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 ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...
in 1908, later as HMS Giang Bee. The ship was sunk in the
Banka Strait on 13 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 (born Harry Lee Kuan Yew; 16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015), often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean politician who ruled as the first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. He is widely recognised ...
) 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 (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.
References
Shipping companies of Singapore
1905 establishments in the Dutch East Indies
Family of Oei Tiong Ham
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