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

Object number: NG-MC-1169

Polychromed wooden ‘bread-and-butter’ style half block model of the starboard side of a three-masted screw steamer, mounted on a rectangular white, wooden backboard.

The side of the ship is closed and painted white. The clipper bow features a beakhead ending in a decorative, gold-painted scroll. The stern is elliptical and bears the coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Below the stern an empty aperture for a screw propeller and a round-headed rudder on to which the cap and pintles are painted are depicted. The opening between the sternpost and rudderpost is large enough to indicate the use of a lifting screw. The model has one deck and a small poop above the well of the screw. The sheer is virtually flat. One sheer rail is indicated. The hull is round, almost flat with round bilges, and painted a metallic bronze colour below the waterline. The model has three sets of channels rigged with chainplates. The position of three masts and the bowsprit is shown in a truncated form. The masts rake considerably.

This model was sent from Amsterdam to the Department of the Navy on 21 January 1865.¹¹See inscription. The 6-gun screw steamer Watergeus, 56 metres long, was designed by Bruno Johannes Tideman (1834-1883). Watergeus was inspired by the American design of the Confederate ship Alabama and built in Amsterdam from 1863 to 1864. Watergeus took part in the blockade of the coast of Aceh and in the Samalanga expedition of 1877. The screw steamer was transferred to the Dutch East Indian Military Navy in 1881, but decommissioned only two years later in 1883 and sold for breaking up in Surabaya.²²A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 64.

Scale (on model) 1:50

J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1169; A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 64; J.M. Dirkzwager, ‘Z.M. schroefstoomschip “Watergeus”’, Spiegel Historiael 26 (1991), no. 7/8, pp. 353-54; A.J. Hoving, ‘The Watergeus (1864)’, Model Shipwright 84 (1993), pp. 63-663; A.J. Hoving, Message in a Model: Stories from the Navy Model Room of the Rijksmuseum, Florence, OR 2013, pp. 216-19

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Rijkswerf Amsterdam, Half Model of a Screw Steamer, Amsterdam, 1865', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200316087