• 1 Originally called ‘Pollux Eten en Drinken’ (2006-2014), this restaurant located at Pier 6 of the NS (...)
• 2 The earliest reference to a warship in the Dutch navy with the name Pollux can be traced to the Sev (...)

1Visitors to Amsterdam interested in a different dining experience could until recently take their meal on board a former Dutch maritime training vessel, the three-masted sailing bark (barkschip) Pollux. For long (1940-84) anchored at Prins Hendrikkade (Oosterdok) and then (1984-99) near the Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum) on the Kattenburgerplein,1 this sailing ship, built at the Rederij Verschure in Amsterdam and launched on 9 September 1940, is the successor to a line of Dutch warships and training vessels bearing this name which have served in the Dutch Navy since at least the mid-eighteenth century.2 After the Dutch restoration to their East Indies colony on 19 August 1816 following the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15), at least three naval vessels named the Pollux have served in the Dutch East Indies fleet: a schooner/yacht, a bark (barkschip), and, most famous of all, a corvette-of-war (Dutch: oorlogskorvet) (1824-38). It is with the last that this essay is concerned.

• 3  http://warshipsresearch.weblog.nl/warships/2009/2008/dutch-warships-1.html, accessed 1-08-2011.
• 4  http://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-hajenius/1230.php, accessed 10-08-2011.

2This corvette Pollux was laid down at the state shipyard—Rijkswerf— in Rotterdam in November 1822 and constructed by the Rotterdam shipbuilder, Pieter Glavimans (c.1720-87). Launched two years later on 13 March 1824 (Plates 1 and 2), it entered Dutch naval service on 16 May 1824. With a length of 36 meters and a beam of 10 meters, it carried 28 guns (two six-pounder bow guns, and 26 32-pounder carronades), although after 1832, only ten remained, as we will see shortly.3 It had a crew complement of 150 officers and men. Its first commanding officer, Christiaan Eeg (1774-1832), appointed on 16 April 1824, was a Dutchman of Danish descent—his father, a Dane, also named Christiaan (1736-1811), born in Copenhagen, listed his profession as ‘pirate hunter’ (coureur des mers), was close family with the shipbuilder, Pieter Glavimans (c. 1720-87), whose daughter, Elisabeth Glavimans (1746-1805), he married. Pieter’s other children, Katharina (born 1749) and Jannetje (born 1747), served as his grandson, the future Captain (kapitein-ter-zee’s), godparents when he was baptised in the Remonstrant Church in Rotterdam on 22 August 1774.4

• 5 NL-HaNA 2.12.14_5_0047 and 4_14_0071 (Register and Staat van Dienst Christiaan Eeg).
• 6 On the discovery of Fenua Tapu (Nederlandsch Eiland), see Acda 1983:296-99. Contemporary press repo (...)

3After joining the Dutch navy in September 1808, Eeg rose rapidly becoming a First Lieutenant (luitenant-ter-zee eerste klasse) on 11 July 1814 and kapitein-ter-zee fifteen years later (1 July 1829).5 Together with Flag Captain Fredrik (sic) Coertzen (1771-1832) of the frigate, Maria Reigersbergen (Plate 3), he achieved almost immediate fame when he was selected to make a 30,000 nautical mile round-the-world voyage via the Guinea Coast (St George Del Mina, also spelt Elmina), Uruguay (Montevideo) and Argentina (Buenos Aires), Cape Horn, Chile (Valparaíso ), Peru (Lima) and the South Pacific (Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, post -1880 French Polynesia) in 1824-26 in his newly launched vessel. This epic voyage, which resulted in the discovery by the Pollux on 14 June 1825 of a previously unknown island in the South Pacific, Fenua Tapu (Nederlandsch Eiland / Netherlands Island), an islet of the Nui atoll in the current Pacific Ocean State of Tuvalu,6 became the subject of a best-selling account by the naval officer, First Lieutenant Pieter Troost (1791-1846), who accompanied the voyage. Entitled, Aanteekeningen gehouden op eene reis om de wereld; met het Fregat de Maria Reigersberg [sic] en de Korvet Pollux, in de Jaren 1824, 1825, en 1826 [Notes made during a voyage around the world with the Frigate Maria Reigersberg [sic] and the Corvette Pollux in the Years 1824, 1825 and 1826], it was published by De Weduwe J. Allart in Rotterdam in 1829, and was widely advertised in the Dutch press, its sales boosted by its many fine line drawings and illustrations. These included an oil painting of the two ships under sail in stormy weather on 10 February 1825 after rounding Cape Horn by the Maltese-born artist, Nicolas Cammillieri (c. 1762-1860), and sketches and maps drawn by Troost himself. The book made both the Maria Reigersbergen and the Pollux household names in the Netherlands in the late 1820s.

• 7 Bataviasche Courant, 7-09-1825.
• 8 Launched in 1824 at Rembang on the north coast of Java, Javaan was built as an experiment with loca (...)
• 9 The desperate situation in Central Java in August and early September 1825 is described in detail i (...)

4But the romantic image portrayed in Troost’s travel account was very different from the reality which confronted the officers and crew of the two warships when they eventually reached Surabaya on 30 August 1825.7 There they learnt that the Java War (1825-30) had just broken out (20 July 1825) and the Dutch were in disarray: Yogyakarta was under close siege by Diponegoro’s forces, the ruler of Surakarta, Pakubuwono VI (r. 1823-30), was not dependable, and Diponegoro’s ally on the north coast, Pangeran Serang II (c. 1794-1852), and his much-feared mother, Raden Ayu Serang (c.1766-1855), were threatening Semarang. With an estimated force of 10-12,000 men and women fighters they had briefly (24-26 August) cut the vital trans-Java posting road (postweg) linking Batavia (post-1945, Jakarta) and Surabaya between Kandal and Pekalongan, a development which caused the Dutch to seek urgent help from the Sultans of Madura (Pamekasan) and Sumenep. 3,600 Madurese pikemen (1,600 from Sumenep along with 350 infantry) were rushed to Semarang arriving on the very day (3 September) that a 400-strong force under command of Captain Hendrik Frederik Buschkens (1795-1869) was cut to pieces by Raden Ayu Serang’s forces at the village of Dombo to the south of Demak (3 September). In their panicked flight back to Semarang, Buschkens’ column lost nearly half its men, including 50 European sailors from the frigate, Javaan,8 anchored in Semarang, and a similar number of European infantry and local (pribumi) cavalry, along with twelve of the fifteen volunteers (vrijwilligers) from European agency houses in Semarang. On the night of 3-4 September 1825, Serang’s forces encamped just two leagues (three kilometers) from the centre of Semarang. If they had pressed home their attack, the principal Dutch city in Central Java might have fallen.9

• 10 Bataviasche Courant, 7-09-1825, 14-09-1825, 28-09-1825; Nederlandse Staats-courant, 4-02-1826.

6The arrival of the Maria Reigersbergen and Pollux thus came at a very opportune moment for the hard-pressed Dutch commanders. Their arrival was celebrated in the Dutch press,10 the Nederlandse Staatscourant (4-02-1826) editorialising that:

• 11 Bataviasche Courant, 14-09-1825. NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601_0122 (Logbook Pollux) mentions that in the at (...)
• 12 Nederlandse Staatscourant, 4-02-1826. Kraus 2018:xxii.
• 13 Carey 2008:364, 616.
• 14 NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601_0121 (Logbook Pollux) states that ‘beiden waaren als verdagt van met de samenr (...)
• 15 NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601_0121 (Logbook Pollux).

