The KPM motor ship Maetsuycker had two distinct roles during the Pacific War. After escaping from the Netherlands East Indies, she operated from Australia as a troop and supply transport supporting Allied operations in New Guinea. In 1944 she was converted into a hospital ship and began evacuating sick and wounded personnel from forward operational areas.
Maetsuycker remained a Dutch-registered vessel flying the Dutch flag, with Dutch officers and predominantly Indonesian seafarers. Her medical staff, however, came from the United States Army, while her movements were coordinated within the wider Allied transport system.
This combination made Maetsuycker a striking example of the multinational cooperation upon which the Allied campaign in the Southwest Pacific depended.
A modern KPM passenger and cargo vessel
Maetsuycker was built for the Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij by the Nederlandsche Dok en Scheepsbouw Maatschappij in Amsterdam. She was launched on 19 September 1936 and entered service in 1937.[1]
The vessel was approximately 110 metres long and had a gross tonnage of about 4,200 tons. Her diesel engines gave her a service speed of approximately 14½ knots, making her faster than many of the older KPM ships that later operated from Australia.[2]
Maetsuycker was named after Joan Maetsuycker, who served as Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies from 1653 until 1678.[3]
Before the war, the ship carried passengers and cargo within the KPM’s extensive network of services connecting the islands and ports of the Netherlands East Indies.
Escape to Australia
Maetsuycker escaped the Japanese conquest of the Netherlands East Indies and reached Australia during the great movement of ships and refugees in the opening months of 1942.
She became one of the original group of KPM vessels made available to the Allied war effort. On 26 March 1942, the United States Army in Australia arranged for the employment of 21 KPM-operated ships, including Maetsuycker.[4]
The precise charter arrangements evolved over time and involved Dutch authorities, the United States Army, the Australian Commonwealth Shipping Control Board and Allied shipping agencies. Maetsuycker did not become the property of either the Australian Merchant Navy or the United States Army. She remained a Dutch vessel, although her employment was directed according to Allied military requirements.
Her Dutch officers remained aboard, together with Indonesian seafarers from the Netherlands East Indies. Australian and other Allied merchant seamen were subsequently used to fill vacancies as wartime conditions affected the availability of the original crew.[5]
Troops and supplies for New Guinea
Maetsuycker was soon employed carrying Allied troops and supplies from Australian ports to New Guinea. On 6 April 1942 she left Sydney in a convoy that included the KPM ships Cremer, Van Heutsz and Tasman.[6]
These early voyages took place when the Japanese advance towards Port Moresby appeared to threaten Australia directly. Suitable transport vessels were scarce, and the surviving KPM ships provided capacity that neither Australia nor the United States could immediately replace.
Maetsuycker subsequently carried troops, vehicles, equipment and supplies to forward bases in New Guinea. She participated in the reinforcement of Milne Bay and later became one of the 19 Dutch vessels employed in Operation Lilliput.[7]
Operation Lilliput
Operation Lilliput established a regular escorted supply service between Milne Bay and Oro Bay from December 1942. The route supported the fighting around Buna and Gona and the subsequent Allied advance along the northern coast of New Guinea.
The approaches to Oro Bay were narrow, reef-strewn and incompletely charted. Once inside the anchorage, ships encountered improvised unloading facilities and limited protection against Japanese aircraft.
Maetsuycker was among the larger vessels able to use the route. When the first Liberty wharf was completed at Oro Bay, she was reportedly the first ship to berth alongside it.[8]
Operation Lilliput ultimately delivered approximately 3,802 reinforcements and 60,000 tons of supplies in 39 completed convoy movements undertaken over 40 planned stages.[9]
Although Maetsuycker survived, the operation was extremely dangerous. Japanese air attacks sank the KPM ships ’s Jacob, Bantam and Van Heemskerk and damaged several others. Dutch and Indonesian crew members were killed or wounded while ships were unloading in the forward ports.
The need for hospital ships
As Allied operations moved farther from Australia, the evacuation of casualties became an increasingly serious logistical problem. Wounded and seriously ill personnel had to be moved from forward medical facilities to larger hospitals in secure rear areas.
Aircraft could evacuate some patients rapidly, but their capacity was limited. Many casualties required more extensive care during transportation than could be provided aboard an ordinary troop or cargo vessel.
Hospital ships offered operating facilities, wards, medical equipment and trained personnel. They could receive patients near the fighting area and transport them to hospitals in places such as Brisbane.
