On a chilly May midnight long after the hour when they usually go to bed, thousands of good Dutchmen packed Rotterdam's quays. The well-to-do in their American automobiles — with headlights glaring and horns shrieking—formed a traffic jam for a mile along the River Maas. The middle-to-do on bicycles pedaled vigorously along in their own continuous stream of traffic. The little-to-do on foot crowded the quays, staring into the beam of a great searchlight. Broad Dutch faces beamed, deep Dutch shouts rose louder than the shrieking horns. For slowly, a great new ship, floodlit from stem to stern, passed down the middle of the river outward bound for New York.
The Netherlands, a small nation, has built her seagoing reputation on small ships, solid, sturdy, comfortable. But three years ago, when the Dutch were in mid-depression, Holland-America Line, which had been floundering in red ink, asked for bids on a ship such as the Dutch had never owned. She was to be of 36,000 tons, 750 feet overall—only half the size of such mammoths as the Normandie and Queen Mary, but one of the dozen biggest passenger ships in the world, bigger than any U. S. ship save the late (German-built) Leviathan. Holland-America's two new managing directors, Frans C. Bouman, longtime general manager of Rotterdam Lloyd for the Far East, and Willem H. de Monchy of the Van Ommern shipping firm, vetoed the idea of a Government subsidy. They did get a 20-year loan of 12,000,000 gulden from the Government.
In January 1936 the keel was laid. In April 1937 Queen Wilhelmina launched the Nieuw Amsterdam.* With accommodations for 1,232 passengers in cabin, tourist, and third classes, the new, 785 ft., 36,287 ton ship had 374 private bathrooms (a record for her size), 23 public rooms so arranged that all could be thrown together to make her a one-class ship for cruises, two swimming pools, a theatre, more complete air-conditioning and fire protection than any ship afloat, aluminum lifeboats. Most notable of all, her interior decoration ranked her at once as one of the most beautiful ships on the Atlantic.
Last week when the Nieuw Amsterdam set sail, the renascent Holland-America Line had already been able to pay back in full the Government's "20year" loan, and only a successful maiden voyage was needed to make black ink blacker still. Half way across the Atlantic, the Nieuw Amsterdam ran into genuine rough weather. Officials aboard beamed with satisfaction. She proved not only seaworthy but exceptionally steady. Three days later, however, they discovered an error in their careful Dutch calculations: Designed to make 21½ knots, the Nieuw Amsterdam did 23 without pushing and as a "seven-day ship" made her first crossing of the Atlantic in six.
* An old liner Nieuw Amsterdam, less than half so large, was scrapped in 1931.