Half Model of the Stern of a Screw Steamer

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-104

Construction model of the port side of a stern with the screw aperture or well mounted on a rectangular base.

The model has an elliptical stern and shows three decks. The diagonal trussing is according to Soetermeer’s design. The planking has been left off. The well of the screw, between sternpost and rudderpost, serves to lift the frame with the screw, which are not fitted on the model.

This model was specifically made to show the construction of the stern of the screw steamer Piet Hein, put on the stocks as a ship of the line in 1833, taken apart and put together again as the first Dutch screw steamer frigate Admiraal van Wassenaer, 59.62 metres long, built by August Elize Tromp (1801-1871) in Amsterdam from 1853 to 1856.¹¹A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 55.

The model is probably the one mentioned in the archives as having been sent from Amsterdam to the Department of the Navy in The Hague in 1855.²²HNA 2.12.01 Min. Marine, inv. no. 3979. This design of the screw aperture or well, inspired by British examples and imposed on Dutch engineers against their will by the Secretary of the Navy James Enslie (1795-1877) and his advisor H.G. Jansen, without success because it interrupted the lines of the stern: it caused such trembling that people feared the entire rear would fall off. In 1861 the affair escalated into a parliamentary enquiry on Evertsen and Admiraal van Wassenaer, both built with this construction. Following Tromp’s advice subsequent ships were thereafter built after Lambertus Katharinus Turk’s (1811-1873) design.

Scale (on model) 1:20.

J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 104; J. Wentholt, Memoriaal reis Admiraal van Wassenaer, s.l. 1869, manuscript in HSM, inv. no. S.2277(01); A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 55; J.M. Dirkzwager, ‘De introductie van de “waterschroef” in de Nederlandse Marine’, Industriële archeologie 7 (1983), pp. 80-96; J.M. Dirkzwager, ‘De Nederlandse marine als pionier in de technische ontwikkeling. Schroefvoortstuwing in het tweede en derde kwart van de negentiende eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis 12 (1993), no. 1, pp. 13-26, pp. 27-29; H. Stevens (ed.), The Art of Technology: The Navy Model Collection in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/Wormer 1995, pp. 58-59; A.J. Hoving, ‘Screw Propulsion’, Model Shipwright 80 (1992), pp. 58-62; A.J. Hoving, Message in a Model: Stories from the Navy Model Room of the Rijksmuseum, Florence, OR 2013, pp. 198

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Rijkswerf Amsterdam, Half Model of the Stern of a Screw Steamer, Amsterdam, c. 1854 - c. 1855', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.243914