The Allies therefore decided to convert Maetsuycker into a close-support hospital ship for service in the Southwest Pacific.
Conversion in Australia
Maetsuycker underwent conversion during 1943–44. Her cargo and passenger spaces were transformed into wards and medical facilities, and she was painted white with a broad green hull stripe and large red crosses identifying her protected medical status.[10]
The conversion provided accommodation for approximately 250 stretcher patients. Depending upon the combination of cases carried, she could also accommodate a larger number of ambulatory patients.[11]
On 4 February 1944, Maetsuycker formally entered service in her hospital-ship role. The ceremony included an address by the Netherlands Consul-General.[12]
The ship is frequently described as Australian Hospital Ship Maetsuycker or Hospital Ship No. 7. These designations can create confusion about her nationality and control.
Maetsuycker remained Dutch-registered, sailed under the Dutch flag and was certified by the Netherlands Government as a hospital ship under the applicable international conventions. Her shipboard officers and seafarers remained separate from the medical complement. The United States Army controlled her operational medical employment, while the Australian Commonwealth Shipping Control Board exercised administrative responsibilities.[13]
She also carried the United States Army local-fleet designation X-12.[14]
The 196th Station Hospital
Medical personnel aboard Maetsuycker came principally from the United States Army’s 196th Station Hospital. The unit supplied doctors, nurses, medical orderlies and other specialists required to operate the wards and care for casualties at sea.[15]
The result was an unusually international shipboard organisation:
- Dutch officers remained responsible for the vessel;
- Indonesian, particularly Javanese, seafarers formed an important part of the maritime crew;
- Australian and other Allied merchant seamen filled some wartime vacancies; and
- American medical personnel treated the patients.
The conversion was therefore not simply an American “takeover” of a Dutch vessel. It was a cooperative arrangement under which Dutch maritime personnel and American medical staff performed different but complementary functions aboard the same ship.
Medical service in New Guinea
Maetsuycker’s first hospital-ship operations took her to the northern New Guinea bases. Her regular destinations included Milne Bay, Oro Bay, Lae, Finschhafen, Aitape and Hollandia.[16]
At these ports she embarked wounded and sick personnel from field hospitals and forward medical installations. She then transported them to better-equipped hospitals in secure areas, including Brisbane.
Her service placed her close to active operations. Hospital ships were protected under international law, but their crews and patients were not necessarily beyond danger. They operated in waters subject to Japanese air and naval activity and entered harbours crowded with military shipping.
On 25 June 1944, while operating near Biak, Maetsuycker received Captain Cyrus Taylor, the badly burned commander of the American motor torpedo boat PT-193. His vessel had been damaged and deliberately destroyed to prevent capture. Taylor died from his wounds aboard Maetsuycker later that day.[17]
This incident illustrates the ship’s close-support role. She was not simply carrying convalescents over long distances; she received seriously wounded personnel directly from active operational areas.
From New Guinea to the Philippines
As Allied forces advanced westward and northward, Maetsuycker’s area of service expanded. By the end of 1944 she was operating in the Philippines.
She reached Leyte Gulf in December and served in connection with the medical evacuation system established around Tacloban.[18] Hospital ships faced particular difficulties at Leyte because of repeated Japanese air attacks, including the first organised kamikaze operations.
For their protection and to avoid obstructing military shipping, hospital ships were often restricted in when they could enter the gulf and how long they could remain. Patients had to be transferred during relatively short visits before the vessels withdrew to safer waters.[19]
Maetsuycker later supported operations associated with the Allied advance into Luzon. In February 1945, casualties carried from Lingayen Gulf aboard the American landing ship LST-911 were transferred to Maetsuycker and another hospital ship for continued treatment.[20]
A ship that connected several Allied services
Maetsuycker’s hospital-ship service was markedly different from her earlier work as a military transport, but both roles arose from the same quality: the adaptability of the surviving KPM fleet.
As a transport, she helped move Allied troops and supplies from Australia to New Guinea. As a hospital ship, she carried casualties away from the advancing battlefront and into the military hospital system centred partly on Australia.
Her service also demonstrates why the history of the KPM fleet cannot be described as exclusively Dutch. Dutch ownership and officers were important, but Indonesian seafarers performed much of the shipboard work. Australians participated in administration and crewing, while American medical personnel cared for Allied patients.
