Heritage Day Flanders: Visiting Some Ship Wharfs

Last Sunday was Heritage Day in Flanders, a yearly event during which heritage sites open their doors to visitors and make an extra effort to organise guided walks, hold lectures, set up exhibitions etc. As a maritime archaeologist, I was naturally drawn to Flanders’ maritime heritage and decided to visit two ship wharfs. One located inland along the river Scheldt in Baasrode; the Scheepsvaartmuseum Baasrode and the other at the coast of Blankenberge; De Scute. Both were very enjoyable and informative visits and I would strongly recommend visiting both. However, it was the one that I was least familiar with that turned out to be a very pleasant surprise and would like to explore a bit further in this post.

In Baasrode, I was warmly welcomed by volunteers of the VZW Scheepsvaartmuseum Baasrode. In collaboration with the province East-Flanders and the city of Dendermone, these enthusiastic men and woman succeeded in saving the ship wharfs ‘Van Damme’ and ‘Van Praet-Dansaert’ from the sledgehammer. More than that, they have managed to make the place into something very special. The museum houses a permanent exhibition about inland shipping in Flanders, maintains three historic ship wharves with workshops and tidal docks which they keep in their original state, houses a model building school and has ambitions to restore the 38m long spits ‘Alyv’ from 1938, built by the wharf Van Praet-Dansaert.

 

However, as a maritime archaeologist who is passionate about wooden shipbuilding, it was the construction of the Rosalie, a new 16m long Baasroodse palingbotter, that impressed me the most. The botter, traditionally a Dutch sailing vessel, was scaled up and contructed at the wharfs in Baasrode. It was mainly used to transport large quantities of eel from the Netherlands to Belgium.

Even though small botters still sail on the IJselmeer in the Netherlands, the construction of a new ship of this size is unique. These vessels were originally built without plans, instead using moulds and the optical judgement of experienced shipwrights (See my post of 17 March 2014). Therefore, the museum relies on the experience of boat builders of the ship wharf in Niewboer, Spakenburg in the Netherlands, who still have experience in making
repairs to this old ship-type.

A unique reconstruction project like this, along the banks of the Scheldt in Flanders, can only be encouraged and I am very much looking forward to following the progress made on the construction of the ship.