7The warships’ first task was to transport the remaining 171 troops from the Surabaya garrison to Semarang, where they arrived on 8 September 1825 in time to repulse the last of Serang’s forces from the environs of the city and later (17 November) to take part in the Dutch attack on his base in Purwodadi in the regency (kabupaten) of Grobogan.11 At the same time, once in Semarang, they were also both immediately given a more sinister role—namely acting as floating prisons to house the former Regent (bupati) of Semarang, Kiai Adipati Suroadimenggolo V (c. 1775-1826; in office 1809-22) (Plate 4), and his eldest son, Raden Mas Saleh (post-1815, Raden Tumenggung Ario Notodiningrat, c. 1800-72), who had previously served as bupati of Probolinggo in the Eastern Salient (Oosthoek) of Java (1817-c.1821) and Lasem (c.1821-24).12 After receiving two and a half years (1812-15) of high school education in Calcutta (Kolkata) on the initiative of the former British Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas Stamford Raffles (in office 1811-16), where he became fluent in English, Raden Mas Saleh (Notodiningrat) seemed to have a bright career before him. But his prospects were blighted both by his outspoken anglophile sentiments and the pull of his younger brother, Raden Mas Sukur (c. 1802-pre-March 1856; post-1825, Raden Hasan Mahmud’s), identity as a Javanese Muslim. With the Java War raging in Central Java, Sukur had joined Pangeran Serang’s forces to the south of Semarang in late August, his decision bringing immediate degradation, imprisonment and shame on the rest of his family.13 This was especially the case for his father and elder brother, who were thought—rightly—by the Dutch authorities to have been privy to his actions.14 Arrested in early September 1825 for being “privy to the rioting in Java” by the Resident of Semarang, Hendrik Jacob Domis (1782-1842; in office 1822-27), Suroadimenggolo and his eldest son were embarked on 9 September on the newly arrived warships where they were held separately, the first on the Maria Reigersbergen and the second on the Pollux. These vessels were now tasked as guardships (wachtschepen) in Semarang harbour where they remained at anchor for the next three months until December 1825, their elite Javanese prisoners having to endure the vicissitudes of shipboard arrest on a pitching and heaving sailing ship. As the gales of the oncoming West monsoon battered the north coast of Java with the Pollux losing her anchor on 4 November in the surging seas,15 Raden Mas Saleh (Notodiningrat) wrote in perfect English to Governor-General G.A.G.Ph. van der Capellen (1778-1848; in office 1816-26) from the Pollux on 15 December:

• 17 NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601_0123 (Logbook Pollux).
• 18 Bataviasche Courant, 8-02-1826 (refers to Maria Reigersbergen’s departure); 15-02-1826 (refers to i (...)

8On 23 December, eight days after this missive was sent,17 Raden Mas Saleh (Notodiningrat) was transferred to the frigate Maria Reigersbergen, which would transport both himself and his father to Surabaya on 1 February 1826.18

• 19 Bataviasche Courant, 6-12-1826.

9There they arrived on 4 February and were held for a further three weeks until 27 February when they were transferred to another guardship (wachtschip), the frigate (1808-24), Dageraad, before being released back to Semarang. There Suroadimenggolo went to an early grave (15 November 1826),19 after what was described in his obituary notice, written by Resident Domis, as ‘a lengthy decline’ (eene langdurige sukkeling), a condition hastened by his long months as a seaborne detainee on successive Dutch warships.

• 20 Bataviasche Courant, 22-03-1826.
• 21 Bataviasche Courant, 7-06-1826, reported the Maria Reigersbergen’s departure from Batavia on 5 June (...)
• 22 See Christopher Reinhart (ed.), Antara Lawu dan Wilis: Arkeologi, Sejarah dan Legenda Madiun Raya B (...)
• 23 On Dutch fears of foreign arms smuggling by the British and American traders, particular along Java (...)
• 24 See Bataviasche Courant, 22-03-1826, for a reference to the Pollux as a troop transport.

10With the transfer of Suroadimenggolo and his eldest son to the Dageraad on 27 February 1826, the Maria Reigersbergen stayed on in Surabaya until the end of March 1826,20 when it parted company with the Pollux, sailing west to Semarang and Batavia. On 5 June 1826, it eventually departed for the final leg of its round-the-world tour back to the naval dockyard at Den Helder, a journey of 11,354 nautical miles which it would complete in record time (108 days, 5 June-20 September 1826), an average of 105 nautical miles a day.21 The Pollux, meanwhile, remained in Surabaya, which would be its main base for the coming nine months until 29 September 1826, when it was tasked with undertaking an expedition to Pacitan with a detachment of 50 Madurese troops under Second Lieutenant François Auguste Schnorbusch (1796-1830) sent to quell a long-running uprising under Diponegoro’s designated local commander, Amat Daris.22 In those nine months, the Pollux undertook regular sweeps along Java’s north coast to the west—referred to as “kruistochten [cruises/patrols]” in the press reports—presumably designed to ‘show the flag’ and deter would-be arms smugglers, particularly British and Americans, seeking for ways to sell weapons to Diponegoro’s forces.23 It also transported troops between Surabaya and Semarang.24

• 26 The Pollux’s presence in Batavia on 1 November 1826 is mentioned in the Journal de la Province de L (...)
• 27 Bataviasche Courant, 29-11-1826.
• 28 These included in nautical miles: (1) Texel to Elmina (3,915); (2) Elmina to Valparaíso (6,462); (3 (...)
• 29 Bataviasche Courant, 14-03-1827.

12These inspection patrols resumed for the Pollux following a brief stopover in Batavia (29 October-3 November 1826) after the completion of its Pacitan expedition (14-23 October).26 By 16 November, the corvette was back at its Surabaya base.27 There it remained until early March 1827 when it was directed to the shipyard repair facilities on Pulau Onrust in the Bay of Batavia. By now, three years had elapsed since its 24 March 1824 launch from the Rijkswerf (Dutch state shipyard) in Rotterdam and it had sailed nearly 30,000 nautical miles.28 It was time for a refit. But Onrust did not have the facilities required to overhaul such a state-of-the-art vessel. In the same press report, which mentioned its presence at Onrust, came the news (13 March 1827) that it was being immediately ordered to return to the Netherlands.29 Only the Dutch naval dockyard at Den Helder could provide the services required for a complete refit. But, given its less than prime condition, would it survive the return journey?

• 30 Bataviasche Courant, 3-04-1827.
• 31 These were kapitein-ter-zee (later Vice-Admiral) Jean-Daniel Musquetier (1766-1831) and luitenant-t (...)
• 32 NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601_0186-0187 (Logbook Pollux) described as ‘een vliegende storm’ with huge seas.
• 33 On the storm which struck the Pollux, see Dagblad van ‘s-Gravenhage, 3-12-1827; and L’éclaireur pol (...)
• 34 NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601_0187-0188 (Logbook Pollux).
• 35 NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601_0193-0194 (Logbook Pollux). All currency conversions use the historical curren (...)
• 36 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, 6-10-1827; Leydse Courant, 9-11-1827; Rotterdamsche Courant, 17-11-182 (...)
• 37 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, 4-12-1827.
• 38 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, 11-12-1827 (obituary notice for Henri Louis Marguerite Baron Gansneb, (...)

