Middelburg, 14 October. Yesterday [13 October] was at the yard of the Commercie Compagnie with success the bark ship Minerva of around 500 Java lasten launched.(1) She was build for account of Spoors en Sprenger of Middelburg and with as master L.M. Hoffmann destined for the Dutch East Indies trade shipping. At the same time was the keel laid down of a ship with similar size and destination.
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).
