the relationship between Jerome Nicholas Hollander and a Noordwijk skipper Jeroen Klaaszoon Vlieland

Al vele jaren gaat ons onderzoek naar de relatie tussen Jerome Nicholas Hollander en een Noordwijkse Schipper Jeroen Klaaszoon Vlieland, schipper op een bomschuit, die de veerdienst onderhield en zo in een regelmatige lijndienst, post en passagiers overbracht naar het aan overkant van de Noordzee liggende plaatsje Topsham (Verenigd Koninkrijk). Wie helpt ons aan de oplossing van dit vraagstuk. Duik in de Blog. Is het misschien uiteindelijk de uitgave van de rijke kostschool Puber John Skinner ........Wordt het een zaak voor "Opsporing Verzocht" of.......de (leef)tijd dringt. Help mee het onderzoek na meer dan 12 decennia definitief op te lossen.

For many years now, our research has been on the relationship between Jerome Nicholas Hollander and a Noordwijk skipper Jeroen Klaaszoon Vlieland, skipper on a bomb barge, who maintained the ferry service and thus transferred mail and passengers to the town on the other side of the North Sea in a regular service. Topsham (United Kingdom). Who will help us to solve this problem. Dives into the Blog. Is it perhaps ultimately the publication of the rich boarding school Adolescent John Skinner ........ Will it be a case for "Opsporing Verzocht" or ....... the (age) time is running out. Help solve the research after more than 12 decades.......

The Old Ship Hotel, HMS Hood and the Battle of the Denmark Strait

Thanks to Barbara for this contribution. The Old Ship Hotel, HMS Hood and the Battle of the Denmark Strait What connection could there be between the oldest hotel in Brighton, the British battlecruiser HMS Hood, and a naval engagement in May 1941? The connection is Reginald Keith Peel, who has deep family links in our Vlieland story. Named after his father but always called ‘Keith’, he was the eldest son of Reginald Peel by his second marriage, his first being to Frances Maude, eldest daughter of Charles James and Alice Edith Vlieland. HMS Hood was launched at John Brown & Co.’s shipyard on the river Clyde in Scotland on 22 August 1918. The largest in the world at the time, she was built for speed, but this sacrificed the protection of her armaments. In July 1940, she helped to destroy the French ships in the harbour of Mers-El-Kébir, to deny Germany the use of the fleet. She next deployed in Scapa Flow, off the Orkney Islands, escorting British merchant convoys bringing in vital supplies from America under German U-boat attack. By then over 20 years old, a refit to strengthen her decks and protect her vulnerable magazine (ammunition store) had to be cancelled in 1939. On 24 May 1941, she engaged with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the battleship Bismarck in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. A 15- inch shell from Bismarck hit Hood’s magazine containing 100 tons of cordite explosive: she blew up, split in half and sank in 3 minutes, with the loss of 1418 crew, including Keith, Assistant Steward on the ship. Keith enlisted in October 1940 and joined Hood in February 1941. He is named on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial and in the Hood Chapel in St John the Baptist Church at Boldre in the New Forest, the family church of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, who was also lost: Ted Briggs, one of only three of the crew to survive, had a last sight of Holland sitting in his chair in stunned dejection as his ship disintegrated around him The Old Ship Hotel on Brighton seafront was first recorded as The Shippe as early as 1559, and by the 1760s was the most fashionable venue in the town. Archie Graham (husband of Barbara Vlieland Peel), always took a room when he was playing the Theatre Royal. Keith joined the hotel at 18 in 1935, and learned the etiquette of the sommelier’s trade (how to choose wine and glasses and present them at the table), bringing up bottles from the cavernous cellars with their smugglers’ passages leading to the sea. On Hood, he would have been assigned to serve at table in the messroom or officers’ quarters and maintain ‘discipline’ in his onboard ‘hotel’. Although it is now lost, a brass plaque in the Old Ship’s foyer honoured all the hotel staff killed in the two World Wars, so Keith was remembered there as well. Some of the material in this post draws on that by Barbara Smith (Keith’s daughter) on 25 August 2013. Ted Briggs’ memories come from David Mearns and Rob White, Hood and Bismarck(2002)

The Bridge Inn in Topsham

Did Jeroen Aldertsz Vlieland and his crew drink in The Bridge Inn in Topsham. 

The Bridge Inn in Topsham, the port where we know that Jeroen Aldertsz Vlieland traded as a master mariner, has just had its heritage listing upgraded by Historic England because of its remarkable interior, including a stonefireplace, a salt cupboard, a hatch through which ale was served and a malthouseat the back to brew its own beer, with a large brewing chimney and the remainsof the stone floor where the hops were spread out to dry, just like William Millenwould have had at Syndale Farm. Standing on Bridge Hill, the building was mentioned in the Domesday Book, butflourished as public house especially after 1797, and Jeroen would certainly haveknown it. Built of local stone and cob (compacted clay and straw), it had its ownquay and salt refinery (see below). 

We know how important Topsham was in the wool and cloth trade, but the ships that brought back cod fish to the port fromNewfoundland from the 1640s until the early 1700s supported local work for carpenters, rope-makers, coopers (barrel-makers) and chandlers (candle-makers), all of which was lost during the conflicts with Spain and Holland and then the Napoleonic Wars.

Salt was vital to preserve the Newfoundland catch while it was being transportedback to Devon in the ship’s hold and then to cure it before it, and local-caughtsalmon, were transported to up-country buyers. The marshlands around Topsham had been mined for salt from medieval times: in 1836, the town’s Saltworks was auctioned as a going concern at the Salutation Inn, along with 2 acres of land, the quay and ’two neat dwellings’.

 

The salty sea-water from themarsh land was collected in massive shallow iron pans and the liquid evaporated above a furnace so that the crystals were left as sediment, shovelled into woodenblocks by a ‘lumpman’, and then dried and raised to the first-floor warehouse bya ‘loftman’ for sale. Even as late as the 1950s in England you could go to agrocer’s shop and buy a slice off a salt block and grate it into grains at home. Salt was also a valuable trade item, taxed heavily by the government Board of Excise. For domestic use, it was so expensive that it was kept in a stone salt cupboard or hand-made wooden salt-box, often with a lock and key, and hung by the fire so the grains could be kept dry and free from mould, and just a tiny spoonful used for cooking or at meals. In wealthier households, the salt-spoons themselves were part of the family silver, made by firms such as Thomas Eustace of Exeter, with a scallop-shaped bowl and an engraved handle In New England states such as Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the settlers from England in the 1630s built ‘salt-box houses’, mimicking the shape of their salt-box from home, with one slope of the roof much lower than the other to protect the house from snow or extreme heat.

Thanks to Barbara for her lovely contribution