Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij

The Koninklijke package Vaart Maatschappij ( KPM ) was a Dutch shipping company. Formally, the KPM was based in Amsterdam, but the operations center was located in Batavia (present-day Jakarta ), the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The KPM was 1888-1966 and was mainly responsible for the upkeep of the vessel to and from the Dutch East Indies as well as for the supply of the hinterland of this colonial territory. In 1957 a part of the KPM on the Indonesian state-owned shipping company Pelni, In 1967 the Koninklijke Java - China Package Vaart Lijnen ( KJCPL ) the remaining share.

Creation and development

The KPM was on September 4, 1888 in Amsterdam from Rotterdamschen Lloyd ( RL ) and the Stoomvaart Maatschappij " Nederland " (SMN, Netherlands Steamship Company ) was founded. The Amsterdam head office was located in 1916 along with several other local shipping companies in a cantor of the shipping house on the Prinsengracht Hendrikkade. The new company took over one of the ships of the Nederlandsch Indian Stoomvaart Maatschappij. After two years of preparation, the KPM on January 1, 1891 the first scheduled journey.

The company had primarily ship connections for passenger and cargo transport between the islands of the Dutch East Indies, the so-called inter - insular ride. The common term for this type of scheduled service for the transport of passengers, mail and goods was vaart packet at the end of the 19th century. The package vaart was performed with packet schepen ( package ships ), the packet prefix ( postpakket in Dutch with the meaning ) nor with only one written k was; later the general notation was pakket, pakketvaart and introduced pakketschepen, but the proper name of the shipping company remained unchanged.

From 1906 also routes were established starting from the Indian Archipelago abroad, the so-called buitenlijnen ( " outline "). These lines often were given their own name, which appears aroused that they were independent companies, but in fact they were under the direction of KPM. Thus arose in 1908 the Java Australië Lijn (JAL ), 1910 Java Siam Lijn ( JSL ) and 1915 Deli Straits China Lijn ( DSCL ).

In the period between the two world wars, the activities of the shipping company grew such that the fleet of the KPM of Rotterdamschen Lloyd and SMN outdated. In terms of both the number of vessels and the tonnage on the KPM was the largest shipping company in the Netherlands. During World War II it was so abruptly ended, the KPM came from this time forth severely damaged.

Decline

1947 buitenlijnen KPM with the independent Java - China - Japan Lijn ( JCJL ) were merged and incorporated on 1 January 1948 into a new company: Koninklijke Java - China Package Vaart Lijnen ( KJCPL ). The KPM again focused entirely on the inter - insulaire vaart. But this was soon complicated by the founding of the state of Indonesia in 1949, which was accompanied by the disappearance of the local colonies. On 6 December 1957, the Indonesian government decided to take the local company KPM in possession and the regulated service incorporate Pelni. This was implemented in the nationalization during the years 1958 to 1960, after the indonesische.Parlament had issued in 1958 to a new legislation. After several complications, most ships departed in April 1958 from Singapore, where will the new command center was set up.

A number of relatively small ships was sold and laid off some of the staff. With the larger and more modern ships tried the shrunken KPM to open up new cruising grounds in the Far East, such as the Pacific Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean.

Fusion

On January 1, 1967, the KPM merged with Koninklijke Java - China Package Vaart Lijnen ( KJCPL ). In fact, it was more of a takeover of after losing the buitenlijnen rebuilt the company. The KPM brought a fleet of 38 ships with a total capacity of 205 766 gross tons in the KJCPL. More mergers followed in 1970 with some other Dutch shipping companies, resulting Nedlloyd emerged. Nedlloyd in 1996, part of the company Royal P & O Nedlloyd, which passed into the possession of the Danish shipping company Maersk Line in 2005.

The Dutch part of the KPM Archives The National Archives was transferred from the Nedlloyd, the Indian archive was largely lost in the seizure of the headquarters. The art collection of KPM is now available as part of the Nedlloyd collectie held by the Foundation Kunstbezit Koninklijke Nedlloyd, which has left the collection on loan to the Maritime Museum Rotterdam and Scheepvaart Museum Amsterdam.

Trivia

In the Dutch East Indies, the abbreviation KPM was often jokingly used for " Komt Pas morning" ( "Come tomorrow " ), probably because of the frequent delays of KPM.