13On 1 April 1827, Pollux weighed anchor and sailed out of Batavia Bay to begin its long journey back to the motherland.30 It was carrying two senior naval officers from other commands as passengers,31 along with seven civilians and scores of troops from the Netherlands returning home. With its 150-strong crew complement, the small corvette had nearly 200 people aboard when it made its way through the Sunda Straits in the first week of April 1827. Little did the assembled company know what awaited them. It would be nine months before they set foot on Dutch soil, an epic voyage which almost ended in disaster. On 4/5 June, when it was just east of Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa, the Pollux ran into a violent westerly storm which blew at hurricane force,32 the sort which had sent both Admiral Sir Thomas Trowbridge’s (1760-1807; East Indies Squadron commander, 1805-1807) flagship, HMS Blenheim, and his lead escort vessel, a recently captured Dutch frigate, H.M.S. Java (Captain The Honourable George Pigot), to the bottom with all hands just two decades previously (February 1807) (Plate 5).33 The corvette survived—by dint of good seamanship—losing its foremast, bowsprit and rudder. But the ship’s helmsman (stuurman) strongly urged Eeg that the exhausted ship’s crew should be allowed to recuperate while emergency repairs were carried out at a convenient port.34 As the westerly gale made it impossible to make Cape Town, and since Madagascar lacked suitable repair facilities, the Pollux’s commanding officer decided to head for Mauritius, a distance of 2,231 nautical miles. The journey, undertaken with a jury-rigged foremast and temporary rudder, took three weeks (6-30 June), and the Pollux eventually entered Port Louis on 1 July. It would spend the next five weeks (1 July–3 August) in the Mauritius capital undergoing repairs, which cost the Dutch Ministry of Marine and Colonies 34,575 guilders (US$367,000 in today’s [2021] money), with a further 15,000 guilders (US$150,000) for revictualling.35 By 3 August everything was complete. The corvette sailed the following day.36 The home journey, which Pollux’s sister ship on the round-the-world tour, Maria Reigersbergen, had completed in just 108 days, would take more than twice as long (244 days), an average of just 46.5 nautical miles a day, and it would only dock at the naval dockyard of Nieuwediep in Den Helder on 30 November 1827.37 By then, the hardships endured on the home journey had sent one of its youngest officer cadets, the seventeen-year-old midshipman (Adelborst der eerste klasse) Tengnagel, to an early grave.38

• 39 Middelburgse Courant, 25-08-1829. The naval shipyard proper at Den Helder was known post-1822 as Wi (...)
• 40 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, 19-11-1829 and Leydse Courant, 20-11-1829, reported Pollux’s sailing p (...)
• 41 Dagblad van ‘s-Gravenhage, 20-11-1829.
• 42 Javasche Courant, 25-03-1830.

14The rigours of three years at the helm as the ship’s commanding officer were now mitigated for Eeg when he was given a 20-month (5 December 1827-29 July 1829) leave of absence while his ship was put out of commission pending repairs. During this time Pollux was given a complete overhaul at the Nieuwediep naval shipyard in Den Helder, the work only being completed in late August 1829.39 Gazetted as Captain (kapitein-ter-zee) on 1 July 1829, Eeg was now (29 July 1829) tasked with sailing his corvette back to the Indies—the Pollux departed Den Helder on 16 November 182940—with the commander of the Dutch Indies fleet (Commandant en chef Zijner Majesteits Zeemagt in Oostindiën), kapitein-luitenant-ter-zee (Commander) Johan Friederich Christiaan Wardenburg (1776-1839), as his principal passenger.41 Little did the Rotterdam-born Eeg know that just over a month after his arrival in Batavia on 22 March 1830,42 he would be given an even more extraordinary assignment, namely the transport of the principal leader of the recently ended (28 March 1830) Java War, Prince Diponegoro (1785-1855) (Plate 7), and his 19-strong party, into exile in Manado in North Sulawesi.

• 43 Javasche Courant, 23-03-1830, 25-03-1830.
• 44 Javasche Courant, 10-04-1830 (reporting departure of Pollux on 5 April 1830 and its passage through (...)
• 45 Davidson 1846:9. “What a joyous place Batavia was in those days,” Davidson wrote, “with everybody t (...)

15The Pollux’s presence in Indies waters was reported on 20 March 1830 when it was seen passing through the Sunda Straits and two days later it had anchored in Batavia roads.43 Following its return, the Pollux undertook one sortie—most likely for training purposes for its sea cadets—through the Sunda Strait between 5-11 April 1830.44 By the time it returned, Diponegoro and his party had already arrived in the colonial capital from Semarang (8 April) on the steamship, SS Van der Capellen, captained by the young Scotsman, Andrew Davidson (c.1809-31), whose brother, George Frank, would pen a vivid account of the prince’s landing in the colonial capital.45 For the next three and a half weeks (8 April-3 May), Diponegoro was held in the Town Hall (Stadhuis). There he was under the supervision of the Batavia magistrate (baljuw), Adrianus Johannes (Jan) Bik (1790-1872), an accomplished artist who made a fine pencil sketch of his prisoner during his period of detention.

• 46 Carey 2008:706-7, referencing Besluit van den Gouverneur-Generaal buiten rade [Decision of the Gove (...)
• 47 Knoerle 1835:166-67.

16The prince’s extended stay in the colonial capital was due to the temporary illness of the newly arrived Governor-General, Johannes van den Bosch (in office, 1830-34). Since a formal decision (besluit) regarding Diponegoro’s exile destination and the conditions in which he would be held needed to be formalised, this could only be accomplished on 30 April 1830, when Van den Bosch had sufficiently recovered to review and sign the document.46 Even before that decision had been taken, however, the Pollux had already been designated as the warship tasked with transporting Diponegoro and his party during their exile journey, its choice being made on the basis of its recent refit in Nieuwediep (Den Helder), and the fact that it had very appropriate accommodation for Diponegoro, his three family members (wife, sister and brother-in-law) and thirteen followers. These were the ‘Voorkajuit [Fore Cabin],’ recently used by Commander Wardenburg, and its two directly adjoining cabins, the first able to house the prince’s immediate family, and the second, a long berth with multiple bunks, all his followers.47

• 48 Carey 2008:711.
• 49 Carey 2008:711 note 160; Louw and De Klerck 1894-1908, II:283 note 2.
• 50 Carey 2008:106-7, 109, 711 note 161.

17On the morning of 27 April, the Governor-General’s military adjutant, Second-Lieutenant Knoerle (in office, 1829-31), had received his secret orders directly from Van den Bosch. These related to his mission as officer escort during the prince’s voyage to Manado.48 Knoerle’s selection for this politically important mission was because of his supposed knowledge of Javanese, the Dutch military translator whom Diponegoro greatly respected, Captain Johan Jacob Roeps (1805-40), not being available because of his imminent home leave (early July 1830).49 At the same time, the prince had been insistent to the Dutch authorities that he should be accompanied by an officer who could converse with him in his mother tongue rather than in Malay which he spoke poorly and which he found deeply distasteful.50

• 51 Carey 2008:710.
• 52 Carey 2008:716-7 note 176.

