The Netherlands, (Nederland in Dutch) also known informally as Holland, is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three island territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands lies between latitudes 50° and 54° N, and longitudes 3° and 8° E and borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing maritime borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Germany. It is geographically a very low and flat country, with about 26% of its area and 21% of its population located below sea level, and only about 50% of its land exceeding one meter above sea level. The country is for the most part flat, with the exception of foothills in the far southeast, up to a height of no more than 321 meters, and some low hill ranges in the central parts. Most of the areas below sea level are man-made, caused by peat extraction or achieved through land reclamation. Since the late sixteenth century, large polder areas are preserved through elaborate drainage systems that include dikes, canals and pumping stations. Nearly 17% of the country’s land area is reclaimed from the sea and from lakes.
The Netherlands is divided into north and south parts by the Rhine, the Waal, its main tributary branch, and the Meuse. In the past these rivers functioned as a natural barrier between fiefdoms and hence historically created a cultural divide, as is evident in some phonetic traits that are recognizable on either side of what the Dutch call their “Great Rivers” (de Grote Rivieren). Another significant branch of the Rhine, the IJssel river, discharges into Lake IJssel, the former Zuiderzee (‘southern sea’). Just like the previous, this river forms a linguistic divide: people to the northeast of this river speak Dutch Low Saxon dialects (except for the province of Friesland, which has its own language)
The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Amsterdam is the country’s capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the world’s largest port outside East-Asia, and the largest port in Europe. The name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands.
“Netherlands” literally means “lower countries”, influenced by its low land and flat geography. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to by the much older designation “Holland” (meaning holt land, or wood land). This term strictly speaking refers only to North and South Holland, two of the nation’s twelve provinces, formerly a single province and earlier the County of Holland. This originally Frankish county emerged from the dissolved Frisian Kingdom and was — after the decline of Duchy of Brabant and County of Flanders — economically and politically the most important county in the Low Countries region. Because of this importance, and the emphasis on Holland during the formation of the Dutch Republic, the Eighty Years’ War and later the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Holland served as a pars pro toto for the entire country, and is nowadays considered either incorrect, informal, or on occasion opprobrious, depending on the context, but is widely used when referring to the national football team.
The Netherlands is the world’s second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products, after the United States. This is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. It was the third country in the world to have an elected parliament, and since 1848 it has been governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, organized as a unitary state. The Netherlands has a long history of social tolerance and is generally regarded as a liberal country, having legalized abortion, prostitution and euthanasia, while maintaining a progressive drugs policy. In 2001, it became the world’s first country to legalize same-sex marriage.
The prehistory of the area that is now the Netherlands was largely shaped by the sea and the rivers that constantly shifted the low-lying geography. The oldest human (Neanderthal) traces in the Netherlands were found in higher soils, near Maastricht, from what is believed to be about 250,000 years ago. After the end of the Ice Age, various Paleolithic groups inhabited the area, and around 8000 BC Mesolithic tribes resided in Friesland and Drenthe, where the oldest canoe in the world was recovered. Autochthonous hunter-gatherers from the Swifterbant culture are attested from around 5600 BC onwards. They are strongly linked to rivers and open water and were related to the southern Scandinavian Ertebølle culture (5300–4000 BC). To the west, the same tribes might have built hunting camps to hunt winter game. People made the switch to animal husbandry sometime between 4800 BC and 4500 BC. Agricultural transformation took place very gradually, between 4300 BC and 4000 BC. The farming Funnelbeaker culture extended from Denmark through northern Germany into the northern Netherlands, and erected the dolmens, large stone grave monuments found in Drenthe (built between 4100 BC and 3200 BC). To the southwest, the Vlaardingen culture (around 2600 BC), an apparently more primitive culture of hunter-gatherers survived well into the Neolithic period. Around 2950 BC, there was a quick and smooth transition from the Funnelbeaker farming culture to the pan-European Corded Ware pastoralist culture. The Bell Beaker culture, also present in the Netherlands, apparently rose out of the Corded Ware culture.
