Sailcargo is still common on Sunda Kelapa

22 July 2025

The Sunda Kelapa harbour quay, with Jakarta’s skyscrapers in the background, is full of wooden ships. They are schooners, sailing ships with smooth gunwales. They carry general cargo. Ancient times in the present.

In 1619, Dutchman Jan Pieterszoon Coen conquered the area from the Portuguese, who had by then been trading there for years. He named the city Batavia. More than 300 years later, after independence in 1950, Indonesians call the city Jakarta. The old port is named Sunda Kelapa (‘coconut of Sunda’), in homage to its pre-colonial history.

All these years, little seems to have changed. The harbour is still full of impressive, handmade Buginese schooners (pinisis), traditional wooden two-masted sailing ships from Sulawesi. They carry trade goods between the Indonesian islands, such as bags of rice, flour, cement, wood and other general cargo. Loading and unloading is largely done by hand, often barefoot and without modern tools.

High bows

The construction knowledge of schooners goes from generation to generation: there are no construction plans and everything is done without nails. Their shape resembles a Chinese junk, with the bow making a sharp angle with the waterline. The pinisi usually has two masts with a schooner rig, including topsails and three jibs. Every day as many as 100 are docked with tropical hardwoods from Kalimantan and South Sumatra. They are often impressive, with tall bows and colourful paintings.

You will also find layar bugis, another variant of the traditional Buginese-Makassar wooden sailing ships. Similar to the pinisi, but sometimes with slightly different rigging or construction style. You also see many smaller wooden boats, often used by fishermen or as shuttles between the larger ships and the quay. These boats are essential for loading and unloading goods.

Working donkeys

With much shouting, the next ship is unloaded. Skinny men walk balancing on wooden gangways between the ships, carrying beams as long as five metres planted in their necks. A little further on, men trot with 40 kg bags of fertiliser and cement on their shoulders: the UK Health and Safety Executive would be horrified.

Tons and more tons of goods of all kinds pass over the sinewy shoulders of local workhorses, who seem oblivious to the foreign tourist on the quay. But what do you want with a daily wage of two euros[….]

For a trifle, a friendly old boss paddles you past the beautiful wooden ships. Perhaps such a trip is even more impressive than a visit to a maritime museum. You see past glory, that has not perished.

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