Heap Eng Moh Steamship Co. was a shipping line owned by Majoor Oei Tiong Ham, a Chinese Indonesian businessman.

History

The company was founded by Oei Tiong Ham under the name "NV Kian Gwan" in 1905. His first ship was the ''Giang Bee'' built as Reijnierz in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...

in 1908, later as HMS Giang Bee. The ship was sunk in the Banka Strait on the 13th of February 1942. The company was renamed as the Heap Eng Moh Steamship Company in 1909. Lee Hoon Leong (the grandfather of

Lee Kuan Yew Lee Kuan Yew (16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015), born Harry Lee Kuan Yew, often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean lawyer and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Singapore between 1959 and 1990, and Secretary-General o ...

) worked on some of their ships as a purser, and eventually became managing director of the shipping Company. Oei died in 1924 and the company was sold by the Oei family in 1928. The majority of the shares were purchased by KPM, a Dutch shipping company. KPM merged with the Java China Japan Lijn and eventually became Koninklijke Java-China Paketvaart Lijnen (known as Royal Interocean Lines). In 1970 RIL became part of the Dutch Nederlandse Scheepvaart Unie and was merged with Nedlloyd Lijnen in 1977.

Records

Some records of Heap Eng Moh Steamship Company are held in the

National Archives of Singapore The National Archives of Singapore (NAS) ( Malay: ''Arkib Negara Singapura'', Mandarin: 新加坡国家档案馆, Tamil: சிங்கப்பூர் தேசிய காப்பகம்) is the national archives of Singapore. It was f ...

References

Shipping companies of Singapore 1905 establishments in the Dutch East Indies Family of Majoor Oei Tiong Ham {{Shipping-company-stub