18On the afternoon of that same Tuesday, 27 April 1830, just a week before the corvette sailed for Manado, Knoerle came on board to inspect the facilities and to meet with Captain Eeg to discuss the details of the forthcoming journey as well as its political implications. By this time, a special allowance of 400 Indies guilders in silver money (US$ 5,000 in present-day [2021] money) had been made available by the Director-General of Finances to defray the costs of the prince’s six-week voyage to Manado.51 Three days later, on 30 April, with the Governor-General’s official besluit (decision) in his pocket, Knoerle went to the Stadhuis to meet with Diponegoro and brief him about their forthcoming journey. By the following morning (1 May), the German officer had embarked permanently on the corvette to put everything in readiness. Although it had originally been envisaged that the prince would also embark with his party on the same day, there was a delay due to the need to prepare the Voorkajuit and its two adjoining cabins for the exiled leader and his party.52

• 53 Carey 2008:712 note 166.
• 54 Schillet 1832.
• 55 Carey 2008:109, 375-6, 713.

19The Pollux also had to take on six weeks’ supply of fresh water and food, no stopovers being envisaged because of the political sensitivities surrounding the corvette’s principal passenger.53 Eventually, at eight o’clock on the morning of Monday, 3 May, Diponegoro and his 19 followers came on board, accompanied by Roeps and the same Batavian city administration officials who had greeted the prince on his arrival from Semarang. They were met by Captain Eeg, his junior officers and the ship’s doctor, Surgeon Major Hermanus Schillet (1794-1861), an expert on cholera,54 whom the prince took an instant liking to because his face reminded him of the former British Resident, John Crawfurd (1783-1868; in office, 1811-14/1816), whom the prince greatly admired because of his fluency in Javanese.55

• 56 Carey 2008:713, quoting Knoerle who may have had the officers rather than the crew in mind here, as (...)

20Once the prince’s luggage had been loaded, the city officials took their leave. Knoerle then saw to the furnishing of Diponegoro’s cabin and repeated again the assurances given to him at the Stadhuis regarding the respect which would be paid to the women in his party. The prince had apparently shown particular anxiety that his two “raden ayu [noblewomen]” – namely his wife, Raden Ayu Retnoningsih (c. 1810-85) and younger sister, Raden Ayu Dipowiyono (born c.1806) – might be insulted or otherwise taken advantage of by the Dutch crew.56 There being no wind the corvette rode at anchor for almost a day and a night (3-4 May), much to Diponegoro’s annoyance. But, at five o’clock the following morning, 4 May, a light breeze began to blow off the land and the corvette set sail as the first streaks of dawn stole over the Bay of Batavia. A new chapter in the prince’s life had begun. He would never set foot on the island of his birth again. A quarter of a century of exile and imprisonment lay before him.

• 57 Javasche Courant, 6-05-1830.
• 58 L’éclaireur politique, journal de la province de Limbourg, 21-09-1830, “Diepo-Negoro a été embarqué (...)
• 59 Rotterdamsche Courant, 18-09-1830, Binnenlandsche Berigten, 20-09-1830; Middelburgse Courant, 21-09 (...)
• 60 Journal de la Haye, 31-05-1831, “Diepo Negoro a été embarqué sur la corvette Pollux pour être trans (...)

21Although the Pollux’s departure with Diponegoro and his party was reported in the official Indies government newspaper, De Javasche Courant, of 6 May 1830, no mention was made of its destination (Manado). The only information given was that Captain Eeg had ‘set a northerly course [koersstellende om de noord]’.57 At the same time, the Netherlands press seemed to be giving out intentionally misleading information. Thus, the Limburg provincial journal, L’éclaireur politique, wrote that “Diponegoro has been embarked on the ship Pollux to be transported to the Molucca [Maluku] Islands.”58 Other Dutch newspapers followed suit.59 It was only a full year later, seemingly as a result of a report from one of the officers on the Pollux, that the full story of what had actually happened to Diponegoro began to break. The politically well-connected French-language newspaper, Journal de la Haye (Journal of The Hague), relayed this officer’s information on 31 May 1831 as follows:60

• 61 On the Dutch forts in Maluku at this time, see Forts in Indonesia (Jakarta: Mendikbud, 2012), p.12 (...)
• 62 Carey 1982:3, [(Enfermé) dans un petit fort entre quatre murs, séparé de tous les siens, gardé à vu (...)

22Even then, the earlier Dutch colonial government concocted story, which pretended that Diponegoro had been transported to the Moluccas (Maluku) to live out his exile in a small Dutch fort there,61 persisted. Thus, in January 1848, just before the outbreak of the February 1848 Revolution in Paris, an article appeared in the French press fiercely critical of the way in which the prince was being treated in exile. It spoke of him being held “in the Moluccas [Maluku]”:62

• 63 Het Nieuws van het Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 12 March 1923:’Honorable Brothers! For us all the 8 (...)

23Until the late Dutch colonial period (1816-42), knowledge of what had actually happened to Diponegoro following his transport to his oubliette in the eastern seas of the Dutch East Indies on the Pollux on 3 May 1830 remained garbled. Even someone as well informed as the nationalist leader and educator, Ki Hadjar Dewantoro (Suwardi Suryaningrat, 1889-1959), could still get the date of the prince’s death in 1855 wrong by a month (8 February not 8 January), when he called for it to be remembered nationwide as a day of national commemoration in March 1923.63

• 64 LOr 6545d (G.A.J. Hazeu private collection, Babad Dipanagara, autobiography written in Manado, 1831 (...)

24What then of Diponegoro and his journey on the Pollux? Nearly six weeks at sea—much of it becalmed—would not be a pleasant experience. The prince’s reference to this purgatorial odyssey in his autobiographical chronicle (babad) is suitably laconic:64

• 65 Knoerle 1835:167-8.
• 66 Knoerle 1835:156-7.

25Knoerle’s own shipboard diary closely echoes the spirit of Diponegoro’s account. At seven in the morning of the first day (4 May), for example, the prince summoned his German officer escort to his cabin and requested he be taken on deck, one of only six occasions, according to Knoerle, during the whole forty-day voyage when the exiled leader came up from his cabin.65 “The compass, the ship with sails set on high (Plate 8) and the motion of the vessel” caught the prince’s delighted attention, and he would later express particular interest in the sea chart of Makassar and the navigational methods used by the ship’s officers to plot and steer the Pollux’s course as they sailed towards their final destination along the southeastern coast of Sulawesi (Plate 6).66

• 68 Carey 2008:117.

26In the first five days alone, four died, the ceremonies for the burials – the slow march of the honour guard of soldiers and the muffled drums – being heard distinctly by the prince in his cabin below the quarter (poop) deck. Contemplating this daily toll in mortality, a result of the shocking shipboard conditions for ordinary seamen and soldiers alike, Diponegoro burst out in bitter contempt at the supposed superiority of Western medicine and medical practitioners which Knoerle had tried to impress on him:68

• 69 Kedawung is the Javanese name for the tree Barkia roxburghii G., the seeds and leaves of which are (...)
• 70 Carey 2008:117 note 71.
• 71 On Diponegoro’s addiction to betelnut chewing (sirih), see Carey 2008:122. A discussion of the medi (...)

