Damen Naval is a Dutch

shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are shipbuilding, built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Compared to shipyards, which are sometimes m ...

, and a continuation of the Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde, responsible for a number of ships used by the

Royal Netherlands Navy The Royal Netherlands Navy (, ) is the Navy, maritime service branch of the Netherlands Armed Forces. It traces its history to 8 January 1488, making it the List of navies, third-oldest navy in the world. During the 17th and early 18th centurie ...

. It is owned by the

Damen Group The Damen Group is a Dutch defence, shipbuilding, and engineering conglomerate company based in Gorinchem, Netherlands. Though it is a major international group doing business in 120 countries, it remains a private family-owned company. Dame ...

. Damen Naval is situated in

Vlissingen Vlissingen (; ) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Vlissingen has been an importan ...

History

The company was founded on 8 October 1875 as the ''NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde'' (KMS) after shipbuilder

Arie Smit Adrianus Wilhelmus "Arie" Smit (15 April 1916 – 23 March 2016) was a Dutch-born Indonesian painter who lived on Bali. Early life Smit was the third of eight children of a trader in cheese and confectionery in Zaandam. His family moved in 19 ...

had taken over the ''Marine Etablissement'', the wharf owned by the Dutch navy. Besides shipbuilding and repair, the company also builds machines, engines, steam turbines, airplanes, and light-metal products.

Koninklijk (, Dutch for 'royal') is an honorary title given to certain companies and non-profit organisations in the Netherlands and to a lesser extent Belgium, by the monarchs of each country. It was first introduced by Louis Bonaparte in 1807, then Kin ...

is a royal title granted by the Dutch Crown. In 1965 the company merged with the NV

Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij The Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij NV (RDM) was a major shipbuilding and repair company in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, existing from 1902 to 1996. It built 355 ships, 18 of which were submarines.:nl:Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij, RDM ...

(RDM) and the NV Motorenfabriek Thomassen of De Steeg, which resulted in the founding, on 4 March 1966, of the Rijn-Schelde Machinefabrieken en Scheepswerven NV (RSMS). Pressured by the Dutch government the Verolme Verenigde Scheepswerven NV was added, and this was the start of Rijn-Schelde-Verolme Machinefabrieken en Scheepswerven NV (RSV). RSV went under and split up, and its shares were taken over by the government and the province of Zeeland. Its name was changed to ''Koninklijke Schelde Groep BV'' (KSG) in 1991. In 2000 the government and the province sold their shares to the

Gorinchem Gorinchem ( ), pronunciation respelling, also spelled Gorkum, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of of which is water. It had a population of in . The munici ...

, and KSG became the company's branch charged with building larger ships for naval and coastguard duty.Ibidem.

Aircraft projects

De Schelde Scheldemusch The de Schelde Scheldemusch was a single-seat pusher biplane designed in the Netherlands to be easy and safe to fly. It was one of the first light aircraft to use a tricycle undercarriage. Despite a sales campaign in the UK, only six were built, ...

* De Schelde S.20 * De Schelde S.21

Warships built

Bibliography

*G.A. de Kok, ''De Koninklijke Weg: Honderd jaar geschiedenis Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde te Vlissingen 1875–1975'', Vlissingen, 1975. . *Piet Quite, ''Koninklijke Mij. 'De Schelde': 125 jaar scheepsbouw in Vlissingen'', Alkmaar, 1999. . *Jeroen Verhoog, Jessica van der Hulst, ''Luctor et Emergo: 125 Jaar Koninklijke Schelde 1875–2000'', Vlissingen, 2001. *Harm J. Hazewinkel, ''Vliegtuigbouw in Fokkers schaduw'', Sassenheim, 1988. . *B. van der Klaauw, Armand van Ishoven, Peter van der Gaag, ''De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse en Belgische Luchtvaart'' (series ''De geschiedenis van de luchtvaart''), Lekturama, 1982. *Theo Wesselink, Thijs Postma, ''De Nederlandse vliegtuigen'', Haarlem, 1982. . *Hugo Hooftman, Nederlandse Vliegtuig Encyclopedie ''Scheldemusch en Scheldemeeuw'', Bennekom: Cockpit, 1978.

References

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External links