Object data
wood, brass, rope and paint
height 35.5 cm × length 79 cm × width 17 cm
Rijkswerf Amsterdam (possibly)
Model of a Screw Steamer
? Amsterdam, Amsterdam, c. 1863
Provenance
...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883
Object number: NG-MC-1134
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
Polychromed rigged block model of a screw steamer.
The model has one deck, slightly raised before the foremast, and two gun ports in the sides. It has a clipper bow and an elliptical stern. Below the stern a double parallel Mangin screw fitted in a screw lifting frame and a rudder with a rounded blade are indicated. There are no details on deck except for a telescopic funnel. The sheer is completely flat. Only the sheer rail is indicated. The hull has an S-bottom and is painted a metallic copper colour below the waterline. The model has a three-masted rigging without sails.
The 6-gun screw steamer Watergeus, 56 metres long, was designed by Bruno Johannes Tideman (1834-1883), inspired by CSS 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. 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.1
Scale (derived) 1:100.
Literature
J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1134; 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. 63-66; A.J. Hoving, Message in a Model: Stories from the Navy Model Room of the Rijksmuseum, Florence, OR 2013, pp. 216-19
Citation
J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'possibly Rijkswerf Amsterdam, Model of a Screw Steamer, Amsterdam, c. 1863', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.244947
(accessed 24 November 2024 05:25:47).