Article

Steamers

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Steamers

Scope and Historical Definition

Steamers in the waters of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo represent a critical chapter in the region’s maritime history, marking the transition from sail-based trade to mechanised transport and reshaping the economic geography of South-east Asia. The earliest steam vessel to appear in Asian waters was the Nawab of Oude’s steam yacht, a 19.2-ton craft built at Lucknow in 1819 with a single 8 h.p. Butterley engine, which was soon abandoned and left to ruin [1, p. 127]. The first steamer to reach Singapore waters was the paddle-steamer Vander Capellen (c. 230 tons), built at Sourabaya in 1825, which appeared in the port on 17–19 April 1827 and was chartered by the Dutch government at $10,000 per month during the Java War [1, pp. 131–133]. By the close of the 1830s, approximately fifty paddle-steamers had been employed across India and south-east Asia, of which about thirty remained in active service by mid-1840 [1, p. 161]. The period from 1819 to 1839 has been designated the “experimental era” of steam navigation in the region, a phase characterised by the introduction of individual vessels rather than the establishment of regular lines [1, p. 120].

The development of steam shipping in the region was inseparable from the broader transformation of Singapore from a sail-based entrepôt into a steam-powered regional hub. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 redirected global trade routes through the Straits of Malacca and made steam shipping economically viable for Asian waters on a scale previously unattainable [2, p. 274]. Singapore’s total trade grew from $70.7 million in 1870 to $206.7 million in 1890, and annual shipping tonnage reached 2,989,059 tons carried by 3,646 vessels by that date [2, pp. 276]. This commercial expansion was underpinned by the development of Keppel Harbour, which provided the deep-water anchorage necessary to accommodate the larger steam vessels that were replacing the sailing ships of the earlier period [2, p. 274].

Early Steamers in Malayan Waters, 1827–1846

The first decade of steam navigation in the region was marked by the appearance of individual vessels, most of them paddle-steamers, whose careers were often short and whose names were frequently reused, generating considerable confusion in the secondary literature [1, pp. 120–121]. Gibson-Hill identified five paddle-steamers that appeared in Singapore before 1840: the Vander Capellen (1827), the Enterprize (1829, 1834), the Forbes (1830), the Jardine (1836), and the second Diana (1837–46) [1, p. 122]. Of these, the Enterprize (464 tons, O.M.) was the most significant; built at Deptford in 1825 at a total cost of approximately Rs 430,000, she was purchased by the Bengal Government for £40,000 and served in the Burma War as a packet-boat before being rebuilt at Bombay and finally broken up at Kidderpore in 1838 [1, pp. 134–139].

The second Diana (133 tons), built at Sulkea in 1836 with engines salvaged from the first vessel of that name, reached Singapore on 2 March 1837 and remained in Straits service until January 1846, when she was replaced by the P.S. Hooghly [1, pp. 157–158]. She was the first government steamer permanently based in the Straits, her arrival following prolonged local agitation for regular steam communication [1, p. 122]. Nevertheless, regular steam communication between Singapore and Bengal was not achieved until 1845, a full eight years after the Diana’s arrival [1, p. 122].

The operational context for these early vessels was the broader development of steam in India, including the Hooghly tug trade, the Ganges river services, and the Bombay–Suez packet run [1, p. 122]. The Calcutta Steam-Tug Association, formed in 1835, made a profit of 53 per cent on its capital in its first three years; by 1839 it operated four tugs on the Hooghly, including the Forbes, Seetakoond, Andrew Henderson, and Dwarkanauth [1, pp. 121]. The Forbes subsequently appeared in Singapore in 1830, illustrating the fluid movement of vessels between Indian and Malayan waters during this experimental period.

A significant portion of the early literature on these vessels was marred by errors propagated by retrospective writers such as Rear-Admiral Preble, whose account included two “fictitious” steamers—the King-fa and the Snake—that were products of accretion and misattribution [1, pp. 125–126]. Gibson-Hill’s method of working from contemporary newspapers, government records, and builder’s registers was essential to establishing the true identity and career of each vessel [1, pp. 120–121].

