Across the levy (Houtribdijk) that partitions the Ijsselmeer (between Enkhuizen and Leystad) lies a totally authentic replica of a Dutch East India Trading Company ship called Batavia. The original was built 1628. Batavia is an enormous ship with a LOA of 186 feet and a displacement of 1200 tons. In her day she sailed with a crew of 341 men! Please note the pictures below of the tiller steering with block and tackle for large rudder angles and with a long rod suspended though a wooden ball for fine-tuning the rudder. There is quite a story about her first and only voyage! Read more about Batavia here and here.

Halve Maen (Half Moon)

Outside in the backyard of the Wolfhound shipyard hall lies another replica (quite a bit scaled down in size and the second replica built in 1989) of the Halve Maen (Half Moon). The first replica was built 1909.

The original Halve Maen was another Dutch East India Company ship that was built in 1608 and sailed west in search of the North-west passage. In his 1625 book New World,[2] which contains invaluable extracts from Hudson’s lost journal, Johannes de Laet, a director of the West India Company, writes that they "bent their course to the south until, running south-southwest and southwest by south, they again made land in latitude 41° 43’, which they supposed to be an island, and gave it the name of New Holland, but afterwards discovered that it was Cape Cod".  Read more about the Halve Maen here.