Ocean Exploration in Nusantara

The seas of Nusantara and their diversity amazed a handful of Europeans, especially the Dutch. They saw the Nusantara's seas both as a commercial route and a mysterious world awaiting further exploration.

Perhaps that's also what prompted Georg Eberhard Rumphius, a lowly German employee of the East India Company (VOC), to switch from being a ship engineer to a flora and fauna researcher during his placement as a VOC agent on Hitu Island, Ambon, in 1657.  

Joan Maetsuycker, the VOC governor-general in Batavia, even gave Rumphius dispensation to pursue his nature research. This effort was fruitful because from Rumphius' hands came a scientific work that even the VOC "deliberately did not publish because it contained sensitive information." The work was entitled Het Amboinsche kruidboek, a six-volume catalog of the flora and fauna of Ambon, which was also the first scientific research in Nusantara.

"In addition to his VOC responsibilities, Rumphius took it upon himself to study shells, crustaceans, minerals, plants, and animals," wrote Hendrik M. van Aken in "Dutch Oceanographic Research in Indonesia in Colonial Times," published in the journal Oceanography Vol. 18 No. 4 in 2005.  

Rumphius died in 1702. The embargo on the publication of Het Amboinsche kruidboek was lifted two years later, but it wasn't until 1741, or 39 years after Rumphius' death, that the work was finally published.

The Arrival of Research Ships

During the VOC era, there was not much official marine research activity by scientific research bodies, largely because investment in science wasn't commercially attractive to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

However, there were individuals who pursued research independently and were eventually recognized by the government. Apart from Rumphius, there was Johannes van Keulen (1654-1715) who mapped the sea routes to the East Indies, and Francois Valentijn who actively mapped the waters of the Maluku Islands in his eight-volume book Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1726-1728).  

At that time, the VOC still considered any work on the Indian Ocean waters a state secret, so knowledge of the seas was extremely covert.

"The VOC had a strict policy of not allowing its former employees to publish anything that pertained to the colonies and their administration, although the execution of this policy was erratic and based on personal motives," as written in "Francois Valentijn," published in Fugitive Dreams: An Anthology of Dutch Colonial Literature edited by E.M. Beekman.

The policy was discontinued in the mid-18th century, marked by the publication of the works of Rumphius and Valentijn in Europe. However, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was still not interested in supporting scientific research in Indian Ocean waters due to lack of funds. Instead of Dutch, French and British scientific expedition ships were the ones often seen passing through. This situation lasted at least until the first half of the 19th century.

One of the first to stop was the Boudeuse and Etoile led by De Bouganville from France in 1768, and then the Endeavor ship led by James Cook from England in 1770. James Cook stopped in Indian Ocean waters and took some samples.

Then between 1793 and 1840, French research ships dominated scientific activities in Indian waters, followed by ships from Britain, the United States, Germany and Austria.

"Oceanographic research was part of the colonial policy of the Netherlands, but the initiatives for that research usually came from scientists in the Netherlands rather than the Dutch colonial government," van Aken wrote.  

Marine research in the following years continued to grow, especially in the fields of hydrography or sea mapping and marine biology. More international scientific expeditions began to arrive in the Indian Ocean in the 19th century, such as the Physicienne expedition (1817-1820), the Coquille expedition (1822-1825), the Astrolabe expedition (1826-1829), and the Bonite expedition (1836-1837) from France, and the Beagle expedition (1832-1836) from the United Kingdom with Charles Darwin aboard.

"The Dutch occupation of Nusantara provided accommodation, logistics and repair services for the scientific expeditions of Europeans visiting in the 18th and 19th centuries," Ian S.F. Jones and Joyce E. Jones wrote in Oceanography in the Days of Sail.

The Siboga Expedition

The need to manage the expanding Dutch territory following the transition from the bankrupt VOC to the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies, led to the need for more accurate mapping of the colony's waters. However, this need wasn't fulfilled quickly enough.  

It wasn't until the last years of the 19th century that academics from various Dutch universities began to advocate for more oceanographic activity in the Indian seas. In 1888, geographer Prof. C.M. Kan of the University of Amsterdam called for the formation of an oceanographic expedition organization. In 1896, at the annual meeting of the Commissie ter Bevordering van het Natuurkundig Onderzoek der Nederlandsche Koloniën (Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Physical Research in the Dutch Colonies), Prof. Max Wilhelm Carl Weber, a zoologist from the University of Amsterdam, proposed plans for an oceanographic expedition to research marine fauna and deep-sea basins.

"Max Weber declared himself ready to lead the expedition, and the committee approved the plan. The preparations for the expedition were then recommended to the Maatschappij ter Bevordering van het Natuurkundig Onderzoek der Nederlandsche Koloniën. It was also hoped that the Dutch government would provide ships to support the expedition," as written in Introduction et description de l'expédition [du Siboga].

A response was forthcoming. In May 1898, the Dutch East Indies colonial government decided that the Navy's newly built steam-powered ship, the Siboga, would be handed over to Weber and his team for a year-long expedition. The captain of the Siboga was decided to be G.F. Tydeman, a Dutch Navy officer with the rank of major.

The Siboga left Amsterdam for Surabaya on December 16, 1898. After arriving in Surabaya and making final preparations, on March 7, 1899, Siboga sailed again from the port to the exploration area, namely the seas in the eastern Dutch East Indies. The expedition was led by Max Weber himself, who was accompanied by other researchers such as Anne Weber-van Bosse (his wife), J. Versluys, H.F. Nierstrasz, and J.W. Huysman. Apart from Tydeman as captain of the ship, Siboga was also manned by 11 Dutch officers and 48 native sailors led by a foreman named Atur.

