Jaap Hoogstrate builds the most beautiful Schelde ships… In miniature

Anyone who wants to admire the most beautiful ships that De Schelde has ever built should visit the Beeldenhuis in Vlissingen. Jaap Hoogstrate has set up a permanent exhibition there displaying showpieces from De Schelde history. Jaap has built illustrious ships, such as the Willem Ruys and the Kungsholm, all to scale with his own hands. The stately Beedenhuis in Vlissingen’s Hendrikstraat used to be on the Dokhaven, which was once the site of De Schelde. And, of course, that makes Jaap’s exhibition even more appropriate. The 83-year-old Zeeland native has been modelling ships for some twenty-five years, and is quite proud of his collection.

Jaap can often be found in the attic of his home in Kloetinge, where he carries out his painstaking work. The model ships that he builds with so much love and dedication are all made of wood. Jaap is happy to show us around the room in the Beeldenhuis where his collection is to be found. He points to a true-to-life replica of the Willem Ruys (hull number 214), the flagship that De Schelde built, with an interruption due to the war, between 1939 and 1946. “Did you know that the Germans wanted to blow it up?” says Jaap. “But De Schelde workers secretly removed the explosives that had been placed under the ship.”

“So when it came to the moment that it should have blown up…. nothing happened. The story goes that the Feldwebel [a German NCO] in Domburg turned a blind eye to the ship not being lost.” Jaap also shows us a stunning replica of the Willem Ruys as it looked when it was in service for the Italian shipping company Achille Lauro. “Look, can you see that they made the aft decks longer?” he asks. “There are also two swimming pools on board, while the ship, when it was the Willem Ruys, only had one.” Jaap has an anecdote about every ship on display.

The ferry Koningin Emma, ​​in service in 1933, sailed between Terneuzen and Hoedekenskerke, and Kats and Zierikzee. “When I was a truck driver, I was on board with my truck. There was a fisherman from Arnemuiden with a bicycle with a basket on his handlebars. During the crossing, he was separating the heads of his fish. But he was accidentally throwing his fish into the water, instead of the heads. He was furious when he realized!” The S-frigate HNLMS Piet Hein (1981) was converted for a second life into the superyacht Yas, with only the hull remaining intact.

“Because De Schelde ships were widely known as the Rolls-Royces of ships,” adds Jaap. In the Beeldenhuis, we can also enjoy looking at a model of the first Diponegoro-class corvette, with which Damen Naval successfully entered the export market. Jaap is also proud of the replica he made of the very first ship that De Schelde ever built: hull number 1, the pilot boat De Zeeuw, with sails and all. Jaap has no plans to start taking it easy. The lively octogenarian is already working on a new ship in his attic: a model of the ferry Dokter Wagemaker.

Damen Naval completed this ship in 2005 for the northern Dutch ferry company Koninklijke NV Texels Eigen Stoomboot Onderneming (TESO, in English: Texel’s Own Steamboat Company), which provides a ferry service to and from the island of Texel and Den Helder on the Dutch mainland. It is a ship with the same basic shape as the Zeeland ferry Prins Johan Friso, which can also be seen in Jaap’s exhibition. “The Prins Johan Friso was the last ship to sail for the PSD in Zeeland.” If you would like to visit Jaap Hoogstrate’s outstanding exhibition, please call him in advance (06-46 08 78 51). When you are there, ask him to turn the lights off for a moment. He will then turn on the lights that he has installed on the Willem Ruys and the Kungsholm. And that is a veritable fairy-tale scene.