27Eschewing the ministrations of the ship’s doctor, Surgeon-Major Schillet, for his periodic malarial fevers, the prince continued to treat himself throughout the sea voyage to Manado with Javanese herbal potions (jamu) such as beras-kencur and kedawung69 and restricted his diet on some days to dry sweet potato (ubi kering) to counteract the effects of sea sickness.70 Given what happened to the Pollux’s crew on the corvette’s final return journey to the Netherlands in May-October 1832, when nearly a third of the ship’s officers and crew died of scurvy, Diponegoro’s scepticism regarding the efficacy of early 19^th century European doctors and their medical techniques would seem to have been prescient. Indeed, when it came to a high-protein diet and knowledge of how to maintain physical health through the consumption of stem and root tubers (sweet potatoes, potatoes, yams and cassava), rhizomes (bamboos, ginger and turmeric), fruits, herbal remedies, and personal hygiene, Javanese culture was more advanced than that of the West at this time. Indeed, it would have been hard to imagine Diponegoro succumbing to scurvy, even on board a Dutch warship! His addiction to sirih (betelnut) alone would have ensured that he would have had a sufficiently large daily intake of Vitamin C through his mastication of sirih leaves to avoid contracting the disease.71

• 72 Knoerle 1835:154-5.

28Another aspect of life on board the Pollux which particularly shocked Diponegoro was the extreme brutality of the treatment of ordinary seamen by the officers and quartermasters, especially when it came to punishing them for minor infractions:72

• 73 Electronic communication, T.A. Onderwater, 5 July 2021. I wish to record my thanks here to Tico Ond (...)

29According to Tico Onderwater, a specialist on Dutch naval history, “it is true that extreme brutality was everyday practice on board men-of-war at this time. The Royal Netherlands Navy had great difficulties manning these ships and only the lowest tiers of society could be persuaded to join the service as ordinary seamen. As a result, officers felt that they had to rely on extreme measures to maintain order. The Dutch navy only abolished corporal punishment in 1879, whereas the army and civil justice systems had got rid of such practices decades earlier.”73 This attitude recalls what the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) is supposed to have said of his men during the Napoleonic Wars, “I don’t know if they frighten the enemy, but they certainly scare the hell out of me!”

• 74 Carey 2008:110.

30Although the clash of cultures was stark, Diponegoro did enter into contact with a number of the ship’s officers through Knoerle. This resulted in the prince being lent books and provided with bottles of vintage wine paid for by his officer escort. Although he did not read the books lent him, but only looked at the illustrations, one of the second lieutenants (luitenant-ter-zee der tweede klasse), Barend van den Broek (1802-30), who would die seven months later (12 December 1830) in the assault on the fortified stronghold of Narras (Pariaman) during the Padri War (1803-37) in West Sumatra, lent the prince a richly illustrated romance by Torquato Tasso (1544-95) Gerusalemme Liberata (“The Liberated Jerusalem”) (Parma & Ferrara, 1581). Describing the 1099 siege of Jerusalem, it recounted in high-flown language an imaginative account of the Christian conquest of the holy city from its Muslim defenders at the end of the First Crusade (1095-99).74

• 75 Knoerle 1835:169-70.
• 76 The prince had seemingly developed his own highly personal interpretation of Quranic teachings rega (...)
• 77 Molhuysen & Blok 1911-37, I:363.

31Another of the Pollux’s officer cadets, then still a nineteen-year-old midshipman (Adelborst der eerste klasse), who had dealings with Diponegoro, was Adriaan David van der Gon Netscher (1811-97) (Plate 9).75 In later life an anti-slavery campaigner (with special focus on the Dutch West Indies) and a much-admired water-colour painter (aquarellist) and travel-writer, Netscher provided the prince with two bottles of the sweet Constantia white wine from South Africa which he liked so much (Plate 1076). Alone of all the Pollux’s officers on this voyage to Manado, the teenage midshipman would achieve fame in his lifetime and merit a substantial entry in the Dutch Dictionary of National Biography.77

• 78 NL-HaNA 2.12.14_5_0367, 22_0094 (Register and Staat van Dienst Van der Gon Netscher).
• 79 Besluit Commandant-en-chef ZM Zeemagt in Oostindiën, 24 November 1830 no.22, cited in NL-HaNA 2.12. (...)
• 80 NL-HaNA 2.12.14_17_0198, 12_14_0199, 12_14_2000 (Register and Staat van Dienst Hugenholtz).
• 81 NL-HaNA 2.12.14_26-1723 (Staat van Dienst Spengler).

32Netscher was also the beneficiary of a curious stroke of luck related in part to the culture of violence and physical punishment meted out to officers and men in the Dutch Navy at this time. After serving on the Pollux since 22 August 1829 in preparation for its 16 November 1829 sailing to the Indies/Indonesia, Netscher was accused of a disciplinary offence—not specified in his Service Record (Stamboek)—and ordered to undergo a physical punishment. Described as a ‘debasing penalty’ (vernederende straf), he petitioned the newly arrived director of the Indies Marine, Captain-commander Wardenburg, to be allowed to escape such public humiliation by moving from his midshipman’s assignment on the Pollux to a new post on another corvette, the De Leije (Commander Aart J.J. van Lutsenburg).78 This was sanctioned by Wardenburg and Netscher moved to the De Leije on 15 August 1830.79 His departure from the Pollux at this time meant that he escaped the corvette’s bloody assault on the Padris in West Sumatra (Padang-Pariaman) in December 1830, which claimed the life of his brother officer Van den Broek, and still more pertinently, removed him from participating in the Pollux’s disastrous 23 May-23 October 1832 final return voyage to the Netherlands, when 40 of the ship’s crew, including the captain (Christiaan Eeg), the first officer (Frederik Jacob Anthonie Hugenholtz, 1792-1832)80 and a young Second Lieutenant (Willem August Spengler, 1803-32)81 died of scurvy, the last almost within sight of the Netherlands coast.

• 82 Louw and De Klerck, 1894-1909, V:743; Carey 2008:718 note 186.
• 83 This stash of wine was apparently shared between Hugenholtz and his brother officer, Barend van den (...)
• 84 Knoerle 1835:169-70; Carey (forthcoming).

33Not all the Pollux’s officers were as generous and accommodating as Van den Broek and Netscher when it came to providing reading material and the product of the grape to Diponegoro. The prince’s favourite wine was without doubt vin de Constance—the same wine provided by Netscher—from the world-famous Groot and Klein Constantia vineyards in the Western Cape (South Africa). A wine of kings, said to be the favourite of Frederick the Great of Prussia (r.1740-88), Willem I of the Netherlands (r. 1813-40) and the Emperor Napoleon (1769-1821; r. 1804-14), who had it supplied to him in his St. Helena exile (1815-21), it was also celebrated in the novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817) set in the era of the Napoleonic Wars. Diponegoro had acquired a taste for it during his visits to the Yogyakarta Resident’s retreat at Bedoyo on the slopes of Mount Merapi just before the Java War, during the incumbency of Anthonie Hendrik Smissaert, whose wife, Clara Elisabeth (née Von Liebeherr, 1785–1869), always served it when the prince was present.82 He regarded this wine as a form of medicine (tomboh) and fortifier to restore his strength following his recurrent bouts of malarial fever. The Pollux’s first officer, First Lieutenant Hugenholtz, initially provided just one bottle of Constantia. When pressed by Knoerle to provide a whole case (12 bottles) in return for payment in money, kind or gifts, Hugenholtz demurred even though, according to Knoerle, the Pollux’s First Officer had two “anchors [anker]” (one ‘anchor’ = 9.25 imperial gallons) of vin de Constance in his cabin,83 amounting to some 74 liters, of which he was being asked to spare just under ten liters if one includes the bottle already provided!84 The mind boggles at such quantities and such mean-mindedness.