During the expedition, Siboga often stopped at certain points to take samples and conduct deep-sea measurement experiments using sounding techniques by bouncing radio waves off the seabed to determine depth. The sailors also actively mapped the coastlines and surveyed each island they encountered. As a result, the Siboga expedition collected samples from 323 points and conducted 238 soundings.

The Siboga expedition ended on February 27, 1900, when it docked in Surabaya. Samples, such as zoological, botanical, to geological samples, were collected to be sent to Amsterdam.

"Ultimately, a series of over 130 monographs on the Siboga Expedition appeared between 1901 and 1982. Most of these monographs dealt with zoological subjects, five with algae, two with geology, and only one dealt with the topographic relief of the archipelago," van Aken wrote. "The publication of the series was an international effort by authors from 12 countries, including Japan, Italy, India, the United States, and Canada."

The success of the Siboga expedition triggered the development of various marine facilities in the Dutch East Indies, especially in the field of marine biology. In 1904, the first Visscherij Station (Fisheries Station) was established at the Fish Market in Batavia. In 1919, the station was dismantled and turned into the Laboratorium voor het Onderzoek der Zee or Marine Research Laboratory which has functioned since 1922.

The Snellius Expedition

During the Siboga expedition, biological research was conducted more than anything else, resulting in a limited amount of physical oceanographic and geological data. German plans for a geological expedition in the South Atlantic in 1925 prompted Dutch scientific institutions to carry out a similar scientific expedition in the Dutch East Indies seas to make up for the lack of data from the Siboga expedition.

"In 1925, the Maatschappij ter Bevordering van het Natuurkundig Onderzoek der Nederlandsche Koloniën (Society for the Advancement of Scientific Physics Research in the Dutch Colonies) and the Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (Royal Netherlands Geographical Society) together took the initiative for organizing an oceanographic expedition to the waters of the Netherlands Indies Archipelago, with geology being emphasized," wrote L. Lek in "The Snellius Expedition," published in Science and Scientist in the Netherlands Indies edited by Pieter Honig and Frans Verdoom.

In the Netherlands, a committee was formed to prepare for this expedition, and Max Weber and Tydeman from the Siboga expedition were included. Lobbying and fundraising took place until 1927, when the Dutch colonial government approved the expedition. To carry out its mission, a research vessel designed by L. Troost was built in the Netherlands with the help of the Dutch Ministry of Defense. Construction began on February 23, 1928, and the ship was launched on August 14 of the same year. It was 62 meters long, weighing 1,055 tons. The ship was equipped with research instruments such as laboratories, ocean depth gauges, dark chambers, and others. The ship was named Snellius after the Dutch scientist Willebrord Snellius (1580-1626), and so the expedition was also called the Snellius expedition.

P.M. van Riel, chairman of the department of oceanography and maritime meteorology of the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institution), was chosen as the expedition leader. He was accompanied by several researchers such as H. Boschma, H. Kuenen, A. Boelman, H. C. Hamaker and H. J. Hardon.

Snellius was captained by Sea Major F. Pinke with a crew from the Navy, 67 of whom were native sailors assisted by two engineering specialists named Kartodihardjo and Erie.

In March 1929, Snellius left the Dutch port of Den Helder and reached Surabaya at the end of May. On July 27, 1929, Snellius set sail from Surabaya to observation posts in the eastern part of Nusantara. Like Siboga, they conducted soundings at almost every post. During the expedition, around 33,000 soundings were made, a huge number compared to only 238 on Siboga 30 years earlier.

The measurements focused on the Banda Sea, and the results established the Banda Trough as the deepest part of the sea in the Indies.  

"Some of these are in the Banda Sea, with a depth of more than 7,400 meters in its eastern part, the Celebes Sea with a depth of more than 6,200 meters from sea level, the Sulu Sea with a depth of 5,500 meters and the Flores Sea with a maximum depth of more than 5,100 meters," as mentioned in research report Scientific Results of the Snellius Expedition in the Eastern Part of the Netherlands East-Indies 1929-1930 Volume I.

Although the focus of the Snellius expedition was to obtain hydrological and geological data, during the expedition biological sampling was also carried out from each observation post, such as coral and plankton samples. The Snellius expedition, as written by Willem Vervoort in The Copepoda of The Snellius Expedition I, brought home around 800 plankton samples from around 350 different locations in the eastern part of Nusantara.  

The Snellius expedition ended on November 15, 1930. During the 17-month journey, the expedition team visited 375 observation posts. A few years later, the research results of the Snellius expedition were published in a 23-volume report.

Science and Colonialism

The lack of financial support from both the Netherlands and colonial government, had characterized the dynamics of marine scientific research in the Dutch East Indies for centuries. Dutch officials were not interested in investing in research if there was no political benefit, as in the case of the Siboga and Snellius expeditions.  

"The colonial navy's willingness to provide its Dutch ships for the Siboga scientific research was a result of the Dutch desire to consolidate colonial power in the archipelago against the new colonial powers approaching, such as Germany in New Guinea (1884), Japan in Taiwan (1895) and the United States in the Philippines (1898)," wrote Cornelis Fasseur in Imperialisme en Ethische Politiek (Imperialism and Ethical Politics).  

So were the political overtones in the Snellius expedition. "This expedition (Snellius) should also serve as proof that the Dutch East Indies is not only the best governed, but also the tropical country with the most advanced scientific research," said J.H Luymes, hydrographer of the Dutch Navy, in 1929.

Despite limited government support, important research results were obtained. "The series of publications generated by the Siboga Expedition led by Prof. and Mrs. Weber remain monument to science. And even Commander van Riel, permanently plagued by lack of time and staff after the end of the Snellius Expedition, set an example of high-quality hydrographic observations," van Aken concluded.

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