The Java class was a class of light cruisers of the Royal Netherlands Navy, named after the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Originally, three ships were planned: HNLMS Java, HNLMS Sumatra, and HNLMS Celebes. Celebes was intended to be the flagship of the naval commander in the Dutch East Indies, and therefore she was slightly bigger than the other two ships. However, the contract was cancelled with 30 tons of material already prepared (A new ship, HNLMS de Ruyter was later built to fill that place).
(Text taken from its
Wikipedia entry)