighing copra at Macassar 61 Loading cattte at the anchorage at Padang Bay in Bali 61 Loading ebony logs in the Tomini Bight in Celebes 62 Loading copra in the Tomini Bight in Celebes 62 Cargo boats going in to load cargo at Aimere in Flores 63 Passengers being carried ashore at an anchorage in the Tomini Bight in Celebes-63 Itinerant traders returning to the ship in the Tomini Bight 64 Discharging Australian flour at Macassar in the '20's KPM Paddlewheeler "Negara" on the lndragiri River in Sumatra Motor tunnel boat "Boeroemoen" 65 m.s. "Majang" loading from lighters near Tembilahan m.s. "Tinombo" approaching jetty at Selat Pandjang on the Siak R in Sumatra 66 KPM wharf at Tandjong Priok (Batavia) in the late '30's 67 "Le Maire" (1908) 3,271GRT, m.s. "Janssens" (1935) 2,O71GRT 92 Hospitalship "Tasman" entering Sydney Harbour. 103 s.s. "Ombilin" - 5,658 GRT, 113 s.s. "Generaal van der H"V 119 m.s. "Tinombo" after the explosion at Bombay, 1 19 Oma Pronk - 1936 1 31 Wim Goudriaan, his close friend Hein \Mllemse and myself. 1 32 A. J. Pronk and family, about 1 935 135 Tieuw's little sportscar - 1934 139 Joyce Evelyn Agnes Murison, my wife 149 Tony, Mick & Henk in Papua New Guinea - 1935 151

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