Discoveries of copper artifacts imply trade with other parts of Europe, as the metal is not normally found in Dutch soil. The Bronze Age probably started somewhere around 2000 BC and lasted until around 800 BC. The many finds in Drenthe of rare and valuable objects, suggest that it was a trading center in the Bronze Age. The Bell Beaker cultures (2700–2100 BC) locally developed into the Bronze Age Barbed-Wire Beaker culture (2100–1800 BC). In the second millennium BC, the region was the boundary between the Atlantic and Nordic horizons, roughly divided by the course of the Rhine. In the north, the Elp culture (c. 1800 BC to 800 BC) was a Bronze Age archaeological culture having earthenware pottery of low quality as a marker. The initial phase was characterized by tumuli (1800–1200 BC) that were strongly tied to contemporary tumuli in northern Germany and Scandinavia, and were apparently related to the Tumulus culture (1600–1200 BC) in central Europe. This phase was followed by a subsequent change featuring Urnfield (cremation) burial customs (1200–800 BC). The southern region became dominated by the Hilversum culture (1800–800 BC), which apparently inherited cultural ties with Britain of the previous Barbed-Wire Beaker culture.
The Iron Age brought a measure of prosperity. Iron ore was available throughout the country, including bog iron extracted from the ore in peat bogs in the north, the natural iron-bearing balls found in the Veluwe and the red iron ore near the rivers in Brabant. Smiths traveled from small settlement to settlement with bronze and iron, fabricating tools on demand, including axes, knives, pins, arrowheads and swords. Some evidence even suggests the making of Damascus steel swords using an advanced method of forging that combined the flexibility of iron with the strength of steel. The King’s grave of Oss dating from around 500 BC was found in a burial mound, the largest of its kind in western Europe and containing an iron sword with an inlay of gold and coral.
The deteriorating climate in Scandinavia around 850 BC, that further deteriorated around 650 BC, might have triggered migration of Germanic tribes from the North. By the time this migration was complete, around 250 BC, a few general cultural and linguistic groups had emerged. The North Sea Germanic Ingvaeones inhabited the northern part of the Low Countries. They would later develop into the Frisii and the early Saxons.
A second grouping, the Weser-Rhine Germanic (or Istvaeones), extended along the middle Rhine and Weser and inhabited the Low Countries south of the great rivers. This group consisted of tribes that would eventually develop into the Salian Franks. The Celtic La Tène culture (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest) had expanded over a wide range, including the southern area of the Low Countries. Some scholars have speculated that even a third ethnic identity and language, neither Germanic nor Celtic, survived in the Netherlands until the Roman period, the Iron Age Nordwestblock culture, that eventually was being absorbed by the Celts to the south and the Germanic peoples from the east.
During the Gallic Wars, the area south of the Oude Rijn and west of the Rhine was conquered by Roman forces under Julius Caesar from 57 BC to 53 BC. Caesar describes two main tribes living in what is now the southern Netherlands: the Menapii and the Eburones. The Rhine became fixed as Rome’s northern frontier around 12 AD. Notable towns would arise along the Limes Germanicus: Nijmegen and Voorburg. At first part of Gallia Belgica, the area south of the Limes became part of the Roman province of Germania Inferior. The area to the north of the Rhine, inhabited by the Frisii, remained outside Roman rule (but not its presence and control), while the border tribes Batavi and Cananefates served in the Roman cavalry.
The Batavi rose against the Romans in the Batavian rebellion of 69AD, but were eventually defeated. The Batavi later merged with other tribes into the confederation of the Salian Franks, whose identity emerged at the first half of the third century. Salian Franks appear in Roman texts as both allies and enemies. The Salian Franks were forced by the confederation of the Saxons from the east to move over the Rhine into Roman territory in the fourth century. From their new base in West Flanders and the Southwest Netherlands, they were raiding the English Channel. Roman forces pacified the region, but did not expel the Franks, who continued to be feared at least until the time of Julian the Apostate (358), when Salian Franks were allowed to settle as foederati in Toxandria. After deteriorating climate conditions and the Romans withdrawal, the Frisii disappeared from the northern Netherlands, probably forced to resettle within Roman territory as laeti in c. 296. Coastal lands remained largely unpopulated for the next two centuries.
