Rotterdam is the largest and busiest seaport in Europe, and the eighth biggest in the world after Shanghai, Ningbo/Zhoushan, Singapore, Tianjin, Tangshan, Guangzhou and Qingdao. It stretches for almost forty kilometres from the city centre to the leading shipping channels in the North Sea. It has a turnover of E600 million, and gives employment directly to 1,100 people and many more indirectly. Goods traffic amounts to 450 million tonnes of imports and exports, and approximately 34,000 deep sea vessels and 110,000 inland river craft call at Rotterdam each year. The Port of Rotterdam is also known as Europoort (Eurogate), and is well named as ‘Europe’s port’. The port area comprises 10,500 hectares of which 3,500 hectares are water, 5,000 hectares are commercial docks, mills, plants and businesses, and 2,000 hectares are railways, roads and service areas. The port is owned 30% by the Dutch government and 70% by the Municipality of Rotterdam.

Rotterdam is now the premier container ship hub in Europe in competition with Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Antwerp. Feeder container ships, in the size range from one thousand to three thousand TEU, move containers around the North Sea to smaller ports. Container throughput has risen at around eight percent per year from 4.2 million TEU in 1994 to 9.3 million TEU in 2005 and 12.1 million TEU in 2015. Rotterdam is also a very big transhipment port, with for example coal arriving in Capesize bulkers from Australia for distribution by river coaster or barge to its final client in the Ruhr. Much of the great importance of Rotterdam is due to being near to the heart of the industrialised German Ruhr triangle district, with big river traffic to German and Swiss ports on the Rhine. Rotterdam also has five big and important oil refineries e.g. the Pernis refinery of Shell, to refine the very large amounts of crude oil that arrive by sea, and for distribution of oil products to all of the surrounding countries. The Pernis oil refinery is one of the biggest in the world, operating non-stop every day to produce hundreds of oil products. A very strong increase of 30% was experienced in 2015 in the import of crude oil and the export of petroleum products.

Early History of Rotterdam

A small settlement existed at Rotterdam one thousand years ago at the lower end of the Rotte stream, from which Rotterdam derives its name. However, flooding caused protective dams and dykes to be built all along the banks of the Maas River. The first written mention of a port at Rotterdam was in 1283 when some reclaimed land was created at the foot of the Rotte stream. William IV of Holland in 1340 gave the town permission to build a connecting canal to the Schie at present day Schiedam. Rotterdam exported glass, paper, canvas, linen, pins, pans and manufactured goods to London and neighbouring ports. The first extensions to the port occurred in 1613 when the Leuvehaven and the Oude Haven were connected by an embankment. These extensions gave the trading port its traditional triangular shape, with the Hoogstraat dyke between Oostzeedyk and Westzeeedyk cutting through the old town and continuing up to the dam in the Rotte. In 1703 the Zalmhaven was completed as the last of the town harbours in that first development.

Dutch seafaring expanded immensely with the opening of the sea route to the Dutch East Indies in the late 17th century, and Rotterdam then became the second most important port in Holland after Amsterdam. However, this position was later reversed with the opening of the New Waterway, a dredged channel leading directly from the city to the sea in 1872. Rotterdam then became the premier port in Holland for deep sea merchant ships. Railway bridges across the Maas in 1877 opened up Rotterdam to the Brabant and Limburg areas of South Holland, and also to Belgium. New well equipped loading and discharging quays and dry docks were then built in the 1890s on both sides of the river at Rotterdam, including Stadhavens, Vierhavens, Delfshaven and Merwehaven. Delfshaven, just to the west of the Euromast at Parkhaven, had begun its existence as an outport, but in 1886 it became a part of Rotterdam. Delfshaven was the birthplace of Dutch naval hero Piet Hein, and is now an oasis of history and culture with many streets of historic buildings and a harbour with a tall windmill, sailing boats and yachts. It was from the Delfshaven in 1620 that the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for New England. The Oude Haven is similarly a social meeting place for Rotterdammers, and also has the open air inland Navigation Museum with barges and small tugs on display. The remarkable tall ‘cube houses’, with the cubes on their upper parts tilted at crazy angles, form a backdrop to the bars and tourist area of the Oude Haven.

