July 6, 2012
The ship HNLMS Holland (P840) was commissioned into the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN). This ship was the first one of RNLN’s Holland-class offshore patrol vessels to go into service. HNLMS Holland in fact carried out her first official mission about three-and-months before being commissioned.
This unique mission involved a mirror that the Dutch States Navy had taken from the English Navy vessel HMS Charles as a war trophy in 1667. This took place during a Dutch attack on English warships, including HMS Charles, on the River Medway in southeastern England. On March 15, 2012, HNLMS Holland was used to transport the mirror to England for the first time in 345 years as a goodwill loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to the National Maritime Museum in London.
During her naval service to date, HNLMS Holland has been extensively deployed not only for patrol duties but also drug interdiction. In 2013, for example, this ship’s crew intercepted a high-speed boat in the Dutch Caribbean that was smuggling illegal drugs. Along with arresting that boat’s three-man crew, the HNLMS Holland personnel also searched the sea for bales of drugs that those smugglers had thrown overboard during the chase. The cargo retrieved from the sea included over 2,000 pounds (910 kilograms) of cocaine.
In 2013, HNLMS Holland was deployed to the vicinity of Haiti to provide emergency assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Mathew. This vessel returned to the region in 2021 as part of the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism mission in the wake of both a devastating earthquake – the deadliest natural disaster anywhere in the world that year – and a tropical depression.
HNLMS Holland has been used as well by the Dutch royal family. In 2023, the ship transported Willem-Alexander (born in 1967), king of the Netherlands; Queen Máxima (born in 1971); and their daughter Catharina-Amalia (born in 2003), Princess of Orange, between the island countries of Aruba and Curaçao during a state visit to the Dutch Caribbean.
Photo Credit: Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en)
For more information on HNLMS Holland (P840), please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNLMS_Holland_(P840)
Transportation History 
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