After Roman government in the area collapsed, the Franks expanded their territories in numerous kingdoms. By the 490s, Clovis I had conquered and united all these territories in the southern Netherlands in one Frankish kingdom, and from there continued his conquests into Gaul. During this expansion, Franks migrating to the south eventually adopted the Vulgar Latin of the local population. A widening cultural divide grew with the Franks remaining in their original homeland in the north (i.e. southern Netherlands and Flanders), who kept on speaking Old Frankish, which by the ninth century had evolved into Old Low Franconian or Old Dutch. A Dutch-French language boundary came into existence.
To the north of the Franks, climatic conditions on the coast improved, and during the Migration Period the abandoned land was resettled again, mostly by Saxons, but also by the closely related Angles, Jutes and ancient Frisii. Many moved on to England and came to be known as Anglo-Saxons, but those who stayed would be referred to as Frisians and their language as Frisian, named after the land that was once inhabited by Frisii. Frisian was spoken along the entire southern North Sea coast, and it is still the language most closely related to English among the living languages of continental Europe.
By the seventh century a Frisian Kingdom (650–734) under King Aldegisel and King Redbad emerged with Utrecht as its center of power, while Dorestad was a flourishing trading place. Between 600 and around 719, the cities were often fought over between the Frisians and the Franks. In 734, at the Battle of the Boarn, the Frisians were defeated after a series of wars. With the approval of the Franks, the Anglo-Saxon missionary Willibrord converted the Frisian people to Christianity. He established the Archdiocese of Utrecht and became bishop of the Frisians. However, his successor Boniface was murdered by the Frisians in Dokkum, in 754.
The Frankish Carolingian empire modeled itself after the Roman Empire and controlled much of Western Europe. However, as of 843, it was divided into three parts — East, Middle, and West Francia. Most of present-day Netherlands became part of Middle Francia, which was a weak kingdom and subject of numerous partitions and annexation attempts by its stronger neighbors. It comprises territories from Frisia in the north to the Kingdom of Italy in the south. When the middle kingdom was partitioned, the lands north of the Alps passed to Lothair II and consecutively were named Lotharingia. After he died in 869, Lotharingia was partitioned, into Upper and Lower Lotharingia, the latter part comprising the Low Countries that technically became part of East Francia in 870, although it was effectively under the control of Vikings, who raided the largely defenseless Frisian and Frankish towns lying on the Frisian coast and along the rivers.
Around 850, Lothair I acknowledged the Viking Rorik of Dorestad as ruler of most of Frisia. Around 879, another Viking raided the Frisian lands, Godfrid, Duke of Frisia. The Viking raids made the sway of French and German lords in the area weak. Resistance to the Vikings, if any, came from local nobles, who gained in stature as a result, and that lay the basis for the disintegration of Lower Lotharingia into semi-independent states. One of these local nobles was Gerolf of Holland, who assumed lordship in Frisia after he helped to assassinate Godfrid, and Viking rule came to an end.
The Holy Roman Empire (the successor state of East Francia) ruled much of the Low Countries in the tenth and eleventh century, but was not able to maintain political unity. Powerful local nobles turned their cities, counties and duchies into private kingdoms, that felt little sense of obligation to the emperor. Holland, Hainaut, Flanders, Gelre, Brabant, and the Utrecht were in a state of almost continual war or paradoxically formed personal unions. The language and culture of most of the people who lived in the County of Holland were originally Frisian. As Frankish settlement progressed from Flanders and Brabant, the area quickly became Old Low Franconian (or Old Dutch). The rest of Frisia in the north (now Friesland and Groningen) continued to maintain its independence and had its own institutions (collectively called the “Frisian freedom”) and resented the imposition of the feudal system.