At the end of the 19th century, the Rijnhaven on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas was completed, and shortly after 1900 the Maashaven began to be constructed. The construction of the Waalhaven began just before World War 1, and twenty years later it was finally completed in 1931. The Waalhaven, in particular, became the biggest dredged harbour in the world, and without locks of any kind to allow free access from and to the sea, with most cargo transhipped in open water and directly into inland barges. The Netherlands and her colonies were neutral during World War 1, but the Port of Rotterdam suffered badly when unrestricted warfare was declared on all shipping, including Dutch ships returning fully laden from the Dutch East Indies, on 1st February 1917.

Port of Rotterdam in the Interwar Years

Shipbuilding was of great importance in Rotterdam with no fewer than one dozen yards building deep sea ships in 1920. The most famous of these was the Fijenoord yard, founded in 1825, and which had recently benefitted from the high prices prevailing for new ships during World War I, building ships up to 500 feet in length on six slipways. In 1929, the yard merged with the nearby Schiedam yard of Wilton’s Engineering and Slipway Company, with its five slipways building ships up to 10,000 dwt, and repairing ships in four dry-docks. However, the great depression saw empty slipways and big financial losses, with one problem being the lack of design facilities, forcing Wilton Fijenoord to buy ship designs from independent design offices and only later developing the detailed ship structures. Four Dutch yards then formed a joint design office in 1935 to overcome the problem. Wilton Fijenoord remained in business as a shipbuilder until 1999, when it was integrated into Rotterdam united Shipyards, and four years later the yard was fully absorbed into Damen Shiprepair. The other Rotterdam shipbuilding yards in 1920 were Bonn & Mees with four slipways building ships up to 450 feet in length, the Burgerhout yard with four slipways building ships up to 12,000 dwt, de Groot & van Vliet with two slipways building ships up to 400 feet in length, Rotterdam dry dock Co. ltd. with six slipways and three floating dry-docks for ships up to 600 feet in length, Rotterdam Shipbuilding Co. ltd. with two slipways building ships up to 340 feet in length, P. van Smit junior with three slipways building ships up to 400 feet in length, the Rijkee yard with two slipways building ships up to 400 feet in length, the New Waterway Shipbuilding Company with seven slipways building ships up to 800 feet in length and three floating dry-docks for repair work, and Werf gusto famous for the building of floating cranes with lifting capacities up to 250 tonnes on seven slipways.

Thus, Rotterdam in 1920 was a port based on imports and exports and transhipment commerce, with shipbuilding as its main natural industry. The Rhine inland waterway traffic was most important, both in tonnage and its international economic and political aspects. The densely populated regions of the Ruhr and the middle Rhine saw inland craft operating beyond Mannheim to Strasbourg and Basel, as well as to parts of Alsace, Lorraine, Southern Germany and Switzerland. The New Waterway, in reality a ship canal, had a navigable depth throughout of well over thirty feet, giving importance to Schiedam and Vlaardingen industries, and to Maasluis further towards the Hook of Holland and the open sea. The tides at Rotterdam were only five feet in range, and the large open basins and quays had the traditional methods of working overside into barges or on to well equipped craned facilities on quays. Grain was handled in huge quantities by massive grain elevators, transferring grain into barges for upriver clients. The 1929 import and export traffic figures show a port that was already the biggest in Holland and the near Continent:-

1929 Rotterdam Imports

1929 Rotterdam Exports

It is interesting to contrast these 1929 figures with those of today, which are ten times larger at 452.5 million tonnes of imports and exports. Liquid bulk comprises 209.4 million tonnes (crude oil, petroleum products and other liquid bulk), dry bulk comprises 88.6 million tonnes (ores, scrap, coal, agribulk and other bulk), containerised cargo comprises 127.6 million tonnes, ro-ro tonnage comprises 20.0 million tonnes, and break bulk cargo comprises 6.9 million tonnes.

