The yard in Stavoren.

This seeds of a revival in Stavoren’s fortunes can be traced back to 1846 when Anne Veldstra established a shipyard in a field on the city canal, right behind the sea lock. He energetically started building a large koff ship of 140 tons, but the company soon went bankrupt.

Douwe Roosjen and Gerben Strikwerda tried to revive the yard in 1860. Until 1918, they used it mainly to build small wooden boats for fishing the Zuiderzee. The fishermen used these ‘Stavoren yawls’ to catch herring, anchovies and eel. Six metres in length, these crude but sturdily built sailing boats are seaworthy enough to handle the Zuiderzee. 

 

When Gerben Strikwerda died in 1900, the old yard master Roosjen and Ids Strikwerda, Gerben’s son, continued to build Stavoren yawls. Roosjen had no son to pass on the yard to so he sold it to Auke van der Werff in 1918. The new owner switched from building wooden boats to the construction of inland vessels made of iron.