August 25, 1866
Shipbuilder and naval architect Fop Smit died in the town of Niewe Leckerland (now known as Nieuw Lekkerland) in the Netherlands. He was 88.
Smit had been born on October 11, 1777, in the Dutch town and municipality of Alblassderdam. His father Jan Foppe Smith (1742-1807) and uncle Jacques Foppe Smit (1756-1820) owned and operated a shipyard in Alblasserdam. Fop Smit worked there and consequently learned a great deal about shipbuilding that would serve him well throughout the remainder of his long life.
In 1820, Fop Smit and his brother Jan Smit (1779-1869) took over the management of that shipyard. They worked together over the next several years, with one of their more noteworthy joint efforts being the construction of the wooden river steamboat Willem I in 1825. This vessel was one of the first of its kind to be built.
Fop and Jan Smit also constructed the seagoing steamship De Batavier, which was launched in 1827 and used for the Rotterdam-to-London line of the Netherlands Steamboat Company (Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappii). De Batavier became a hugely popular vessel that achieved literary fame due to its prominent role in Vanity Fair, a novel authored by English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) and first published as a 19-volume monthly serial during the 1840s.
The brothers’ business partnership formally came to an end in 1828, with Jan Smit renting his share of the shipyard to his brother. Fop Smit went on to form his own shipbuilding company, Fop Smit Shipyard (Etablissement Fop Smith). He ultimately operated not only the family shipyard in Ablassderdam but also a shipyard in the Dutch village of Kinderdijk.
Over time, Smit achieved several notable “firsts” as a solo shipbuilder. A key example involved his company’s construction of the brigantine (two-masted sailing vessel) Industrie, the Netherlands’ first iron ship, in 1847. Smit subsequently built a vessel named California, which became the first Dutch iron clipper ship (a merchant sailing ship designed for speed).
Smit’s company also built the steam corvette (warship) Kanrin Maru for the Tokugawa shogunate, the military government ruling Japan from 1603 to 1868. This vessel was Japan’s first steam- and screw-driven warship.
Another one of Smit’s maritime accomplishments took shape in 1842, when he established what became a highly lucrative towage service between the strategically located Dutch cities of Hellevoetsluis in the province of South Holland; and Brouwershaven in the province of Zeeland. By the time of Smit’s death, his company was operating a total of nine paddle steamer tugboats for that service on behalf of numerous shipowners and mariners.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on Fot Smit and his family’s maritime legacy, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Smit_en_Zoon
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