Post-War Years

On 5th June 1947, the Marshall Plan to rebuild the cities of Western Europe after World War II was announced in Washington (DC) by Secretary of State George C. Marshall. This encompassed the cities of both victor and vanquished, and applied particularly to Rotterdam. The city received $109 per year for every man, woman and child in the city for several years, and Rotterdam was raised from the rubble of war with American foreign aid money. Subsequently, even the wrappers on loaves of bread in the port were told that this food had been produced with the assistance of the generous Marshall Plan. The German bombing of May 1940 had left most of central Rotterdam as a wasteland, and was further destroyed by allied bombing later in the war. One of the few buildings to survive this destruction was the White House near Oude Haven, which was built in 1898 in the ‘Art Nouveau’ style to the design of architect Willem Molenbroek. It is 141 feet tall with ten storeys and cost 127,900 Dutch guilders to complete. It has a red turreted roof completed by two small red painted conical minarets to give an impressive facade. It is now a National Heritage Site of Holland, and is surrounded by high rise hotels and shopping centres. The centre of Rotterdam slowly recovered in post-war years with American aid, and is now one of the most modern cities in Europe with a university, a beautiful park with a number of interesting museums, and a large zoo called the Blijdorp. The Lijnbaan Shopping Centre of the 1950s was a pioneer of pedestrian shopping malls in Europe and North America.

The New Waterway has been deepened several times in post-war years, and new seaward docks were developed from 1957 at Europoort over two decades to provide petrochemical refineries and storage tanks, bulk iron ore discharge facilities, as well as container terminals and new automobile handling terminals. Very large vessels enter Europoort via a separate and parallel channel from the New Waterway known as the Calandkanaal.

The first stage of Maasvlakte (‘Maas plain’) was then begun in the late 1970s with a very large sea reclamation project with even more refineries and storage tanks. Maasvlakte contains the eighth set of oil berths to be built in the Port of Rotterdam. Maasvlakte 2 project is now complete extending the port even further seawards and to the south west of the Hook of Holland. Maasvlakte 2 has increased the port area by 20%, and provided a depth of water of 23.65 metres to handle those mega iron ore carriers e.g. Berge Stahl of 365,000 dwt with a loaded draft of 75 feet, that can only berth at one port in Brazil (Ponta da Madeira) for loading and at Rotterdam for discharging. Container terminal capacity has been tripled, and a large number of wind turbines have been added offshore to take advantage of the exposed coastal winds.

European Bulk Services (EBS) completed a 4.8 hectare site at Laurenshaven Terminal in late 1990s to add dry bulk discharge facilities of over one quarter of a million tonnes. EBS was founded in 1993 following the merger of three prominent Rotterdam stevedoring companies. It has two terminals, the Europoort site for the import and export of agribulk products and transhipment of coal from Capesize bulkers at dolphins. The Laurenshaven Terminal for Panamax bulkers handles minerals, petcoke, coal, scrap, biomass and agribulk products. EBS has a fleet of floating cranes and weighing towers for discharge grabs of up to 100 tonnes at a time, and they can be used throughout the Rotterdam port area.

The large area of branch docks on the south side of the port to the west of Waalhaven is known as Eemhaven, and further to the west near Rozenburg is the Botlek area of chemical industries, oil refineries and energy companies, and is also used by gearbulk gantry equipped bulk carriers to unload paper rolls for Rotterdam SCA Paper and Ciparo Paper. The Brittanniehaven at the east end of the Calandkanaal is a large open dock for the discharge of automobiles brought in by deep sea European and Japanese lines, together with Cobelfret and UECC short sea lines. It has a specially constructed ‘wind wall’ near the Caland bridge to reduce ‘windage’ on the auto carriers and ensure a safe passage into and out of the dock. The Caland Bridge opened in 1969 and will come to the end of its technical lifespan in ten years time, with a decision on some sort of replacement to be made soon. There is also the Broekman Car Terminal for import and export of automobiles. The Beneluxhaven in Europoort has daily connections for North Sea Ferries to Hull, as well as other feeder container connections to Felixstowe. Stena line operates from the Hook of Holland on the other side of the New Waterway to Harwich, with a fast train connection to London. A second Stena line terminal is being built in collaboration with the Port of Rotterdam as part of an €27 million investment.

