Fruits of Preservation 2

Here was the first in this series.  Guess the date these photos were taken?

Consider all that coal smoke.

As it turns out Dockyard III doesn’t always blow so much smoke. Click on this link if you wish, but what I find remarkable there is that Dockyard III and its sisters were built in WW2 for Murmansk and hence have the chimney-encasing wheelhouse (for heat) and an ice-strengthened bpw.

Adelaar dates from 1925.

Paddle steamer De Majesteit dates from 1926.  I saw her on the river in Rotterdam in 2014, and included her in a comparison of old passenger vessels here.

Dockyard IX, part of that same order that never made it to Murmansk, was completed in 1942.  Dockyard IX has been on this blog once before here.

Many steam tugs crowd the river below, but nearest the camera,  that’s Heibok 4, a floating steam crane dating from 1916.

SS Furie, dates from 1916.  I wrote about her extensively here in 2016.

George Stephenson had me fooled;  it was built starting in 2007, ie., she might be called steampunk.  I saw her in May 2014.

Hercules is the real deal steam, launched in 1915.  I was aboard her in 2016, as seen here.

And the answer is late May 2018 at the Dordrecht Steam Festival.  The photos come via Jan van der Doe from the photographer Leo Schuitemaker.

Looking at these photos, I’m again struck by the number of historic vessels preserved and in operating condition in the Netherlands.  Some are scrapped there of course.  Has anyone ever heard of the Dutch reefing boats to create North Sea fish habitat?  These, and I have many others from Jan and Leo I’d love to post,  have benefitted from loving restoration. Let me know if you want more steam tugs.

Amicitia, which I wrote about in 2011, is back to life after 60 years (!!!) underwater as a result of being bombed, not reefed, back then.

Do the Dutch have different financial tools that produces this fruit?  Is it because of their different attitude toward maintaining machines and buildings?  Are there just different priorities throughout Dutch culture?

A google search leads to this article referring to “artificial reefs around the world,” but the headline is quite misleading.

 

Thanks to Xtian

Xtian has been sharing photos here for some time.  Now it turns out he and I were in the tiny dorp of Maassluis within days of each other earlier this month, as evidenced by his photo of Furie, which was in the same spot the day I visited here (and scroll).

I would never have guessed RPA 14 is 31 years old!  Xtian certainly caught the light right here.

Smit Ebro has been on this blog before, as in this post.

Equipment on Husky?Make your guesses and on Monday or so, I’ll explain.

Smit Cheetah and SD Seal . . . doing fire equipment training?

FairPlay 21 … in between Smit Panther 

and FairPlay 24 with still more Smit tugs in the foreground.

Here’s part of the Kotug fleet.  From left, it’s unidentified, RT Evolution, SD Rebel, and RT Adiaan.  Click on each of the three links previous to see how different those three tugs are.

Smit Hudson has been around since 2008.

Click here for the entire FairPlay list.

 

 

 

Many thanks to Xtian for these photos.

Dutch Tugs 3

Hudson, launched 1939, spent WW2 working for the British Ministry of Shipping, having left the Netherlands with a tow to Africa just before the Germany invasion and occupation.  After the War, it towed to ports worldwide until 1963, when it was deemed underpowered and sold for scrap.  Instead, it was purchased by a fishery as an ice-making ship, which it did until 1989.  And again it was to be scrapped.  This time, a foundation bought it, invested 14 years of restoration, and now, as a unique industrial  artifact, it’s berthed in Maassluis, where visitors can picture the life of those in ocean towing from just before WW2 until 1960.

 

 

Hercules was built in the Netherlands in 1915 and worked for a Danish company until the late 1970s, when it was purchased for much-needed restoration.  See its condition here.

 

Furie has a similar story:  it was built in the Netherlands in 1916, sold to a Swedish lumber company in 1918.  It worked mostly on the Baltic until 1976, when it was returned to the Netherlands for restoration and assumed a role in a Dutch TV series called Hollands Glorie, inspired by Jan de Hartog novel.  You can watch the 90-minute series pilot here.   It was made in 1977 and in Dutch, but it follows a new chief mate named Jan Wandelaar (hiker or wanderer) in the “hiring hall.”   Give it a shot.  If you want to skip around, the captain’s character gets established around the 10-minute mark.  Around the 21-minute mark they are off the coast of Ireland.  Around the 29-minute mark, the captain negotiates in his version of English for the tow and the next few minutes are exciting.  Around 41 minutes in, they are towing a dredge along the WestAfrican coast to Nigeria.  Around 1 hour 5,” they deal with a leak in the dredge.

 

Equally picturesque although I don’t know the stories are Anna and

Alphecca.

These photos by Freek Konings come via Fred Trooster, to whom both I am grateful.

This post from 2013  was prompted by a request from Freek that I try to learn the disposition of a former Dutch Navy tug, likely sunk by the USCG.  We are still looking for info on the fate of Wamandai.