RL mainly operated scheduled passenger and mail services between Rotterdam and the Dutch East Indies.

Its independent existence ended in 1970, when KRL merged with four other Dutch shipping companies to form the Nederlandsche Scheepvaart Unie (NSU).

After the Suez Canal opened in 1869, his son Willem Ruys (1837–1901) expanded the company in 1872 with a steamship service to Batavia.

The hulls of Dutch merchant ships were clearly marked, with their name and port of registry painted along their side in large capital letters.

On February 22, U-21 torpedoed the Norwegian cargo ship Normanna in the Celtic Sea,[4] and then attacked a Dutch convoy that stopped to rescue survivors.

[5] A boarding party from U-21 detonated scuttling charges aboard a third RL ship, Menado, but she remained afloat.

[8] The United Kingdom also seized Dutch merchant ships, including RL's Goentoer, Madioen and Pontianak.

[17][18] RL ordered a 21,000 GRT motor ship in 1938, and she was laid down in 1939, but she was still being built when Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940.

Later that month, a British air raid set her on fire, and then a Royal Navy torpedo boat destroyed her.

[20] On March 16, 1941 the German battleship Scharnhorst sank the RL steamship Mangkai by shellfire, killing 36 of her crew.

The cruiser Chikuma shelled the motor ship Modjokerto in the Indian Ocean south of Christmas Island, severely damaging her.

[24] The Japanese Navy took 35 survivors from Modjokerto to Kendari Airport on Sulawesi, where they beheaded them and buried them in a mass grave.

[23] The German occupiers of the Netherlands arrested director Willem Ruys (1894–1942) as a hostage in July 1942, and executed him a month later.

[19] Indonesia won its independence in 1949, the Dutch colonial empire declined, and commercial aviation took an increasing share of passenger travel.

On January 20, 1970, KRL merged with four other Dutch shipping companies to form the Nederlandsche Scheepvaart Unie (NSU).