The quality of the 5.7 million punched sea level pressure observations from Dutch ships 1854-1938 has been under debate due to ambiguities in the gravity correction. The observations were omitted from the 1985 COADS (Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set) Release 1 monthly summaries. We re-examined the Dutch data with the help of original meteorological ship logs. It is concluded that the Dutch procedure for pressure reduction was consistent throughout time. In the recent (2001) COADS Release 1c the Dutch data are incorporated. This increases the number of COADS pressure observations 1854-1938 by about 28%. For the 1854-1880 subperiod the increase is more than a factor two.