Object data
wood, brass, rope and paint
height 91 cm × length 160 cm × width 38 cm
Laird Brothers
Model of an Ironclad Ram Ship
Birkenhead (Merseyside), 1867
Inscriptions
- inscription, on a square brass label: "PRINS Hendrik DER NEDERLANDEN” / BUILT FOR THE / DUTCH ROYAL NAVY. / BY / LAIRD BROTHERS, BIRKENHEAD. / 1867.
Provenance
...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883
Object number: NG-MC-1213
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
Polychromed block model of an ironclad ram ship, the original base is missing.
The model has a ram bow, a sharp cruiser stern with a round-bladed rudder and two twin-blade propellers. It bears the coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on the bow and stern. It has two turrets with two guns each. There are two deckhouses behind the aft turret, connected by gangways, two more deckhouses are placed between the turrets, also connected by gangways, and one deckhouse is at the bow. The railing can be folded back when firing the gun. The funnel is on the forward deckhouse between the turrets. The model has five boats in davits. The sheer is completely flat, the hull is round and painted a metallic copper colour below the waterline. The ship has a three-masted rig without sails, but the rigging and the funnel are not original: they do not appear on the earliest photographs. The foremast and mainmast are tripod masts (Cole’s system), the mizzen mast only has a gaff.
The model seems to have been made at the Laird Brothers yard, since it is produced in the same style as other models from that yard (NG-MC-1236, NG-MC-1238 and NG-MC-1239); archival material, however, could not be found.
The ironclad ram ship Prins Hendrik der Nederlanden, measuring 70.14 metres in length, was the first seagoing ironclad ship of the Dutch Navy. It was built by the Laird Brothers in Birkenhead in the United Kingdom from 1866 to 1867 to a joint design by Laird Brothers and the Dutch engineer Bruno Johannes Tideman (1834-1883). It had four 23-cm guns and four 12-cm guns. It did not function well as a sailing ship. After 1876, it served in the Dutch East Indies and took part in the Lombok expedition of 1894. She was decommissioned at Surabaya in 1899 and used as an ammunition depot until at least 1905 – its fate after that date is unknown.1
Literature
B.J. Tideman, Memoriaal van de Marine, bevattende opgaven betrekkelijk de afmetingen, constructie, ... van Nederlandsche oorlogsschepen en omtrent enige havens, dokken, sluizen, werven enz., Amsterdam 1876-80, livret F; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1213; S. de H., ‘De eerste Nederlandsche pantserschepen’, Ons Zeewezen 30 (1931), pp. 306-17, 344-50, 382-87, 420-26 and Ons Zeewezen 31 (1932), pp. 4-9, 42-48, pp. 344-47; A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 89; J.M. Dirkzwager, ‘De introductie van pantserschepen in Nederland’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis 4 (1985), no. 1, pp. 23-41, pp. 31-35; H. Stevens (ed.), The Art of Technology: The Navy Model Collection in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/Wormer 1995, pp. 60-61; A.J. Hoving, Message in a Model: Stories from the Navy Model Room of the Rijksmuseum, Florence, OR 2013, pp. 210-15
Citation
J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Laird Brothers, Model of an Ironclad Ram Ship, Birkenhead (Merseyside), 1867', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245026
(accessed 22 November 2024 14:10:54).