In the interstices of this history there are insights into the savage punishments meted out to the crews of Dutch men-of-war, Diponegoro’s reaction to these, the strikingly unhealthy shipboard conditions which convinced the prince to eschew Dutch doctors, and the culture of fine wine drinking amongst the ship’s officers in which the prince also participated. Ending its days as a guard vessel on the Scheldt, its brief fourteen years of service gave it a ring side seat to the birth of the Netherlands Indies state (1816-1942) and the suffering of its Javanese and Minangkabau opponents. On two occasions in 18, its return journeys to the Netherlands brought it close to disaster: the first when a storm east of Cape Agulhas (South Africa) destroyed its navigational equipment and foresail and the last when scurvy wiped out a third of the ship’s crew including its long-serving captain and first officer. After serving as a troop transport, patrol vessel and floating prison, its high point came in the immediate aftermath of the war when it was chosen to transport the Java War leader, Prince Diponegoro, into exile in Manado (3 May-12 June 1830). But its arrival in Java in late August 1825 plunged it into the turmoil of the Java War (1825-30). Launched in Rotterdam in March 1824, the corvette immediately achieved fame with its round-the-world voyage via South America, Cape Horn, and the Marquesas in the company of the frigate Maria Reigersbergen, during which it discovered a new islet in the Pacific Ocean.
Alfred de Vigny’s Servitude et Grandeur Militaires (1835) could be the leitmotif for this article which describes the highs and lows of the fourteen-year history of the corvette-of-war Pollux (1824-38) as it experienced the vicissitudes of the Dutch colonial wars in the Indies/Indonesia.
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