Around 1000 AD, due to several agricultural developments, the economy started to develop at a fast pace, and the higher productivity allowed workers to farm more land or to become tradesmen. Towns grew around monasteries and castles, and a mercantile middle class began to develop in these urban areas, especially in Flanders and later also Brabant. Wealthy cities started to buy certain privileges for themselves from the sovereign. In practice, this meant that Brugge and Antwerp became quasi-independent republics in their own right and would later develop into some of the most important cities and ports in Europe.
Around 1100 AD, farmers from Flanders and Utrecht began draining and cultivating uninhabited swampy land in the western Netherlands, and made the emergence of the County of Holland as center of power possible. The title of Count of Holland were fought over in the Hook and Cod Wars (Hoekse en Kabeljauwse twisten) between 1350 and 1490. The Cod faction consisted of the more progressive cities, while the Hook faction consisted of the conservative noblemen. These noblemen invited the Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy — who was also Count of Flanders — to conquer Holland.
Most of the Imperial and French fiefs in what is now the Netherlands and Belgium were united in a personal union by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy in 1433. The House of Valois-Burgundy and their Habsburg heirs would rule the Low Countries in the period from 1384 to 1581. Before the Burgundian union, the Dutch identified themselves by the town they lived in or their local duchy or county. The Burgundian period is when the road to nationhood began. The new rulers defended Dutch trading interests, which then developed rapidly.
The fleets of the County of Holland defeated the fleets of the Hanseatic League several times. Amsterdam grew and in the fifteenth century became the primary trading port in Europe for grain from the Baltic region. Amsterdam distributed grain to the major cities of Belgium, Northern France and England. This trade was vital, because Holland could no longer produce enough grain to feed itself. Land drainage had caused the peat of the former wetlands to reduce to a level that was too low for drainage to be maintained.
Under Habsburg Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain, all fiefs in the current Netherlands region were united into the Seventeen Provinces, which also included most of present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and some adjacent land in what is now France and Germany. In 1568, the Eighty Years’ War between the Provinces and their Spanish ruler began. In 1579, the northern half of the Seventeen Provinces forged the Union of Utrecht in which they committed to support each other in their defense against the Spanish army. The Union of Utrecht is seen as the foundation of the modern Netherlands. In 1581, the northern provinces adopted the Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence in which the provinces officially deposed Philip II of Spain as reigning monarch in the northern provinces.
The Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England sympathized with the Dutch struggle against the Spanish, and sent an army of 7,600 soldiers to aid the Dutch in their war with the Catholic Spanish. The English army under command of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester was of no real benefit to the Dutch rebellion. Philip II, the son of Charles V, was not prepared to let them go easily, and war continued until 1648, when Spain under King Philip IV finally recognized the independence of the seven north-western provinces in the Peace of Münster. Parts of the southern provinces became de facto colonies of the new republican-mercantile empire.
After declaring their independence, the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Groningen, Friesland, Utrecht, Overijssel, and Gelderland formed a confederation. All these duchies, lordships and counties were autonomous and had their own government, the States-Provincial. The States General, the confederal government, were seated in The Hague and consisted of representatives from each of the seven provinces. The sparsely populated region of Drenthe was part of the republic too, although it was not considered one of the provinces. Moreover, the Republic had come to occupy during the Eighty Years’ War a number of so-called Generality Lands in Flanders, Brabant and Limburg. Their population was mainly Roman Catholic, and these areas did not have a governmental structure of their own, and were used as a buffer zone between the Republic and the Spanish-controlled Southern Netherlands.
