MS Van Heutsz was a Dutch diesel powered passenger and cargo vessel of the Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM) line operating from Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) in the Dutch East Indies. The ship, as was sister ship , was designed for the longer routes of the East Indies inter-island trade extending to Singapore and Hong Kong. The ships had limited cabin accommodation for passengers but large deck passenger capacity. Much of the passenger trade was with Chinese moving between China, Singapore and the East Indies.