Middelburg, 10 March. At the yard of the Commercie Compagnie at Middelburg was on 9 March in the presence of a very large audience with success the bark ship Het Zeepaard of about 500 Java-lasten launched. She was build for account of Van den Broecke, Luteyn en Schouten of Middelburg for the Dutch East Indies trade shipping and her master was to be J. Giltjens. Prince Hendrik who just arrived at Middelburg with the steam yacht Prinses Marianne coming from Rotterdam sighted the launching.
Note
1. In 1826 was the standard to calculate the cargo capacity of a ship the so-called roggelast (rogge=rye) of 2.075 kilo’s. In 1827 made the Nederlandsche Handels Maatschappij a list of all colonial products with their weights corresponding with the space needed for one roggelast. This became known as the Java last. For instance the weight of a Java last tea was 1.000 kilo, of pepper 1.600, of rice 2.000 and of coffee 1.500 kilo (in the practice in fact 1.800).