In the Dutch Golden Age, spanning much of the seventeenth century, the Dutch Empire grew to become one of the major seafaring and economic powers. Science, military, and art (especially painting) were among the most acclaimed in the world. By 1650, the Dutch owned 16,000 merchant ships. The Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company established colonies and trading posts all over the world, including ruling the northern parts of Taiwan between 1624–1662 and 1664–1667. The Dutch settlement in North America began with the founding of New Amsterdam on the southern part of Manhattan in 1614. In South Africa, the Dutch settled the Cape Colony in 1652. Dutch colonies in South America were established along the many rivers in the fertile Guyana plains, among them Colony of Surinam (now Suriname). In Asia, the Dutch established the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and the only western trading post in Japan, Dejima.
Many economic historians regard the Netherlands as the first thoroughly capitalist country in the world. In early modern Europe it had the wealthiest trading city (Amsterdam) and the first full-time stock exchange. The inventiveness of the traders led to insurance and retirement funds as well as phenomena such as the boom-bust cycle, the world’s first asset-inflation bubble, the tulip mania of 1636–1637, and the world’s first bear raider, Isaac le Maire, who forced prices down by dumping stock and then buying it back at a discount.
In 1672 — known in Dutch history as the Rampjaar (Disaster Year) — the Dutch Republic was in war with France, England and three German Bishoprics simultaneously. At sea it could successfully prevent the English and French navy entering the western shores. On land, however, it was almost taken over by the advancing French and German armies coming from the east. It could however turn the tide by inundating parts of Holland, but could never recover to its former glory again and went into a state of general decline in the eighteenth century, with economic competition from England and long-standing rivalries between the two main factions in Dutch society, the republican Staatsgezinden and the supporters of the stadtholder the Prinsgezinden, as main political factions.
With the armed support of revolutionary France, Dutch republicans proclaimed the Batavian Republic, modeled after the French Republic and rendering the Netherlands a unitary state on January 19, 1795. The stadtholder William V of Orange had fled to England. From 1806 to 1810, the Kingdom of Holland was set up by Napoleon Bonaparte as a puppet kingdom governed by his brother Louis Bonaparte to control the Netherlands more effectively. King Louis Bonaparte tried to serve Dutch interests instead of his brother’s, and he was forced to abdicate on July 1, 1810. The Emperor sent in an army and the Netherlands became part of the French Empire until the autumn of 1813, when Napoleon was defeated in the Battle of Leipzig.
William Frederick, son of the last stadtholder, returned to the Netherlands in 1813 and proclaimed himself Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands. Two years later, the Congress of Vienna added the southern Netherlands to the north to create a strong country on the northern border of France. William Frederick raised this United Netherlands to the status of a kingdom and proclaimed himself King William I. In addition, William became hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg in exchange for his German possessions. However, the Southern Netherlands had been culturally separate from the north since 1581, and rebelled. The south gained independence in 1830 as Belgium, while the personal union between Luxembourg and the Netherlands was severed in 1890, when William III died with no surviving male heirs. Ascendancy laws prevented his daughter Queen Wilhelmina from becoming the next Grand Duchess.
The Belgian Revolution at home and the Java War in the Dutch East Indies brought the Netherlands to the brink of bankruptcy. However, the Cultivation System was introduced in 1830; in the Dutch East Indies, 20% of village land had to be devoted to government crops for export. The policy brought the Dutch enormous wealth and made the colony self-sufficient. On the other hand, the colonies in the West Indies (Dutch Guiana and Curaçao and Dependencies), relied heavily on African slaves in which the Dutch part is estimated at 5–7 percent, or more than half a million Africans. The first stamps of the Netherlands were issued in 1852 and depicted King William III. The Netherlands abolished slavery in 1863. Furthermore, slaves in Suriname would be fully free only in 1873, since the law stipulated that there was to be a mandatory 10-year transition. The Dutch were also one of the last European countries to industrialize, in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The Netherlands were able to remain neutral during World War I, in part because the import of goods through the Netherlands proved essential to German survival, until the blockade by the British Royal Navy in 1916. That changed in World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. The Rotterdam Blitz forced the main element of the Dutch army to surrender four days later. During the occupation, over 100,000 Dutch Jews were rounded up and transported to Nazi extermination camps of whom only a few survived. Dutch workers were conscripted for forced labor in Germany, civilians who resisted were killed in reprisal for attacks on German soldiers, and the countryside was plundered for food.
