Model of a Ship Camel

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

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-21

Wooden construction model of a ship camel, the starboard one of a pair.

The planking has been left off, revealing its construction. The hull has the shape of a rectangular box, with one of its sides resembling the impression of a ship’s hull. The model has three levels: the bottom, between decks and the upper deck; the inside is divided into six compartments with bulkheads. The aft compartment has living quarters between the decks; the chimney aperture for the galley is indicated. The model is fully detailed with twenty-eight pumps in two rows, ten cocks for flooding, thirty windlasses with their tackles running to the bottom of the camel through wooden casing, a cathead, a riding bitt and eleven hatches. The rudder is missing.

Ship camels or lighters were invented by Meeuwis Meindertsz Bakker (1641-?) from Amsterdam around 1690 to lift the bigger ships over the shallows of Pampus into the river IJ at Amsterdam. They were placed one at either side of a ship, joined with tackles underneath the keel and pumped dry. Their shape would assure maximum support and stability for the ship. Camels were usually towed by so-called ‘waterschepen’.

J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 21; G. Doorman, Octrooien voor uitvindingen in de Nederlanden uit de 16de-18de eeuw, The Hague 1940, pp. 53-54; G. Boven and A. Hoving, Scheepskamelen & waterschepen. ‘Eene ellendige talmerij, doch lofflijk middel’, Zutphen 2009, pp. 44-45; A.J. Hoving, Message in a Model: Stories from the Navy Model Room of the Rijksmuseum, Florence, OR 2013, pp. 50-53

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Model of a Ship Camel, Amsterdam, c. 1780 - c. 1840', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.242746