The following series was translated from the original Dutch by Willem Rabbelier and Cor Snabel of the Netherlands. It is published with their permission on The Olive Tree Genealogy pages.

Sun, 13 Feb 2000
Letter from Cor Snabel to the Dutch-Colonies List:

A few weeks ago my son Bram (13) and I visited the "Scheepvaart Museum" (Marine Museum) in Amsterdam. We admired the pictures and scale-models of ships, which were dated between 1600 and 2000. Outside the museum, in the Amsterdam harbor, is a one-to-one scale replica of the VOC ship Batavia which was built some ten years ago. It was build according to the drawings from the 17th century. My son loved it.

I myself discovered something else I loved the minute I saw it. In the library of the museum I found a book, written by Jaap Jacobs, the author of "Een Zegenrijk Gewest". The book is called "De Scheepvaart en handel van de Nederlandse Republiek op Nieuw-Nederland 1609-1675". Translated: "The Shipping and Trade from the Dutch Republic to the New Netherland 1609-1675".

In this book is a list of about 500 ship crossings over that period from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam and vice-versa. Unfortunately it has no passenger-lists, it only says, for instance "...on board 20 colonists". Nevertheless I think many of you will be interested in this book.

The book was never published, it was the thesis of Jaap Jacobs, going for his Master's degree on history at the University of Leiden in 1989. I found the recent address of the author and called him up. I asked him how many copies were made, unfortunately there were only five. One in the museum in Amsterdam, one in the library of the University in Leiden, two somewhere in the US and he still had one copy.

So I went back to the museum in Amsterdam and copied the whole book. [Note: The copyright expired in 1994]The first week of January I visited our friend and teacher Willem Rabbelier and gave him another copy of the book and we both studied the data and tried to find a way to get this information to the DC-list in the most interesting way.

In the coming weeks you can expect some information from us, based on this book, with supplements from other sources. If you want to know any arrival- or departure date of any ship in the period 1609-1675 feel free to ask Willem or myself

We hope you enjoy the information we will give you, we certainly did enjoy preparing it for you.

Regards,
Cor Snabel
The Netherlands