Although there were thousands of Dutch who risked their lives by hiding Jews from the Germans, over 20,000 Dutch fascists joined the Waffen SS, fighting on the Eastern Front. Political collaborators were members of the fascist NSB, the only legal political party in the occupied Netherlands. On December 8, 1941, the Dutch government-in-exile in London declared war on Japan, but could not prevent the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). In 1944–45, the First Canadian Army, which included Canadian, British and Polish troops, was responsible for liberating much of the Netherlands. Soon after VE day, the Dutch fought a colonial war against the new republic of Indonesia.
Following World War II, the previous stamps continued in use until a new series was introduced on April 1, 1946. This series contained stamps originally issued by the Netherlands Government in Exile in Britain in 1944 for use on ships of the Netherlands Navy serving with the Allies.
In 1954, the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands reformed the political structure of the Netherlands, which was a result of international pressure to carry out decolonization. The Dutch colonies of Surinam and Curaçao and Dependencies and the European country all became countries within the Kingdom, on a basis of equality. Indonesia had declared its independence in August 1945 (recognized in 1949), and thus was never part of the reformed Kingdom. Suriname followed in 1975. After the war the Netherlands left behind also an era of neutrality and gained closer ties with neighboring states. The Netherlands was one of the founding members of the Benelux, the NATO, Euratom and the European Coal and Steel Community, which would evolve into the EEC (Common Market) and later the European Union.
Government-encouraged emigration efforts to reduce population density prompted some 500,000 Dutch people to leave the country after the war. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of great social and cultural change, such as rapid ontzuiling (literally: depillarization), a term that describes the decay of the old divisions along political and religious lines. Youths, and students in particular, rejected traditional mores and pushed for change in matters such as women’s rights, sexuality, disarmament and environmental issues.
In 2002, a series of 12 provincial stamps were issued. Whilst not strictly local stamps, as they were valid throughout The Netherlands, the stamps were only available to purchase from post offices in the relevant province or from the Netherlands Philatelic Bureau.
On October 10, 2010, the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved. Referendums were held on each island to determine their future status. As a result, the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (the BES islands) were to obtain closer ties with the Netherlands. This led to the incorporation of these three islands into the country of the Netherlands as special municipalities upon the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles. The special municipalities are collectively known as the Caribbean Netherlands.
Scott #521 was released by The Netherlands on May 21, 1975, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland, known as SMZ, or in English as Zeeland Steamship Company. The 35-multicolored stamp depicts the company logo along the former Conferderate blocakade runner, PS Stad Middelburg. Printed using the photogravure process, the stamp is perforated 14×13.
The SMZ was founded in June 1875. Services started with the ex-Confederate blockade runners Stad Middelburg and Stad Vlissingen on July 26, 1875, between Sheerness and Vlissingen (Flushing), since the pier at the intended British port, Queenborough, had not been finished. Sheerness and Queenborough are close to each other on the eastern bank of the River Medway. Both ships had been built in 1865 by Quiggin & Jack of Liverpool as the Southern and Northern, and had served as blockade runners in the American Civil War. They were acquired and renamed by SMZ in 1875. Stad Vlissingen stranded and lost in 1879, and her sister was renamed Aurora in 1881, followed by sale in 1889.
A third steamer, the ex-Snaefell (1) of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company was bought as a reserve ship, becoming the Stad Breda. Snaefell (1) was the first of a series of two-funneled paddle steamers built by Caird’s of Greenock. Poor support led to the route ceasing in November 1875. The service restarted on May 15, 1876, between Vlissingen and the newly completed pier at Queenborough, cargo traffic also being carried. Initially a daily overnight service (except Sundays) was offered.