The Port of Rotterdam is now divided into nine distinct areas over the nearly forty kilometres when travelling from east to west to the North Sea:-

Stadhavens
Vierhavens
Merwehaven
Waalhaven
Eemhaven
Vondelingenplat
Botlek
Deepwater Europoort
Maasvlakte 1 and 2

The port has 14.5 million tonnes of crude oil storage, 12.9 million tonnes of mineral oil products storage, 2.7 million tonnes of chemical products storage, and 1.2 million tonnes of vegetable oil and fats storage. There is open ground storage for 300,000 cubic metres of agribulks storage, warehouse storage of three million square feet, and cold or cool reefer products storage of 2.55 million cubic metres.

Dutch Inland Waterways

An extensive network of rivers and canals of 5,046 kilometres is navigable for shallow draft coasters and barges from Rotterdam. This transhipment trade from deep-sea ships to river craft is ‘bread and butter’ to Rotterdam, and there are 24 berths at dolphins and buoys to handle ship to ship transfers for vessels up to 380 metres in length. This has led to an outstanding development of Dutch inland shipping, including Rhein, Maas und Seeschiffs (RMS) with a big fleet of thirty low air draft inland coasters of up to 4.000 dwt including RMS Rotterdam 2,590/11. One third of all goods transported inside the Netherlands are carried on the canals and waterways. The main commercial waterways have a total length of 2,200 kilometres and account for around 40% of international freight movements in the country. Dutch inland shipping has access to Germany and France along the Rhine and its branch rivers, and also to Belgium and France along the Meuse and Scheldt including the Rhine-Scheldt link. Belgian and German businesses are in fact the biggest trading partners of the Port of Rotterdam. The Dutch inland waterways fleet is currently very large at around 4,500 vessels and barges carrying around 220 metric tonnes of cargo each year. The deep sea and short sea Dutch fleet is much smaller at around 1,300 ships.

Port of Rotterdam Repair Facilities

There are two large shiprepair yards today in the Port of Rotterdam, Damen Shiprepair Rotterdam (DSR) B.V., and Keppel Verolme Rotterdam. The latter yard has handled ship repair and maintenance, modifications and conversions since 1957. It is part of the worldwide Keppel offshore and Marine group, and has the largest dry-dock in Europe at 405 metres in length, ninety metres in width, and 11.06 metres over the sill. This big dock can accommodate three offshore vessels or three oil rigs simultaneously. The Damen DSR yard undertakes ship repair and conversion work with 250 employees, three dry-docks (one covered) in Schiedam, and two floating docks. The yard has its own water basin with quays some 2,100 metres in length and has the use of heavy lift overhead cranes of up to two hundred tonnes capacity.

Port of Rotterdam Facts and Figures

The Port of Rotterdam is still expanding and will soon run out of space to seaward to build new port facilities. Land reclamation of more inland sites is considered the most appropriate solution. The huge size of the port can be gauged from the following facts and figures:-

Oil refineries   5
Refinery terminals      6
Independent tank terminals   11
Chemical plants          45
Biofuel plants  8
Vegetable oil refineries          5
Independent chemical terminals        17
Gas fired power stations         3
Coal/biomass fired power stations     3
LNG terminals 1
Wind turbines 78
Gas and Water plants 4
Steam powered plants            7
Waste recovery plants            1
Deep sea container terminals            6
Short sea container terminal  4
Inland container depots          18
Ro-ro terminals           8
General cargo terminals        19
Dry bulk terminals      15
Steel terminals            6
Timber/Paper terminals         2
Automobile terminals 2
Fruit Terminal 1
Port jetties      111
Berths on buoys/dolphins       27
Pontoons         100
Quay length    74.3 km
Water depth    24.0-26.0 m
Harbour tugs   29
Pilot boats       6
Multi-purpose cranes 162
Container gantry cranes         103
Floating cranes           25
Ship to shore bulk cranes        22
Rail terminal cranes   12
Sheer legs cranes        10

