Today's action: The journey of an old fire boat

"Jan van der Heyden (March 5, 1637, Gorinchem – September 12, 1712, Amsterdam) was a Dutch Baroque-era painter, draughtsman, printmaker, a mennonite and inventor who significantly contributed to contemporary firefighting. He improved the fire hose in 1672, with his brother Nicolaes, who was a hydraulic engineer. He modified the manual fire engines, reorganised the volunteer fire brigade (1685) and wrote and illustrated the first firefighting manual. A comprehensive street lighting scheme for Amsterdam, which lasted from 1669 until 1840, designed and implemented by Van der Heyden, was adopted as a model by many other towns and abroad."

The above tekst is quoted from Wikipedia. It is brief, but it shows clearly the importance of Jan van der Heyden for the improvement of firefighting. In his honor the Amsterdam fire brigade named their fireboats Jan van der Heyde. Note the missing 'n', but in those days the way names were spelled varied quite often.

When the first Jan van der Heyde was at the end of it's lifecycle, a new boat was built, the Jan van der Heyde II. It served it's years and now the Amsterdam fire brigade has Jan van der Heyde III in operation. Jan II, as it is often named, retired to a museum of firefighting history.

Tomorrow, Saturday 12 April 2014, here in Almere a brand new museum opens it's doors. The new museum shows everything on the history of emergency services: fire, ambulance and police. Museumboat Jan van der Heyde II went on a journey through Dutch canals and waterways and today arrived at it's destination in the city centre of Almere, to be added to the collection of the new museum.

It was really pretty to see this boat, powered by a steam engine, go through our local waterways, although it had a few obstacles to overwin. But finally it got there.