• 85 Carey 2019:xi, xxvi-xxviii.

34Buoyed by wine but not much else—all other rations were running dangerously low and the Pollux’s passengers and crew forced to survive on potatoes (many of which were rotting by the time the ship reached Manado) with little additional meat and no fresh vegetables—the corvette eventually cast anchor in the Bay of Manado on Saturday, 12 June 1830. The epic six-week passage from Batavia to Manado was at an end. At ten o’clock the following morning Diponegoro and his nineteen-strong party were transferred to Fort Nieuw Amsterdam (Plate 11). There they would remain for the next three years (13 June-20 June 1833) until their secret transfer to Makassar on board the Dutch navy schooner, Circe (Plate 6). During these three years, confined in four-room house in the Dutch fort and rarely going out into the surrounding town, the prince would create a masterpiece—his autobiographical chronicle, the Babad Dipanagara. Written in just nine months (20 May 1831-3 February 1832), the first third of its 43 cantos would tell the history of Java from the fall of Majapahit (circa 1527) to the prince’s birth in Yogyakarta (11 November 1785) and then the detailed story of his life up to his arrival in Manado. Covering some 1,150 folio pages in Javanese macapat verse written in Arabic script (pégon), it would be recognised 181 years later (18 June 2013) by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a Memory of the World manuscript.85

• 86 NL-HaNA_2_1.13.04_387_0076 (Staat van Dienst Cornelis Bosman).
• 87 Carey 2008:724.

35On 19 June 1830, just a week after the arrival of the Pollux, the corvette’s commanding officer and ship’s officers came to the fort in their white dress uniforms to take their formal leave of Diponegoro. They were returning the next day to Batavia via Surabaya, a journey which would be completed in just nineteen days (20 June–9 July 1830). Some fifty-three soldiers, under the command of Second-Lieutenant Cornelis Bosman (born Leiden 1796)86 remained behind to guard the prince. Unfortunately, this junior officer, unlike Roeps and Knoerle, lacked the diplomatic and linguistic skills needed to handle the prince. Within weeks, his “rough and inconsiderate” behaviour had caused the Resident of Manado, Pietermaat (in office 1827-31), to arrange his transfer to Ternate where the 40-strong garrison was in need of an additional officer. In his autobiographical babad, Diponegoro mentions this courtesy visit and the conversation which took place between himself and Knoerle and Captain Eeg. After confirming his monthly stipend of 600 guilders (US$6,500 in present-day [2021] money), the commander of the Pollux suggested that the prince might have a personal message for the Governor-General. Perhaps he would like to send a letter back to Java which he could take for him? “No”, Diponegoro replied, “I have no desire to send a letter for I cannot write […] just send my regards to General Van den Bosch!”87

• 88 Javasche Courant, 20-07-1830, 24-07-1830.
• 89 Javasche Courant, 22-07-1830.
• 90 Knoerle, Julius Heinrich. ‘Aanteekeningen gehouden door den 2e Luit Knoerle betreffende de dagelyks (...)
• 91 Knoerle 1835:175. See also Binnenlandsche Berigten, 17-09-1830 on the appointment of First Lieutena (...)

36The relief on board the Pollux amongst the officers and crew after the completion of their six-week non-stop marathon and the successful discharge of their task of transporting the Java War leader into exile must have been palpable. Now revictualled and with a strong following wind, the corvette completed the 1,253 nautical mile journey from Manado to Surabaya in just 19 days (20 June-9 July), an average of 66 nautical miles a day, a much swifter passage than the modest 45 nautical miles a day it had achieved on the longer—1,800 nautical mile—outward journey. After its swift return journey to Java, the Pollux remained five days in Surabaya (9-14 July 1830)88 before returning to Batavia where it entered port on 19 July.89 By then Knoerle’s secret report of his day-to-day interactions with Diponegoro was in the hands of the Governor-General whose heavy blue pencil markings can be seen on the original in his private collection in the Dutch National Archives.90 The German officer had sensibly used the 19-day return journey from Manado to finish his shipboard diary and dispatch it to the Governor-General by express post with a covering letter dated the same day (9 July) as the Pollux’s arrival in the East Javanese port. By this time, he had received news of his promotion to the rank of First Lieutenant, a style he now gave himself when he signed off on his covering letter to his superior.91

• 92 Javasche Courant, 26-07-1830 and 9-09-1830 (refer to the Pollux leaving Batavia in a westerly direc (...)

37For the next four months until early December 1830, when Eeg received orders to deploy Pollux as a naval support vessel for the Dutch assault on Padri fortified positions in the interior of Padang-Pariaman on the West Coast of Sumatra, the corvette remained in Batavia as a guardship (wachtschip) with occasional sorties through the Sunda Strait and points west and north.92 As we have seen, during the operations in West Sumatra involving members of the Pollux’s crew, forty of whom (nearly a third of the ship’s complement) perished, one of Eeg’s brother officers died. The captain immediately wrote an obituary notice which was published in the Javasche Courant on 8 February 1831:

• 93 Javasche Courant, 5-02-1831 (reference to Pollux’s return to Batavia); 22-02-1831 (reference to Pol (...)
• 94 Javasche Courant,19-03-1831.
• 95 Javasche Courant, 19-05-1831. On the mortality figures in Surabaya for the 1821 cholera epidemic wh (...)

38Following the disaster at Narras the decision was taken not to pursue the campaign and the Pollux was back in Batavia by 3 February 1831, only to leave 17 days later (20 February-1 March) to transport further troop reinforcements for the Dutch war against the Padris in West Sumatra.93 It then returned briefly to Batavia (1-6 March) before moving on to Surabaya where it arrived on 10 March.94 There it remained for the best part of the next three months (10 March-18 May 1831), surviving a local epidemic, probably cholera, which it did by cancelling all shore leave for its crew and moving further out to sea in the Madura Strait while the epidemic raged in the East Javanese port. According the Javasche Courant, some 15 percent (48,217) of the 311,192-strong Surabaya population contracted the disease and just over 100 lives (0.002 percent of those infected) lost—distinctly mild compared to the previous cholera epidemic a decade earlier in April-November 1821 when seven percent of the population of the city together with Madura and the Oosthoek (Java’s Eastern Salient) had succumbed.95

• 96 Javasche Courant, 26-05-1831 (reports Pollux entering Batavia on 23-05-1831). Then all numbers of t (...)
• 97 Carey 1984:9; 2008:164 note 18. Another example of such a three-masted schooner was the 14-gun Circ (...)
• 98 Javasche Courant, 2-08-1831 (reports 25 July arrival of Pollux in Semarang from Rembang with Warden (...)