The six deep sea container terminals at Maasvlakte 1 and 2 are located on the Yangtzekanaal, Europahaven and Amazonehaven waterways and are:-

Rotterdam Container Terminal
ECT Euromax Terminal
APM Maasvlakte 1 Terminal
APM Maasvlakte 2 Terminal
Rotterdam World Gateway Terminal
ECT Delta Terminal

The throughput to these giant terminals is helped by a new logistics service called Container logistics Maasvlakte (CIM) to bundle containers by rail for the benefit of all six terminals, port users and the final destination of the containers. Maasvlakte Plaza will have large scale parking for international trucks and their drivers by 2017. The throughput of Maasvlakte 1 and 2 is expected to rise to 30 million TEU by 2035. The four short sea container terminals are located in the Waalhaven and Eemhaven dock areas nearer the city centre.

The five oil refineries are:-
Shell
BP
Kuwait Petroleum
Koch Supply and Trading
ExxonMobil

The six refinery oil terminals are:-
Kuwait Petroleum Europoort
Shell Europoort Terminal
BP Terminal
Maasvlakte Oil Terminal (MOT)
Maatschap Energy Terminal (MET)
Team Oil Terminal

The independent Tank Terminals include those owned by Royal Vopak NV, a 1998 merger between Royal Pakhoed NV and Philips van Ommeren in the oil storage sector, and LBC Tank Terminals. The Tank Terminal West (TTW) in West Europoort will open in 2017 with a storage capacity of three million cubic metres of crude oil and oil products. The deep water at Maasvlakte 2 is also used to good effect for the completion of the ‘topsides’ of FPSO (Floating Production, Storage and offloading) oil vessels. Rotterdam Offshore Group (ROG) use heavy lift and floating cranes of up to 1,400 tonnes lifting capacity for the offshore industry as well as port and construction work. FPSOS have to be towed away or are loaded onto deep draft heavy lift vessels such as dockwise vanguard in the Calandkanaal for voyages to remote oilfields around the world. LNG arrives at the gate Terminal in Maasvlakte with supplies sourced in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Australia, and with some then exported around Europe.

The Allseas dynamic positioning platform installation and pipelay vessel Pioneering Spirit, at 382 metres in length and the largest vessel in the world, arrived at Prinses Alexiahaven in Massvlakte 2 during 2015 for completion, with equipment supplied by the Keppel Verolme yard and Broekman logistics. The hull was built by Daewoo in South Korea and towed to Rotterdam, with a twin hull forward of the bridge, and a tensioner capacity for pipelay of 2,000 tonnes over the stern. She has a heavy lift crane of 600 tonnes, with three pipe transfer cranes of 50 tonnes, and can hold 27,000 tonnes of pipe on her deck ready for laying. When in full commission, she has accommodation for 571 persons.

The eight Ro-Ro terminals are operated by four shipping lines, with Cobelfret dominant on the route to the Thames from their 28 hectare terminal on the Brittanniehaven, and DFDS on the route to Felixstowe. Team lines and Sea-Cargo lines operate a Rotterdam to Leixoes service, and a Rotterdam to Scandinavia and Baltic ports service respectively. The fifteen dry bulk terminals are spread along the entire length of the port, from Waalhaven and Eemhaven near the city to Mississippihaven in Maasvlakte, which handles the discharge and transfer of iron ore, and a direct connection with the Hartelkanaal ensures a speedy delivery of ore by barges and pusher tugs to the hinterland.

The nineteen general cargo terminals include seven heavy lift and project cargo terminals, the Trimodal Terminal, and the RSC Rail Terminal. The latter is in the Waalhaven and Eemhaven area and has four modern cranes and the capacity to operate trains carrying over 350,000 containers, swap bodies and trailers per year. The German rail company dB Schenker holds 51% of the shares of the terminal, with three other European rail operators holding the remainder of the shares. The six specialised steel terminals are operated by Steinweg, Rhenus Logistics, J. C. Meiers BV, Van Uden Stevedoring, Metaaltransport Waalhaven and Westerstuw BV.

