The journey of a 1904 North Borneo postal card from Kudat to Java

 

This beautiful postal card has a multitude of post marks which yields very interesting information about its journey from Kudat to Java. It is uncommon in the the sense that it was properly and commercially used. It was correspondence between two Dutch planters in their respective localities.

I would be very grateful if someone out there can translate this long message in Dutch at the back which was written on 17 Dec 1904 at the Ranau Estate near Kudat. It was sent to Bezoeki on the east side of Java. The 26,000 acre Ranau Estate of the New London Borneo Tobacco Company Ltd grew mostly tobacco even though rubber was gradually being introduced. On the other hand, the area around Bezoeki was more suited to sugar cane even though the tobacco grown in Bezoeki was the best in Java². The series of cancellations present tells a very good story of its journey and the processes involved.

 

This 6c card had the 1 January 1891 rate for postcards from UPU countries in transit through Singapore even the prevailing rate for a postcard was changed to 3c from 1 September 1895³. It was posted in Kudat and has the cancellation date of 19 DEC 1904. It reached Labuan the next day. On the card  there are arrival and dispatch cds of 20 DEC 04 and 22 DEC 04 from Labuan respectively. The ship that was bound for Singapore around those dates was the S.S. Kedah of the Norddeutscher LLoyd Bremen Company⁴. It arrived on the 13th Dec and then started its journey back from Lahat Dato probably on the 17th December. It would have called at the ports of  Sandakan and Kudat before Labuan. It was quite possible that the Kedah received this card at Kudat  and then bypassed Jesselton taking only one day to reach Labuan depending on the shipping schedule.

It took 5 days to reach Singapore on DE 27 04 and was efficiently received by the Netherlands Indies Postal Agency in Singapore on the same day as seen by the square circle cancellation on the lower right side . The card was then carried by the KPM shipping line in stages to its final destination eventually. The Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij or Royal Packet Navigation Company, 1888-1967, was set up to maintain the connection between the islands of Indonesia with the outside world. Postal agencies were set up in Singapore and Penang in 1851 to aid this process and they continued in service until around 1920⁵. By maintaining an inter island service, KPM supported the unification of the Dutch Indies economy and brought commerce through Batavia (Jakarta) instead of Singapore

Probably the mail for remote areas in Java were initially processed at Weltevreden as seen by the corresponding square circle cancel dated 30 12 1904 three days later. This  was a suburb of Batavia favoured by the Europeans. From here it was carried by KPM to Sitoebondo or Situbondo as it is now known, over 1,000km away on the eastern side of Java.  It took another three days to arrive on 2 1 1905 as seen on the square circle postmark. The well known area of Surabaya is 226km to the west.  The final destination of Bezoeki or Besuki nowadays is 70km to the west of Situbondo. The carriage at this stage would have been either by land or native boat. The overpaid rate of 6c was really a bargain considering the complicated journey that was undertaken to deliver the card.

¹ Military report on the Netherlands' possessions in the East Indies.  ² The Postal History of British Borneo by Edward Proud. ³The British North Borneo Herald  Jan 3 1905. ⁴Maritime marks of Indonesia by Geoff Ellerton, TPO and Seapost Society.

I can not find an image of the SS Kedah and the one on the internet is actually a later ship built in Britain and was one of the Straits steamships based at Singapore and is depicted on of the country's stamps. This one here belonging to NDL of Bremen is a similar ship and tonnage. It started its run between Singapore and Sandakan in 1900 and also stopping by Kudat, Jesselton and Labuan in between. Its sister ship was the SS Tringannu on this particular route. Later on, it also went on to Lahad Dato and Tawau after the main port of call of Sandakan. Occasionally, it would venture as far afield as Jolo in the southern Philippines. NDL sold the Kedah in the second half of 1905. And the Tringannu was also put aside. The NDL ships that replaced them were the SS Darvel and SS Marudu. The involvement of Norddeutscher Lloyd line in the Far East was abruptly cut with the advent of WWl. This ended an era of Germanic merchant navy efficiency and supremacy much to the loss of local Europeans as their on-ship hospitality was apparently legendary.