The Dutch Government awarded SMZ the mail contract to England. In first ships built for the route were the Prinses Marie and Prinses Elisabeth of 1878, built by John Elder of Glasgow. Similar steamers Prins Hendrik (1) and Willem Prins van Orange followed in 1880 and 1882.
In 1882, Queenborough Pier was seriously damaged by fire, and the passenger service moved to Dover for four months. Cargo services to Queenborough did not restart until 1885, and cargo steamers were chartered to operate into London in the interim. At the request of the Dutch postal authorities the service was doubled to twice-daily in 1887, with three new paddle steamers, the Duitschland, Engeland and Nederland being acquired.
In 1893, the Great Eastern Railway services from Harwich were improved and the Zeeland suffered a decline in traffic. They ordered three new paddle steamers which were delivered in 1895, the last paddlers to be ordered for the route. They were named Koningin Wilhelmina (1), Koningin Regentes and Prins Hendrik (2) but the service suffered further disruption and a temporary transfer to Dover in 1897 due to flooding of the railway to Queenborough. In 1900, Queenborough pier was destroyed by fire a second time, and the service moved temporarily to Port Victoria, on the opposite bank of the River Medway. Things then settled down for nine years until the Great Eastern Railway received their first turbines in 1903, and accelerated their services.
SMZ responded by building three turbines of their own at Fairfields, the Prinses Juliana (1), Oranje Nassau and Mecklenberg (1). The turbines were used on the night service, with the less competitive day service being operated by the displaced paddle steamers. After one year, the turbines were moved to Folkestone in 1911, since the Medway was unsuitable for their greater draft than the paddlers. The distance from Vlissingen (Flushing) to Folkestone was 92 miles, compared to 112 miles from Queenborough. The day service remained at Queenborough.
Prinses Juliana (1) and Mecklenberg (1) were lost within days of each other early in 1916, and replacements were built in 1920 and 1922, becoming the Prinses Juliana (2) and Mecklenberg (2). These were built in Holland using the original Fairfield drawings.
Until 1927, UK railway connections to SMZ services had been provided by the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, the South Eastern Railway, and their successors the South Eastern & Chatham Railway and the Southern Railway. From 1927, the British port moved to Harwich, and railway connections were provide by the London & North Eastern Railway, who operated a competing service to the Hook of Holland.
In 1939, just before the start of the Second War, the diesel sisters Koningin Emma and Prinses Beatrix (1) were delivered. Both ships escaped to the UK and were used by the Admiralty as usually landing craft vessels, which required considerable modifications.
The Vlissingen (Flushing) base had been destroyed by the war, and services were transferred to Hook of Holland in 1946. Koningin Emma and Prinses Beatrix (1) were re-constructed, and re-entered service in 1948. A day service with the older ships Oranje Nassau and Mecklenberg (2) was run again from Vlissingen (Flushing) to Folkestone between 1949-1952, but after this Harwich-Hook remained the only route, in collaboration with British Railways and Sealink.
In 1960, the streamlined Koningin Wilhelmina (2) delivered. Although she lasted with SMZ for 18 years, she was not a car ferry and therefore obsolescent from the start. She acted as reserve and extra boat after just eight years in service, following the delivery of Koningin Juliana in 1968.
The SMZ and Sealink services were fully amalgamated from 1968 when the first car ferries were delivered, SMZ’s being the attractive Koningin Juliana. Each company later provided two car ferries which ran in tandem at busy times, SMZ’s second contribution being the Prinses Beatrix (2).
In 1984, Sealink was privatized, being bought by Sea Containers after a competition with Stena Line. Plans were initiated to replace the four ships with one large ship for each company, with Sealink being represented by the St Nicholas. SMZ built the Koningin Beatrix in 1985, and soon re-marketed their service as Crown Line.
In 1988, the Dutch Government announced that would sell their 70% interest in SMZ, and the company was acquired by Stena Line in 1989. The following year, Stena also acquired Sealink from Sea Containers, and hence took complete control of the Harwich-Hook route.
A Stamp A Day 