39On 18 May, Pollux left Surabaya for Batavia once again where it remained between 23 May and mid-July, making just one sortie to the West, possibly either another training exercise for its cadets through the Sunda Strait or the beginning of its survey operations in Merak Bay (2-6 June 1831).96 In mid-July, the corvette was briefly tasked with transporting the Commandant-Director of the Netherlands Indies Marine, Captain-commander Wardenburg, from Rembang (23 July), where he may have been inspecting the local shipbuilding industry, the north coast port being one of the places where teakwood three-masted schooners and frigates had been laid down, most recently the frigate Javaan (footnote 8), which had seen service in Semarang in August-September 1825.97 Pollux brought him first to Semarang (25-29 July), where he spent four days inspecting the naval facilities in Tanjung Mas and Torboyo, and then on to Batavia (1 August), where he resumed his naval command functions.98

• 99 Javasche Courant, 1-09-1831 (refers to Pollux leaving Batavia and sailing West); and Javasche Coura (...)
• 100 Journal de la Haye, 20-06-1832: “Le 4 décembre il était parti de Padang, une escadrille composée de (...)

40There followed another two and a half month period (1 August-19 October) where the Pollux hardly stirred from its Batavia anchorage, apart from one rather longer sortie to the West (30 August-21 September) probably linked with its ongoing survey of Merak Bay. It may also have carried out further troop transport duties and naval support operations for the Dutch war effort against the Padris in West Sumatra.99 Again between 19 October and early January 1831, the corvette was involved in the same naval back-up roles, and assisted during the Dutch assault on the Padri rock redoubt at Ujung Raja near Katiagan in West Pasaman (Pasaman Barat) Regency (kabupaten) in December 1831:100

• 101 Javasche Courant, 20-10-1831 (refers to Pollux leaving Batavia in a northerly direction with troops (...)
• 102 NL-HaNA 2.12.14_5_0047 and 4_14_0071 (Register and Staat van Dienst Eeg).

41On 12 January 1832, after an absence of three months Pollux was back in Batavia.101 By this time, Eeg’s contribution to the Dutch war effort in West Sumatra had been recognised by his investiture with the Order of the Netherlands Lion (Ridderorde der Nederlandsche Leeuw) given personally by the Dutch monarch, Willem I, on 7 October 1831.102

• 103 Javasche Courant, 24-05-1832 reports Pollux’s final departure from Batavia for the Netherlands with (...)
• 104 Rotterdamsche Courant, 25-10-1832.

43Thus, it was that on the morning of 23 May 1832, Pollux weighed anchor from Batavia for the last time heading for the Sunda Strait. As had been the case in 1827, a number of returning Dutch troops were on board making the ship’s tight quarters seem even more cramped.103 Whereas, the corvette’s previous return journey (1 April-30 November 1827) had nearly ended in disaster, an even grimmer fate now awaited the officers and men of the corvette’s last homeward voyage. On the final leg of the journey from the South Atlantic to Vlissingen from 23 August to 23 October 1832 a third of its crew (40 sailors and NCOs) along with its captain, First Officer and a young Second Lieutenant succumbed to scurvy (Plate 12). Indeed, the remaining sailors were so weakened by scurvy that they had severe difficulty entering the navigation channel at the mouth of the Scheldt and bringing the ship into port in Vlissingen. A day before the Pollux docked, it hit a sandbank—the Banjaard—at the entrance to the Scheldt and could only be refloated by throwing 18 out of its 28 cannons overboard.104

• 105 According to Dutch naval historian, Tico Onderwater, “scurvy often appeared as secondary disease, o (...)
• 106 See Carey 2021:58, referencing Errembault de Dudzeele et d’Orroir’s (1789-1830) stopover on his fin (...)
• 107 Batavia to St Helena is 6,857 nautical miles; St Helena to Vlissingen is 4,497 nautical miles, maki (...)

44How did this tragedy happen? Unlike July 1827, when Pollux had been hit by a hurricane, scurvy was not an Act of God. In fact, the Scots doctor, James Lind (1716-94), a pioneer of naval hygiene in the Royal Navy, had already developed the theory that citrus fruits cured scurvy by the third quarter of the eighteenth century. And his methods were largely adopted in the British senior service with lemon (and later lime) juice being mixed with the daily Rum ration by the early nineteenth century—hence the American epithet for British sailors as ‘limeys’. Although other navies, like the Dutch, seem to have forgotten and reinvented this cure more than once, its implementation still depended on the medical knowledge of individual ship’s doctors.105 In Pollux’s case this was Surgeon-Major Schillet. A specialist in cholera not diet, it was his duty to insist on administering citrus fruits. But the attitude of the commander and the possibilities of obtaining such fruit also mattered. And here the tense international situation may have played a part in the tragedy. Whereas, on previous homeward bound voyages, before the Belgian crisis broke in late August 1830, Dutch warships and troop transports had taken advantage of the repair and revictualling facilities at a number of British-controlled ports, including St. Helena106 conveniently situated at a near halfway point between Batavia and the Netherlands,107 Mauritius, where Pollux underwent emergency repairs in July-August 1827, and Cape Town and Simonstown in South Africa, the last an important naval base, the threat of imminent war with Britain over Belgian independence now dictated caution. Captain Eeg may have calculated that the Pollux ran the risk of being impounded by the British authorities if war broke out while the corvette was in a British port.

• 108 NL-HaNA 2.12.03_3601. It can be downloaded at: https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/archief/ (...)
• 109 NL-HaNA 2.12.14_5_0047, 4_14_0071 (Register and Staat van Dienst Eeg); NL-HaNA 2.12.14_17_0198, 12_ (...)

45Sadly, the Pollux’s ship’s log only exists for its first four years of service between 1824 and 1827, possibly because of the fire which destroyed many of the records kept in the Dutch Navy Ministry in the Lange Voorhout, The Hague, in 1844108 so there is no way we can check this against the official record, but it seems almost certain that the corvette did not stop over and revictual at St. Helena as it passed through the South Atlantic in late August 1832. Taking an average daily distance of 73.7 nautical miles a day for the 11,354 nautical mile voyage which the Pollux covered in 154 days, this would mean that it arrived at the latitude of St Helena (15.9650° South) around 23 August 1832. Once it had sailed past this point, there remained another 61 days of sailing to cover the remaining 4,497 nautical miles to Vlissingen. It was precisely on this final leg of the voyage that the disease began to take hold. Captain Eeg died first on 7 September, followed by his First Officer, Hugenholtz, five days later, on 12 September.109 This suggests that it was precisely the failure to revictual in St Helena around 23 August which sealed the fate of the ship’s crew. If new supplies, particularly of citrus fruit, had been brought on board at that time, then the tragedy which overwhelmed Pollux on its last homeward voyage could almost certainly have been avoided.

• 110 NL-HaNA2.12.14_27-1787 (Staat van Dienst Tulleken). See also Van der Aa 1852-78, 8.2:1125.
• 111 This was Vice-Admiral Jan Hoogenhouck Tulleken (1762-1851), who participated in the battle of Dogge (...)
• 112 Leeuwaarder Courant, 13-11-1832, refers to the presence of the British warship.
• 113 Utrechtsche Courant, 3-11-1832, “Dezer [23 October 1832] te Vlissingen binnengekomen korvet de Poll (...)

