Although steamships began to be operated as mail couriers in the British Isles from the 1820s, they were initially employed as military vessels in naval operations against indigenous pirate vessels in Southeast Asian waters. A notable exception was the British-owned Van der Capellen, a mail steamer which plied the waters off the north coast of Java. Part of the early reluctance in adopting steamers for use as mail and passenger transports stemmed from the relatively high costs of running the coal-hungry ships, which had a low fuel mileage. From the 1850s onwards, steamers became more common as innovations in nautical technology such as the screw-propeller, iron hull, surface condenser, and compound engine lowered their operational costs. In response to the growing demand for steamships delivering inter-island mail within the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), the Dutch-owned Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij (KPM) regional shipping line was formed in 1888. The KPM-owned Tasman was a well-known passenger liner that plied the route between Singapore and Australia.
