Gerard Derkenne
Growing up in Newcastle in the 1960s and 1970s, I knew nothing of my great great grandfather. All my parents could tell me was he was a Dutch sea captain. All that could be surmised about him was that he at the very least had the respect of his children's children: the name Gerard re-occurs time and again throughout the generations as a middle name of his descendents. My father was called Warren Gerard Derkenne. His father was Walter Gerard Derkenne. His father was Gerard Edward Derkenne (the Eddy referred to in the last letter)Gerard Derkenne was not a Dutch sea captain (he was even prone to seasickness). He was not even a sailor. The truth was much more colourful than that.
Born in Rotterdam on 28 June 1841, Gerard Derkenne was a student at the 'minor seminary', a school for the sons of well-to-do families at the Old Catholic Church (a denomination of the Roman Catholic Church founded around 1720 in Holland) at Amersfoort from June 1854.
His father was mentioned as a shipping-agent later as a bookkeeper, his mother was a very active in music probably as a singer, musician or music mistress.
Gerard's uncle Wouter Hutschenruijter, born December 28 1796 was a very well known musician (horn), conductor and composer. He was known for having played the Dutch national anthem on a church organ after the service, shortly after the French defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 although French troops were still in Rotterdam.
Gerard was not very keen to stay on at school, and left Amersfoort around February 1856, aged 14, and got a job at an office in Rotterdam.
He was good friends with Johannes or Jan Heijligers, who was born at Schiedam on 28 October 1834. Jan, as he is called in the letters below, was a law student at the Utrecht university, and later the brother-in-law of his sister Allegonda Catharina Derkenne.
Jan kept all the letters he received more or less until his marriage in 1877: they came to light in the early 1990s when Jan Gerrit Koning received was sorting through a relative's old papers.After the death of his mother, Catharina Gijsbertha (Hutschenruijter) in 1860 Gerard applied for a job in the Dutch East Indies, he left Holland on 1 April 1861 on the ship Capellen hired by the trading company Van Leeuwen. He arrived on 13 August 1861 in Batavia and on 25 September 1861 he arrived in Soerabaja.
Gerard's life then began to unravel, chiefly because of cards, drink, and women. He was very frank in his letters. He was treated for VD in the navy hospital in Soerabaja in 1862, and was sacked for fraud in 1865. He asked his sister and Jan Heijligers to support him. Its probable that Jan paid off his creditors.
Friends in Soerabaja (now called Surabaya) collected money and paid for a ticket to Australia. He wrote a letter of 16 pages from Melbourne trying to explain his actions. In 1869 he wrote a letter to his sister, but his sister wrote to Jan saying she had no intention of replying.
In his last letter of 7 June 1872 he wrote he was married and the father of three children, working for a shipping office and with an annual income of 180 pounds. He wanted to start his own business and asked Jan for a loan of 150 pounds.
In the menu on this page are the edited versions of Jan Gerrit Koning's literal translations. The translations were difficult, as Gerard uses an unusual style of Dutch, had hard-to-decipher handwriting, and used phrases and expressions no longer used. Scans of the original letters are also available.
- Jamie Derkenne, Sydney, 2008
- Letters from Holland
- Letters from the East Indies
- Letters from Australia
- Scans of the letters
- Map of Surabaya
