1916-1960 Historic Photographs

The Dutch have a strongly developed sense of patrimony, recording details of past events. The town of Alkmaar has an extensive photo archive and when we searched this we found several photos of Catharina Elisabeth. Many of these we identified by the features we recognise of her from other, documented, photos. Most photos are not dated but are probably from the late 1920’s to early 1930’s.

We are now very good at identifying Catharina Elisabeth from features such as railings, bollards, gunwale drains, engine room hatches and so forth. So, even hidden in the background we can pick out her presence.

First, our favourite – dated in the 1930’s

You can clearly see the horizontal wheel in the wheelhouse and the identification of her working route from Alkmaar to Zaanstreek wheelhouse.

Gives some idea of the resolution in the original. The two hatches are one of her distinctive features.

The text on the wheelhouse is quite variable across photos and sometimes includes the name ‘Catharina Elisabeth’ and the company and family name.

Glass Plate Negatives from Alkmaar

A rich source of high-quality photos is the Alkmaar Regional Archive, especially a set of glass plate negatives taken in the 1930’s. These photos have been scanned at a resolution of about 12,000 x 8,000 pixels and show incredible detail. In the gallery below, these have been scaled by 50%. To view them at that resolution, click on a photo in the gallery, pause the slide show and click on the four arrow icon on the bottom. Stretch on a touchpad or #### with a mouse.

Our comments about each photo are visible by clicking on individual photos and you can suppress the comments by clicking on the ‘i’ icon on the bottom.