The Suez Canal Era and the Straits Steamship Company

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the subsequent British political intervention in the western Malay States from 1874 onwards created the conditions for a new phase in the region’s steam shipping history [2, p. 274]. The development of Keppel Harbour to accommodate steamers, and the rise of new port cities across South-east Asia that broke with traditional inland royal capitals, further consolidated Singapore’s position as the region’s dominant entrepôt, served by direct lines to Europe, India, and East Asia [2, p. 274].

The founding of the Straits Steamship Company in Singapore on 20 January 1890 represented a defining moment in this transition [2, p. 274]. The company was formed with a nominal capital of $10 million in $10 shares, but issued capital of only $421,000, all from local subscribers [2, p. 286]. Its initial fleet comprised five vessels: the Sappho (324 tons, 1887), the Will of the Wisp (148 tons), the Malacca (404 tons, 1885), the Billiton (335 tons, 1880), and the Hye Leong (406 tons, 1885); all were schooner-rigged with small auxiliary engines [2, pp. 286–287]. The company emerged from the convergence of Suez Canal-era steam trade, British intervention in the tin-rich Malay States, and a strategic partnership between the European shipping agent Theodore Bogaardt and three prominent Straits Chinese merchants—Tan Keong Saik, Tan Jiak Kim, and Lee Cheng Yan [2, p. 274].

Bogaardt, a Dutchman who had become the key Singapore agent for the Blue Funnel Line (Ocean Steam Ship Company), had already built up a portfolio of regional shipping ventures in the Sumatran tobacco trade, the Borneo tobacco trade, and the Bangkok rice trade [2, p. 274]. Bogaardt and the Holt brothers had invested £80,000 in these ventures between 1875 and 1882; the Hecuba on the Bangkok rice trade alone earned an annual profit of £10,000 [2, pp. 285–286]. The Chinese partners brought the capital, local networks, and access to the tin trade that made the venture viable [2, p. 274]. Tin ore export was permitted by Selangor and Sungei Ujong in 1886 and by Perak in 1888; the Straits Trading Company opened its modern smelter at Pulau Brani in 1890, the same year the company was formed [2, p. 285].

A cautionary counterpoint to the locally-governed Straits Steamship Company model was provided by the East India Ocean Steamship Company, a Blue Funnel subsidiary formed in 1893 that attempted to replicate Bogaardt’s regional model under Liverpool control. Capitalised at £100,000, it was driven out of Sumatra by the Dutch and Borneo by the Germans, and was dissolved in 1899, when it was sold to Norddeutscher Lloyd for £90,045 [2, p. 284]. Its failure underscored the advantages of the locally-governed model that had made the Straits Steamship Company viable [2, p. 274].

Steamers and Diplomatic and Military Activity

Steamers also featured prominently in the diplomatic and military activities of the period. The Italian corvette Governolo, on its 1873 voyage, conducted an extensive campaign of exploration and training off the northern coasts of Borneo and the adjacent islands, visiting Singapore, Sarawak, Labuan, Brunei, and Gaya Island [3, p. 44]. While visiting Sarawak, the Governolo sailed up the river through a branch named the Muarabatos, breaking the journey 32 miles from the sea where the very sharp bends in the river would no longer allow safe manoeuvre; the captain and his party were forced to use a steamboat to visit the Rajah of Sarawak at his residence in Kuching, 3 miles beyond the point where the Governolo was obliged to stop [3, p. 44]. From Gaya, a team including the midshipman Giordano, Mr Bove, and the ship’s surgeon Dr Bocca left to explore Mount Kinabalu with the assistance of 34 local guides and porters, reaching an altitude of 2,800 metres before being turned back by weather conditions and time constraints [3, p. 44].

