FAMOUS SHIPS

 THE MARITIME MUSEUM PRINS HENDRIK 

This Museum is located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The most famous ship model in the museum is the Coca de Mataro, a votive model of the 15'h century. This is the only three dimensional object of the time when Columbus sailed to America and Magellan made his voyage around the world. This is also the period when ship building went through a radical change as the size of the ship grew, new construction techniques were developed and rigging changed. The Coca de Mataro is a model of a Catalan merchantman, a rather slow sailing ship with a cargo capacity of about 85 tons originally in a small church in Mataro, a village on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona.

The Maritime Museum Prins Hendrick is the oldest museum in the Netherlands. The museum is named after Prince Hendrik (182079), the third son of King Willem H. He was always promoting the navy to his Dutch subjects and founded a model room in the Dutch yacht club, the beginning of the museum. The yacht club opened the doors of the model room to the general public in 1874. Many moves were made throughout the years, but the museum today is a new building completed in 1987 which stands in the heart of today's Rotterdam at the northern end of the Leuvehaven, one of the oldest harbor basins of the city.

The museum collection includes over 1,400 ship models and half-models of vessels of all ages which emphasizes the 19th and 20th  centuries. There are also 240 navigational instruments, 150 examples of ship decoration, 300 atlases, 1,000 maps, 145,000 shipbuilder's plans, 80,000 documentary photographs, etc.

In 1950 the museum was lucky enough to obtain the W.A. Englebrecht collection. This collection includes fifteen contemporary 17'hand 18'h century ship models, 280 nautical charts from the le to 18'h centuries, 150 atlases, and about another 150 manuscripts and printed journals concerning the Dutch expansion history of that period. Also included is the large collection of drawings, prints, and archival materials -dealing with Dutch history from the 19'hcentury master of the rolls J. C. de Jonge collection. 

A truly outstanding collection is that of twenty-nine models of Dutch wooden and iron sailing vessels for inland navigation from the period 1850 to 1950. The collection is unique for its completeness and for the excellent quality of the models. Father Daniel and son Jelle Hazenberg between 1910 and 1976 built these with meticulous care.

As is true with other museums, the greater part of the Prins Hendrik Museu&s collections is in storage, a fact that often bothers visitors. To remedy this, the museum has developed a unique system to show interested visitors those items in the collection that is not exhibited. This system has two components: a computerized data retrieval system and a video disc. Although only part of the museums collections have as yet been made visible on the video disc, the system serves both visitors and the museum staff in a satisfactory way.

If you are ever in the Netherlands, this is one museun that will be well worth your extra effort to go and visit. At the same time, you may want to try the Nederlands Scheepvaart Museum, Amsterdam.

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