47Pollux’s third officer, Second Lieutenant (post-1849, kapitein-luitenant-ter-zee) Jonkheer Constantin George van Hoogenhouck Tulleken (1802-59), was now in temporary command.110 The son of a Vice-Admiral,111 Tulleken appears to have risen to the challenge of taking over command of the Pollux following the deaths in quick succession of the ship’s captain and First Officer. But his severely weakened and depleted crew faced multiple challenges, not least when they eventually reached the mouth of the Scheldt on 22 October. There they noted the unmistakable presence of a British warship blockading the navigation canal112 and received a warning from an American ship that hostilities between the Netherlands and Britain over Belgian independence might already have broken out:113

• 114 Van der Aa 1852-78, 17.2:900-901; Molhuysen and Blok 1911-37, V:786.
• 115 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, 8-11-1832.
• 116 Ibid.
• 117 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, 8-04-1830; 10-04-1830 (refers to the birth of Hugenholtz’s youngest ch (...)
• 118 Opregte Haarlemsche Courant, 30-10-1832 (Spengler obituary); 3-11-1832 (Eeg obituary). See also Alg (...)

48The plight of the Pollux and Tulleken’s bravery caught the public imagination in the Netherlands. Indeed, it came hard on the heels of Second Lieutenant Jan Carel Josephus (‘Itz’) van Speyk’s (1802-31) heroic action twenty months earlier on 5 February 1831 when he had blown up his gunboat (kanoneerboot no.2) with all its crew and a large number of the attacking mob in Antwerp rather than allow it to fall into Belgian hands.114 Tulleken would have been well aware of Van Speyk’s heroic action when he summoned his sick crew on the Pollux to prepare for a similar act of self-immolation against the British. Dutch well-wishers of the gallant lieutenant probably made the connection too: those in Haarlem even clubbed together to send him letters of support and monetary gifts – discretely referred to as extra oorlam (‘extra rum / jenever / gin rations’)—sailor’s wages at this time being paid partly in drink. These Tulleken politely refused. He informed the Opregte Haarlemsche Courant readership on 8 November that he had just been doing his duty and could not accept any monetary gifts.115 Bringing the Pollux home after both his superiors had been struck down by scurvy was what was expected of him as a serving officer in the Dutch navy. But heroics were not the only emotion on display in the Dutch press that day. In the same number of the Haarlem newspaper in which Tulleken’s statement had appeared, the human impact of the losses endured by the Pollux was also starkly evidenced: in the Family News (Familiebericht) section, First Lieutenant Hugenholtz’s widow, Alberta Stoffelina Geertruida Bruinier (1798-1857), took out an obituary notice to mourn her husband’s passing.116 Although she did not mention this, she was now left with three young children, two sons aged seven and four years respectively, and a very young daughter, born on 1 April 1830, Jacoba Stoffelina Anthonia, then still a toddler of thirty-one months, whom her late husband had never even met.117 Other obituary notices followed from the grieving parents of Second Lieutenant Willem August Spengler (1803-32), their beloved second son, and the Amsterdam-based widow of Captain Christiaan Eeg, Catharina Margaretha Amesz (1778-1836), whose only son, Christian Jan (1802-68), had already followed his father into the navy and would end his career as a captain (kapitein-ter-zee) in command of the armed brig Mercur (Mercury) in 1851.118

• 119 Overijsselsche Courant, 26-02-1833 (refers to Dufez’s appointment on or around 22 February 1833).

49The Pollux’s days were now numbered. After docking in Vlissingen on 23 October 1832, the corvette would scarcely move from the Dutch naval base for the remaining six years of her life while it served as a blockade ship (blokschip). A new commanding officer seemingly of Swiss origin, First Lieutenant E.F. du Fés (also spelt Dufez), who was immediately promoted to Commander (Kapitein-luitenant-ter-zee), was appointed in late February 1833, taking up his command on 1 March and serving for nineteen months until 1 December 1834.119 On 25 March, it was towed into position at the mouth of the Scheldt by the steam tug De Beurs van Amsterdam to take part in the Dutch blockade of the strategic waterway as negotiations continued over the status of the newly independent Belgium. By this time, it had become little more than a floating battery with its fire power diminished—its ordnance still only numbered ten 32-pounder cannon, the battery guns flung overboard to refloat the corvette as it entered the Scheldt on 22 October 1832 never being restored.

• 120 On the Pollux’s movements on the Scheldt in 1833-34, see Middelburgse Courant, 7-03-1833, 25-03-183 (...)
• 121 See Middelburgse Courant, 18-11-1834, 27-11-1834, reference the Corvettes Pollux and Comet being to (...)
• 122 Algemeen Handelsblad, 15-04-1838.

50Throughout the rest of 1833 and 1834, Pollux continued the same blockade duties with other Dutch warships on the Scheldt,120 usually being towed into position by steam barges or tugs rather than required to manoeuvre under its own sail.121 Four years later, on 15 April 1838, it was still listed as part of His Netherlands Majesty’s Navy (Koninklijke Nederlandsche Marine).122 But by then it had become surplus to requirements. The age of sail had been overtaken by the age of steam. A warship which could not manoeuvre under its own power in a narrow waterway like the Scheldt was now a liability. At the same time, the political tensions over Belgian independence, which had required the Pollux’s urgent presence on the Scheldt in 1832, were now a thing of the past. In late 1838, negotiations had begun in London between the principal powers of the Concert of Europe (Austria, France, Russia and the United Kingdom) and the two parties in dispute (the Netherlands and Belgium), which would result on 19 April 1839, in the Treaty of London, also known as the Treaty of Separation. Signed by the Dutch king, Willem I, and the recently installed Belgian monarch, Leopold I, this formally recognised Belgian independence with the newly established kingdom’s neutrality and sovereignty being guaranteed by the Concert of Europe powers, a guarantee which would remain in place until 4 August 1914, when the German invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg triggered World War I (1914-18).

• 123 On the break-up of the Pollux, see http://warshipresearch.weblog.nl/warships/2009/2008/dutch-warshi (...)

51As the negotiations for Belgian independence commenced in London, quietly and without fanfare, Pollux was decommissioned. The ship was broken at the Naval Dockyard at Vlissingen, only its name continuing to have a resonance until the present era.123 The corvette’s fourteen-year service in the Dutch navy had come to an end. So too did a ship whose short life had spanned the violent beginnings of the high colonial era in the Dutch East Indies. Silent witness to drama and tragedy in equal measure, its ship’s log was stuff of a novel or at least a naval version of Servitude et Grandeur Militaires [Glory and Submission: Aspects of Military Life, 1835], Alfred de Vigny’s (1797-1863) meditation on that “almost barbaric profession of warfare” which caused him to “love the majesty of human suffering.”

• 124 See Nahuys van Burgst 1835-36, II:9.

785 September 1825 – departs Surabaya with the Maria Reigersbergen and a detachment of 171 Dutch infantry from the expeditionary force (divisie) sent from South Sulawesi (Makassar) on transports (frigates and corvettes) arranged by Captain (kapitein-ter-zee) Pieter Pietersen of the Sulawesi (Makassar) squadron,124 of which 64 sail with the Pollux

• 125 A translation of the relevant pages of the ship’s log in Indonesian can be found in Karsono Hardjos (...)

8514-23 October 1826 – ten-day mission in Pacitan125