The British Royal Navy’s use of steamers in the region is illustrated by the career of HMS Maeander, a 44-gun sailing frigate commissioned at Sheerness on 2 November 1847 to convey James Brooke, Raja of Sarawak, to his new post as Governor of the recently acquired colony of Labuan [4, p. 229]. The ship’s log shows that Maeander entered New Harbour (now Keppel Harbour) on 19 June 1848 and remained until 18 August, a stay of nearly two months, making her the first vessel to use the anchorage on a protracted basis [4, pp. 233–234]. The popular story that Captain Keppel grounded the ship on the shoal that bears her name is unsupported by the documentary record; the log records no such incident on any of her four visits to Singapore [4, p. 240]. The ship suffered 15 deaths from disease or drowning by the time she reached Sarawak in September 1848, and total casualties over the full cruise were such that only 150 of her original 360 men remained when she paid off at Sheerness on 30 July 1851 [4, pp. 235]. On 17 July 1849, Maeander ran aground on an uncharted coral bank in the Balabac Strait, heeling at nearly forty degrees; she was refloated within twenty-four hours by jettisoning guns and shot [4, pp. 238–239].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on steamers in the region spans more than a century and reflects shifting priorities in maritime and economic history. Gibson-Hill’s 1954 article, “The steamers employed in Asian waters, 1819–39,” was the foundational study of the experimental era, assembled originally in 1949 to clear the ground for a subsequent study of regular steam traffic in the Malayan region [1, p. 126]. His method of working from primary sources—contemporary newspapers such as the Singapore Chronicle (1825–37) and the Singapore Free Press (1837–45), the Asiatic Journal, the Chinese Repository, and the India Office Library collections in London—established a reliable chronological framework and corrected the errors propagated by earlier retrospective writers [1, p. 126].

Cowan’s 1965 article on HMS Maeander built on Gibson-Hill’s 1954 foundational study of the Old Strait, demonstrating the primacy of the contemporaneous ship’s log over retrospective memoir as a methodological principle [4, p. 229]. His insistence on the documentary record as the arbiter of historical fact corrected persistent misconceptions about Keppel’s relationship with New Harbour and the popular narrative of the ship’s grounding [4, p. 240].

Tregonning’s 1965 study of the Straits Steamship Company’s founding in 1890 represented a shift in focus from the technical and nautical history of individual vessels to the commercial and political context in which steam shipping operated [2, p. 274]. Drawing on the Singapore Registry of Ships, Lloyds Register, company sailing advertisements in the Straits Times, and Tan family papers, Tregonning positioned the company’s formation as a defining moment in Singapore’s transition from a sail-based entrepôt to a steam-powered regional hub [2, p. 274]. He paid explicit tribute to Gibson-Hill’s nautical research, acknowledging the debt of the later commercial history to the earlier technical foundation [2, p. 274].

Candilio and Bressan’s 2000 article, while primarily concerned with Sultan Abu Bakar’s diplomatic visit to Italy in 1885, provides valuable incidental evidence of the role of steamers in the region’s diplomatic and military activities, including the Italian naval expeditions to Borneo and the use of steamboats for riverine transport in Sarawak [3, p. 44]. Together, these studies trace the arc of steamers in the region from the experimental introduction of individual paddle-steamers in the 1820s and 1830s, through the establishment of regular government and commercial services in the 1840s, to the emergence of locally-governed shipping companies in the 1890s that reflected the full integration of steam power into the economic and political fabric of the Straits Settlements and the Malay States.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. C.A. Gibson-Hill (1954). The steamers employed in Asian waters, 1819–39 JMBRAS 27(1): 120–162. Read on JSTOR
  2. K.G. Tregonning (1965). The origin of the Straits Steamship Company in 1890 JMBRAS 38(2): 274–289. Read on JSTOR
  3. L. Bressan and A. Candilio (2000). Sultan Abu Bakar’s visit to the Italian king and to the Pope JMBRAS 73(1): 43–54. Read on JSTOR
  4. C.D. Cowan (1965). New harbour, Singapore and the cruise of H.M.S. Maeander, 1848–49 JMBRAS 38(2): 229–240. Read on JSTOR