Van Uden Shipping of Rotterdam

The Van Uden brothers have been shipowners in the Port of Rotterdam for 110 years with the first deep sea services to Charleston and Savannah. Van Uden Shipping was formed as a separate subsidiary in 1980, and today there are four services from Rotterdam and Northern European ports.

MEDITERRANEAN to Valencia, Alexandria, Beirut, Tripoli (Lebanon), Latakia, Mersin, Piraeus, Limassol and Benghazi.

MIDDLE EAST to Sohar, Jebel Ali, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Bahrain, Damman, Kuwait, Mumbai and Chennai.

EAST and SOUTH AFRICA to Port Sudan, Djibouti, Mombasa, Dar-Es- Salaam, Nacala, Maputo and Durban.

WEST AFRICA to Casablanca, Nouakchott, Dakar, Banjul (Gambia), Conakry, Freetown, Abidjan, Tema, Lome, Cotonou, Lagos, Douala, Libreville, Pointe Noire, Walvis Bay And Luanda.

Van Uden have always used a nomenclature Of Rotterdam docks and waterways For their ships E.G. Coolhaven, Delfshaven, Eemhaven, Jobshaven, Keilehaven, Koningshaven, Lekhaven, Leuvehaven, Maashaven, Merwehaven, Nassauhaven, Nieuwehaven, Parkhaven, Rijnhaven, Schiehaven, Veerhaven, Waalhaven and Yselhaven.

Harbour Towage at Rotterdam

Rotterdam harbour towage is operated by Smit Towage, Svitzer, Fairplay, and Kotug of Rotterdam, the latter with a Kooren family tugowning history dating back to 1911. Kotug was established in 1988 at Wilheminakade to serve the Port of Rotterdam, as well as at Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven. a fleet of 25 Kotug harbour tugs are based in European ports, with three more based at Brunei for oil terminal duties. The fleet uses a prefix of ‘RT’ for the names of most of its tugs, with the latest units having a bollard pull of 80 tonnes. Svitzer has recently moved five harbour tugs from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, and Fairplay is a long established towage fleet from Hamburg.

Smit was founded in 1842 at Rotterdam by Fop Smit and on his death in 1866 the business was inherited by his sons Jan and Leendert with a fleet of six propeller driven tugs in 1870. l. Smit & Company then expanded into the deep sea towing, with their first ocean going tug Wodan of 1883 with twin funnels and a steam engine of one hundred horse power. in 1920, they took over the competing Rotterdam tug operator Internationale Sleepdienst to become l. Smit & Company’s Internationale Sleepdienst. a fleet of 25 powerful steam tugs was operated in 1930 including Zwarte Zee 604/06, and ten years later the very famous motor tug Zwarte Zee (2) 836/33 was one of eleven Smit tugs to come across to London from Holland just before the German invasion of Holland in May 1940. Zwarte Zee (2) was renamed Ierse Zee in 1962 to free the name for a new tug and was scrapped in 1966. in 1960, a fleet of twenty powerful deep sea tugs was being operated, of which Elbe 797/59 is preserved as a floating exhibit at the Rotterdam Maritime Museum. a similar sized fleet of deep sea tugs was operated in 1973, including Zwarte Zee (3) and Witte Zee, both 1539/63 and 9,000 bhp, and Noordzee and Poolzee, both 1326/70 and 11,000 bhp. in addition, a big fleet of harbour and coastal tugs, inland and seagoing salvage vessels, heavy lifting craft, floating sheerlegs of up to 3,200 tonnes capacity at a maximum outreach of 113 metres and maximum height of 108 metres, ocean going pontoons, and oil rig supply vessels was operated by 1997. a huge fleet of 200 harbour tugs now operate worldwide, with 29 tugs operating in the Port of Rotterdam, including the powerful new quartet of Smit Cheetah, Smit Jaguar, Smit Panther and Smit Tiger of 95 tonnes bollard pull.

