A Botter in the Zuiderzeemuseum (Enkhuizen, The Netherlands)
History and context
Looking at old maps it is amazing to see how land and water intertwined once in the northern part of the Netherlands, Noord Holland and Friesland in particular. It is even more so, when one drives through Noord Holland and reminds oneself that this once was a patchwork of islands and shallow stretches of sea. The Dutch fought - and continue to fight - the sea and at the same time a good part of the populations lived off the sea. The Zuiderzee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiderzee'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiderzee) once was a vast bay of the North Sea, reaching deep into the country, nearly down to Amsterdam. It served as throughfare for transport and as a rich fishing resource. However, pressure on the scarce land was high and the sea was a constant menace to the low-lying shores and islands. As part of their struggle against the sea, the Dutch dammed up the bay by a large dike, the Afsluitdijk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsluitdijk), completed in 1933. This put an end to much of the fisheries. The already in its southern part brackish Zuidezee finally turned into a large freshwater lake, the Ijsselmeer.
Over the course of history there have been various types of sailing fishing vessels with numerous local variants. The best-known is probably the Botter (and its larger variant Kwak). At one stage it was estimated that there were over 1000 in operation at the end of the 19th century. The places around the Zuiderzee with the most botters were Enkhuizen, Volendam/Edam, Monickendam, Marken, Bunschoten and Urk. Spakenburg was an important building place.
Man's tools to win a lifelihood constantly change and are being adapted to changing circumstances, new needs and fashions as well. Thus methods of fishing evolved in order to increase efficiency and in response to changes to the fishing grounds and other environmental circumstances that influenced the availability of the resource 'fish'. The history of the botter is not easy to trace as no artefacts have survived and artistic renderings are not so reliable bevore say the late 18th century. As with all small boats, they were built without any drawings well into the 20th century. The botter or its somewhat larger version the Kwak as we know it today developed over the past two hundred years.
Sizes vary, but a typical botter has a keel of about 34 feet long.
Sources
There are quite a number of comprehensive printed works on the botter and its history (see below). These include also drawings. Some original drawings are preserved in various museums in the Netherlands. However, like so many traditional small boats, botters were usually built without any drawings. The museums also preserve various model built from about the early 19th century onward. There are also surviving quite a number of original botters, the oldest being from the last quarter of the 19th century.
These boats survived because they have been adapted as pleasure craft. Obviously a lot of concessions had to be made in this case to accomodate the modern leisure-boaters and therefore these boats are not useful for a reconstruction. In more recent years some of these have been reconverted into a state that is more like their original workday appearance. Also, from the end of the 19th century onward some botters had been built als pleasure craft for private owners. They usually deviate somewhat from the work boats and are often fitted with a cabin, as is found e.g. on boeiers.
The Zuiderzeemuseum (http://www.zuiderzeemuseum.nl/home/?language=en) in Enkhuizen preserves a late botter in its boat-hall. The Zuiderzeemuseum also has a large collection of ship- and boatmodels, including several botters. Some of the models appear to be contemporary, while others have been built in more
recent times.
The Model
The model is based on the resin kit produced by Artitec ( http://www.artitec.nl[/url]) in 1:90 (HO) scale. This company has developed a real mastery in casting complex and large resin parts. In addition to the hull, the kit contains castings for the mast and spars, for rigging blocks and, somewhat strangely perhaps, the taken-down sails. Of course, these kits are mainly meant as accessories for model railway layouts and people not knowing a lot about these craft. The kit also contains a small fret of etched parts, mainly for the ironwork of the rigging. While the etched parts are well made as such, they are for the most part not really useful for representing the forged ironwork. For instance, masthoops are, of course, flat in the horizontal direction, while they should really be short tubes. Other parts simply lack the needed plasticity. Hence most of the etched parts will not be used. Similarly, the cast rigging blocks will be replaced by home-made ones and 'real' sails will be made. I bought the kit 'second hand' and the at some stage the characteristic high stem head was broken off and a new one will have to grafted on. Various other details will be improved for better definition of the shapes. Although the casting is well made, there are certain limitations due to the casting process. A company policy of Artitec is to limit the number of parts and to cast-on as many details as possible. Thus for instance the spill is cast onto the foredeck. There are limitations to undercuts in the silicone rubber molds, hence the barrel is not completely free. I shall have to remove the material underneath the barrel using a scalpel etc.
The main cast resin item, the botter’s hull
Not only are Artitec masters in casting kits, but also in painting them as is evidenced for instance by the diorama of the
Texel Roadsted (http://www.dereedevantexel.nl) and models in various other museums around the Netherlands.
To be continued ....
wefalck
Actually, I didn’t do so much with the resin apart from cutting off bits and pieces, but the resin is quite easy to work with, though a bit brittle. The building begins with removing the casting pips. It appears that the model was cast upside-down, so that excess resin is found only at the bottom of the hull. This excess was cut off with an abrasive disk in the hand-held powerdrill. The bottom was then ground flat onto the waterline on a piece of wet-and-dry sanding paper. It is important to hold the hull securely during the various building steps. To this end two 2.5 mm holes were drilled into the solid part of the hull and tapped for M3 screws with which it can screwed down on a piece of wood for safe handling. The tapped holes will also used to hold down the model in its dioramic setting Hull with mounting screws The hull casting was then inspected for any flash and it removed with a scalpell and files. Luckily, there was hardly any flash. As the next step the hull casting was compared with drawings from the literature, mainly BEYLEN (1985) and DORLEIJN (2001), as well as pictures taken of a Marker botter in the Zuiderzeemuseum while I was living in nearby Alkmaar from 2006 to 2009. As is discussed below, the model will represent a botter from Marken. Botters from different regions differed in some details and these should be represented as true as is reasonably possible at this small scale. When going over the casting, a number of 'problems' were noted: a) the spill lacks some definition of detail, although the general shape is well represented; also a pawl bit is modelled, while normally the pawl would be pivoted on the inside band of the bow; the horse for the traveller of the main sheet is foreseen as an iron bar (an etched part), while the more common arrangement is a wooden horse integrated into the slightly raised stern-platform; c) the leeboards are meant to be glued onto wedge-shaped protrusions on the main bollards; on the prototype, the leeboards are suspended on a pin that ties into a band that is laid around the bollard; d) the horizontal wooden knees left and right of the stem-head are missing, but the whole stem-head has to be rebuilt anyway. In addition, holes for thole-pins etc. have to be drilled through. There are other little bits and pieces that need to improved, but they will not all be listed here. Model on working stand to be continued ... wefalck
