THE SEAPORT EXPERIENCE:
''The Orange Feeling''
meters, and too narrow for a fishing vessel, this heavily built vessel has a curved bow with a bowsprit and a straight stern inclined at less than 45 degrees. At this point, only eight days into the excation, it will be some months before the seabed of the Zuider Zee. Right here we ceiling timbers will be removed and its are about three meters below sea level." hull timbers further identify it, but perHenk ' s words immediately conjure haps it will provide more clues as to the the image of a brave boy with his finger existence of the mysterious hulc. The Ship Archaeology Museum itself, in the dike. But as Henk would explain, protecting this country's lowlands is a with its display of preserved complete serious business for the Dutch. The wrecks and wreck remains, provides lifeDutch first started building dikes around size insight into life at sea many centuries 800 AD to control the flooding Zuider ago, whether it be on fishing vessels in the Zee, a shallow inland sea that covered Zuider Zee or cargo ships trading between the central portion of the Netherlands. Hanseatic ports. Visitors can touch the Then, in 1932, the need for land led to the vessels, even walk inside them, and damming of the Zuider Zee and the turn- through display windows examine the ing of its sea water into the sweet water boots, bottles, coinage and clothes of sailof the IJsselmeer. Since that time, a total ors and travelers, all recovered from the of three reclaimed land masses called former floor of the Zuider Zee. Next year "polders" have been drained to create the museum will begin excavation of a land for settlement and agriculture. "We recently discovered merchantman wreck Dutch have a popular saying," says Henk, and link up in a joint interpretive effort "lk worstel en com boven," in English, with Flevoland's most celebrated maritime "I struggle and rise above the water." attraction, the Batavia, a 17th-century Rising also above the water as the polders Dutch East lndiaman reconstruction bewere drained, however, was something ing built a short distance away in Lei ystad. The Batavia reconstruction has genunexpected: shipwrecks, victims of the once unpredictable, storm-tossed tidal erated tremendous enthusiasm since its waters of the Zuider Zee. keel laying in October 1985. It exists as At my next stop, the Ship Archaeol- a symbol of the adventurous early days ogy Museum in Ketelhaven , museum of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), director Jaap Morel stood in a nearby with a story that carries something of the field four meters below sea level in a intrigue that has surrounded the Bounty steady drizzle, mud up to his ankles on mutiny. The initial catalyst for the project the edge of an excavation. He is pointing was the discovery ofa wreck off the west out to our group the special features of a coast of Australia in the early 1960s. The wreck lying in a pit in front of us, one of wreck was identified as the Batavia, a 350 recorded wrecks in Flevoland. They heav iIy armed, three-masted merchantman date from 1200 to 1900 and are the which, on her maiden voyage to the Dutch special domain of the museum, which East Indies, steered off course and ran has investigated 250 of them and pre- onto a reef in 1629. Her wrecking was the served a small number for display and prelude to a gruesome episode of mutiny research. "This is a 20-meter-long late and murder that only one half of her crew medieval freighter, dated about 1500- of 316 men, women and children sur1550, recently unearthed by a farmer's vived. (The written account, entitled The plough," says Morel. It rests barely two Unlucky Voyage, was a bestseller in the feet from the surface, its dark timbers I 7th-century Dutch-speaking world). Three and a half centuries later, her well preserved. Morre! is excited about this one. He suspects that this wreck massive, heavy timbers tower again over might be a transitional vessel between the a busy shipyard, the realization of a cog and the hulc, a large cargo vessel dream for traditional Dutch boatbuilder whose existence has mystified ship Willem Vos. Armed with solid research archaeologists. Pictorial evidence suggests and riding the wave of public interest in the hulc succeeded the cog and is an the vessel since the wreck's discovery, important link in the evolution of vessel Vos convinced the council ofLelystad to structure from shell-built open boats to donate I and for the reconstruction project pre-framed hulls of great carrying capac- on the shore of the IJ sselmeer. Vos' s aim ity-but a hulc has never been unearthed. was to not only build a replica and excite Longer than the average cog by 3 or 4 interest in the Netherlands maritime past,
Maritime travel in the Netherlands By Kevin Haydon From the air, the land gives up certain secrets. Its peculiar geographical features become obvious, giving clues to the activities and attitudes of its inhabitants. Flying into Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to attend a maritime press tour, I was struck by my first sight of the Netherlands. Below me a green sea circled the western provinces and canals streaked across the pale early spring landscape in a lattice ofintersecting lines of blue. Even a native New Zealand islander like myself was fascinated: What a lot of water. The Dutch business traveler beside me agrees: "Yes, the water, the sea, is not something we can afford to not think about in the Netherlands." The Netherlands is a pocket-sized country with a prodigious maritime heritage. The Port of Rotterdam, the world's largest, has been Europe 's main port since the mid- l 800s. A tugboat ride from Rotterdam ' s Prins Hendrick Maritime Museum on the frrst afternoon of my tour revealed only a fraction of Rotterdam's labyrinth docks and cargo terminals. An exhilarating sight, uncommon to most modern containerized ports, was the volume of small freighters moving briskly about the business of transshipping inland the coal, grain and other freight off-loaded along the corridor of the River Maas. Sixty miles to the north lies the even older Port of Amsterdam. The city's picturesque canals, still lined with traditional vessels, hint at Amsterdam's illustrious maritime past, but for the full witness a visit to the Sheepsvart Museum , occupying the former Admiralty armory and docks, is the right thing to do. But these old cities and their splendid maritime museums and collections are not my main destination . Instead, I'm bound for the new province ofFlevoland. Speeding by car northeast of Amsterdam I entered Holland's flattest lands. To my left lay the brand new city of Almere Stad and to my right the quilt of brightcolored bulb fields . The architecture looked so modern, the roads so clean and wide, and the agriculture so well organized. "Well, after all , everything is new here," says my driver and guide, Henk Kuiper, of Flevoland's tourism office. "Fifty years ago all this land was the 30
SEA HISTORY 63, AUTUMN 1992