His maternal grandfather was Jonkheer Simon Pierre François Meijer, Royal Netherlands Army officer and a knight of the Military Order of William.

[citation needed] Rambonnet married Marie Jeanne Arnoldine Antoinette Uhlenbeck (1873–1940), daughter of Vice Admiral Christian Elisa Uhlenbeck (1840–1897), and Anna Christina ten Bosch (1843–1921) — sister of, among others, Vice-Admiral and member of the Council of State Pieter ten Bosch (1836–1922) — with whom he had three children.

[4] The ship was ordered to steam to the Netherlands East Indies via the Cape of Good Hope and departed the Texel roadstead on 22 October 1883.

In 1887 he was reassigned first to the steam screw gunvessel HNLMS Pontianak and then to a second stint aboard Koning der Nederlanden.

[15] On 11 October 1902 he departed Genoa, Italy, aboard the steamship SS Koning Willem III bound for Batavia.

[17] Rambonnet was the commanding officer of the flotilla vessel HNLMS Mataram in 1904 when a Dutch punitive expedition to Flores took place.

The Minister of the Navy, Vice Admiral Jan Wentholt, favored a design called Pantsership 1912 (English: Armored Ship 1912), a 7,600-ton vessel built to a predreadnought battleship design with a maximum speed of 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph) and armed with four 280-millimetre (11 in) guns in two twin turrets, ten 105-millimetre (4.1 in) guns in single turrets, and three 53-centimetre (20.9 in) torpedo tubes.

[32] After a review of the design which found it to be too poorly armed and armored, Wentholt agreed to modify it by increasing its displacement to around 8,600 tons, mounting 120-millimetre (4.7 in) guns behind thicker armor, and adding a fourth torpedo tube, but the modified design still was criticized as too weak, and the proposed ships' increased size meant that they would be too large to build in Dutch shipyards.

[33] The issue became a matter of national debate, and repeated rejections of his Pantsership 1912 proposal finally led Wenholt to leave office in May 1912.

Minister of War Hendrikus Colijn, who became acting Minister of the Navy upon Wentholt's departure, was a proponent of expansion of the Royal Netherlands Navy,[34] and in June 1912 he established a State Committee of naval experts charged with studying various issues concerning Dutch naval policy, especially the defense of the Netherlands East Indies against Japan.

[34][35] He appointed Rambonnet to the committee, which by July 1912 reached the conclusion — based on erroneous reporting that Japan soon would have a fleet of nine dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers — that the Netherlands needed a fleet of nine dreadnought battleships for the defense of the Netherlands East Indies, the vessels to displace 27,000 tons, mount eight 345-millimetre (13.6 in) guns, and have a maximum speed of 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph).

[37] Rambonnet's version called for the maintenance of a Dutch fleet in the Netherlands East Indies large enough that it would outnumber the Japanese fleet when operating with the forces of a friendly power — which the Dutch hoped would be the United Kingdom or the United States — and be sufficient to deter or block any Japanese invasion.

[37] Accordingly, he reconvened the State Committee on 13 November 1913 to begin planning the design and construction of a fleet adequate for a "risk theory"-based defense of the Netherlands East Indies.

[39] The committee submitted the requirements to 11 shipyards for design proposals, received seven responses, and made its final choice from among three of them.

[39] By July 1914, Rambonnet's ministry had developed a construction plan in which the Netherlands would build five 24,605-ton superdreadnoughts, five 4,000-ton cruisers, and seven submarines.

[37] The Netherlands lacked domestic shipyards capable of building warships larger than cruisers, so Rambonnet's plan called for construction of the superdreadnoughts in foreign yards.

[37] With the Netherlands unable to acquire superdreadnoughts until sometime after the war ended, Rambonnet proposed an innovative naval operating concept for the Far East:[37] Rather than using Dutch cruisers to lure an enemy battlefleet into combat with a larger friendly battlefleet on favorable terms, he proposed using cruisers to lure enemy forces into an ambush by Dutch submarines.

[40] With this idea, he was able to unite his fellow advocates of "risk theory" and the acquisition of superdreadnoughts with Dutch naval thinkers who preferred that the Royal Netherlands Navy instead pursue a Jeune École strategy with less emphasis on capital ships.

[41] He also was able to take advantage of a favorable overall Dutch political disposition toward naval expansion to secure the approval of further naval construction despite the Dutch inability to acquire superdreadnoughts, and his proposal to focus on cruiser and submarine construction until circumstances allowed the acquisition of superdreadnoughts met with widespread approval.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Jonkheer John Loudon allowed a British search of a Dutch merchant convoy bound for the Netherlands East Indies, prompting a conflict between Rambonnet — who considered this to be contrary to international law regarding neutral countries — and his colleagues over the extent to which the Netherlands should comply with such demands.

Queen Wilhelmina emphatically demonstrated her support for him by appointing him as chamberlain in extraordinary service two days after his resignation.