From The Port Of Amsterdam

FROM THE PORT OF AMSTERDAM ON S.S. PRINSES AMALIA1 Start of a Fascinating Journey On October 29,1887, Eugene Dubois, to be known later as the man who found the missing link, set sail from the port of Amsterdam with his wife Anna and daughter Eugenie on the steamship S.S. Prinses Amalia. Their fossil hunting adventure was a long and tedious one in search of Darwin’s missing link. The S.S. PRINSES AMALIA crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Spain from Morocco. At its narrowest point the strait is a stretch of a mere 13 km (8 miles) of ocean separating Europe from Africa. The journey to the Dutch colonies in the Indies was long, tiring, sickening, but educational. There was enough time for Dubois to learn Malay, the language of the natives, which proved invaluable to his work and his family’s everyday’s life. For Dubois, learning a new language was no sweat; He already spoke, read and wrote, at different levels, English, French, Latin, Greek, and German. Once passed Gibraltar, the travelers started looking forward to passing through the Suez Canal and taking a break from the sea journey at Port Said, where they could enjoy land again, buy local stuff and replenish their needs for the remaining journey. After crossing the red sea and into the Gulf of Aden, the S.S. PRINSES AMALIA continued passed the Arabian sea, the shores of Colombo in Sri Lanka, and finally to the shores of Sumatra where it set anchors on December 11, 1887, in the harbor of the city of Padang, after forty four days at sea. The Dubois lived in Padang and Pajakombo on Sumatra before Eugene Dubois moved his operations to Java, where the family lived in Toeloeng Agoeng (known today as Ngoenoet). There were a number of important and inspiring places in Java such as Batavia, Solo, and Malang and fossil sites at Wadjak and Trinil, where Dubois made his famous discoveries and particularly his discovery of the Java Man, what he would later identify as the missing link, and classify as Pithecanthropus Erectus (P.E). 1

Source “The Man Who Found the Missing Link” by PAT SHIPMAN, Harvard University press 2001

FROM THE PORT OF AMSTERDAM

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