Rotterdam Maritime Museum

Rotterdam Maritime Museum was founded in 1874 and is the oldest museum of its type in Holland. it is located on the Leuvehaven and has a statue of de Verwoeste Stad (The devastated City) by Ossip Zadkine in front, commemorating the German bombing of May 1940 and is one of the most famous statues in the country. on the other side of the Leuvehaven, near the Nieuwe Maas, is the monument for merchant shipping ‘de Boeg’ or ‘The Bows’. Prince Hendrik of Holland created the base collection of half a million exhibits including posters, photographs, ship models, war munitions including torpedoes, and nautical instruments. There is a triple expansion steam engine on the quay outside the museum, and a working diesel engine inside a specially constructed glass walled building. The armoured naval ship de Buffel, equipped with a ram bow, and dating from the 19th century is the starring floating exhibit. There are also Dutch deep sea salvage tugs, harbour tugs, dockyard tugs, floating grain elevators and other floating exhibits. The dockyard tugs include some from the Rotterdam drydock Company with red funnels and a black top and two white and two black central bands. a Wilton Fijenoord dockyard tug is also preserved with her handsome yellow funnel with a black top and a roundel containing ‘WF’ in black. Five centuries of maritime history are covered by the numerous exhibits inside the museum, including the oldest ship model anywhere in Europe, that of the sailing ship Mataro from the 15th century. The museum has an excellent bookshop, where one can obtain new maritime books from around the world.

Maeslant Barrier

A storm surge barrier known as the ‘Maesland Barrier’ is located between the cities of Maasluis and Vlaardingen and the Hook of Holland. it is an ingenious folding barrier with two enormous swinging arms that fit snugly into the sides and dykes of the New Waterway to allow shipping to pass, but when closed form a barrier against storm surges from the North Sea. it was the final stage of the many years of construction of the delta Works of nearby deep water Europoort. The objective was to prevent flooding of Rotterdam harbour after Force 9 or 10 gales in the North Sea from storm surges. Construction began in 1991 on two large floating gates, 210 metres in length and 22 metres high, and then white painted steel trusses of 237 metres in length were welded to the gates. The twin gates meet in the middle of New Waterway and are locked together by a massive ‘ball joint’ to form a watertight barrier. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands opened the barrier on 10th May 1997 after six years of construction at a cost of E450 million. The storm barrier is tested once a year, and has been closed on two occasions to prevent storm surges greater than three metres in height reaching Rotterdam. The Thames Barrier performs the same function for the City of London, but is of a completely different design.

Postscript

Around twenty worldwide large cruise ships such as those of Cunard line berth at the Wilhelmina Quay of the new World Port Centre next to the Erasmus Bridge each year. The 124 metre tall World Port Centre is the headquarters of the Port of Rotterdam, and offers spectacular and beautiful views over the city of Rotterdam. if one wishes to get a good view of the city and docks or the Hotel New York, the former Holland America line headquarters, or a view of the preserved liner Rotterdam of 1959, take the lift to the top of the Euromast on Parkhaven. The Euromast is 607 feet tall and was completed in three building stages, as three separate fundraising campaigns were needed after ten years of construction began in 1960. The nearby park had hosted a ‘Floriade’, a horticultural and agricultural exhibition, in 1960 when the first concept of a tall public tower was mooted. The Euromast has views as far as The Hague, Hook of Holland and Antwerp on clear days. The other way to see the port is from a streamlined Spido Boat tour lasting 1.5 hours around the old areas of the port, or a whole day to travel downstream to Maasvlakte 1 and 2. Rotterdam Port days are held in early September and attract thousands of visitors from around the world.

The port has the headquarters of the Royal association of Netherlands Shipowners at Wijnhaven 65, and the headquarters of the Dutch Seafarers Federation at Heemraadsingel 323. Rotterdammers rightly now call their high rise city the ‘Manhattan on the Maas’, and their new Erasmus Bridge is stylish and modern. in conclusion, the Port of Rotterdam, incorporating Europoort for deep draft oil tankers and bulk carriers, is the biggest and main port of the European union (EU), and also by far the busiest port in Europe.