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).