Postwar service
Maetsuycker survived the Pacific War and returned to commercial service. From 1947 she operated with the Koninklijke Java-China-Paketvaart Lijnen, subsequently known internationally as Royal Interocean Lines.[21]
She remained in service until being sold in 1960. Under several later owners and names, the vessel continued operating before being broken up at Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1974.[22]
Remembering Maetsuycker
Maetsuycker’s wartime history spans two essential but contrasting tasks. She carried troops and supplies towards the New Guinea battlefront and later carried wounded and sick personnel away from it.
Her transformation from KPM passenger and cargo ship to Allied transport and hospital ship reflects the broader transformation of the Netherlands East Indies merchant fleet after its arrival in Australia.
The photographs associated with this article provide an important visual record of that transformation. They should remain with the revised page, but the existing heading “Unique set of 1944 pics added” should be replaced with the timeless description:
Maetsuycker as a hospital ship: a photographic record
The following is a set of unique pictures received from Peter Dunn, who took the photographs from the exhibits at NARA’s College Park library near Washington DC. They were taken after the US Army had taken over the hospital ship from the Dutch. The original text is published in the rows below the pictures. For an enlarged set of the pictures see here.
Endnotes
[1] Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, entry for Maetsuycker; Nederlandsche Dok en Scheepsbouw Maatschappij construction records, yard number 61. The ship was launched on 19 September 1936 and entered KPM service in 1937.
[2] Lloyd’s Register of Shipping; contemporary KPM fleet particulars. Different sources give net, gross and displacement figures without always identifying which measurement is being used. Her gross tonnage was approximately 4,200 tons.
[3] Maetsuycker was named after Joan Maetsuycker, Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies from 1653 until his death in Batavia in 1678.
[4] James R. Masterson, U.S. Army Transportation in the Southwest Pacific Area, 1941–1947 (Washington: Transportation Unit, Historical Division, Special Staff, United States Army, 1949), pp. 321–323 and appendix 30.
[5] “Australian Hospital Ships,” Naval Historical Society of Australia, account of Maetsuycker’s Dutch officers, Javanese crew and later Australian merchant-marine replacements.
[6] Contemporary convoy records, 6 April 1942; KPM wartime shipping histories. The convoy included Cremer, Van Heutsz, Tasman and Maetsuycker together with other Allied vessels.
[7] G. Hermon Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1942–1945, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, Series 2, vol. II (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1968), pp. 268–283.
[8] Jan Visser, “Cargo for the Jungle: KPM Ships in New Guinea,” Royal Netherlands Navy Warships of World War II.
[9] Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1942–1945, pp. 268–283.
[10] Hospital ships were identified by white hulls, broad green bands and red crosses in accordance with the international rules governing protected medical vessels.
[11] Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Australian Hospital Ships.” Maetsuycker could carry approximately 250 stretcher patients and, depending upon the configuration, as many as 500 ambulatory patients.
[12] “Dutch Hospital Ship for U.S. Army,” Australian newspaper report, 3 February 1944; formal hospital-ship service is generally dated from the ceremony of 4 February 1944.
[13] Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Australian Hospital Ships”; Australian Commonwealth Shipping Control Board records concerning the administration of Dutch hospital ships.
[14] United States Army Transportation Corps records for the Southwest Pacific Area local fleet. Maetsuycker was designated X-12.
[15] United States Army, 196th Station Hospital records; United States Army medical histories of the Southwest Pacific Area.
[16] Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Australian Hospital Ships”; operational records for Maetsuycker’s voyages to Milne Bay, Oro Bay, Lae, Finschhafen, Aitape and Hollandia.
[17] United States Navy operational records for PT-193; Maetsuycker voyage information for June 1944. Captain Cyrus Taylor was embarked near Biak with severe burns and died aboard the hospital ship.
[18] Maetsuycker operational records, December 1944; history of the United States Army medical service at Leyte.
[19] United States Navy, Administrative History of the Seventh Amphibious Force, part II, discussion of hospital-ship operations at Leyte.
[20] Naval History and Heritage Command, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, entry for LST-911.
[21] KPM and Koninklijke Java-China-Paketvaart Lijnen fleet records. The postwar company became internationally known as Royal Interocean Lines.
[22] Lloyd’s Register of Shipping and subsequent vessel registers, entries recording Maetsuycker’s sale, later names and demolition at Kaohsiung in 1974.
