SWZ|Maritime is not so much a historical, but primarily a technological journal. But if there is any sector to which the adage applies that ‘he who does not know the past, cannot understand the present and cannot shape the future’, then perhaps it is shipbuilding. Because everything builds on the knowledge and experience developed in the past to design and build better and better ships.

The chances of such a pioneering figure ever rising again as Bruno Joannes Tideman (1834-1883) are slim. He is single-handedly considered the founder of modern Dutch shipbuilding in the transition from sail to steam and wood to iron and steel. Large projects are now mainly the result of good cooperation between several actors from what is nowadays called the Golden Triangle, the collaboration between industry, government and scientific institutes such as MARIN, TNO and TU Delft.

There were no such institutes at all in Tideman’s time, but he was convinced that modern shipbuilding was not possible without training engineers with a thorough theoretical knowledge for this purpose. He contributed to this himself as the first professor of naval architecture at the Polytechnische Hogeschool, now TU Delft.

That development of the theory of shipbuilding once started by Tideman is reflected in this edition of SWZ|Maritime in articles by former MARIN employee J.T. (Do) Ligtelijn, former TU Delft alumnus and our editorial board member ir Jaap Huisman, former TU Delft professor Douwe Stapersma, department head of Defence at MARIN Pepijn de Jong, and RH Marine employee ing. Ronald Dingemanse.

Articles that not only exhibit a lot of historical knowledge but also show that it is still of great importance in current and future shipbuilding, think of the construction of the new submarines for the Royal Netherlands Navy or the survivability of all newly built naval ships.

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Optimism about the future of Dutch shipbuilding

In that respect, I think this edition of SWZ|Maritime is a good complement to the symposium PartnerSHIP – From Tideman to Dutch Naval Design to be held in Amsterdam on Friday 7 February. It is inevitable that at this symposium, too, there will be a lot of optimism about the future of our Dutch shipbuilding industry and naval construction in particular. For it is now that that aforementioned Golden Triangle is actually starting to take shape.

At the New Year meetings of the merger organisation of the shipbuilding and offshore industry NMT-IRO and that of Conoship in Groningen, it became clear that they are happy with the government’s Rijksregeling Maritime Maakindustrie (National Maritime Manufacturing Scheme) with a total subsidy budget of EUR 321 million. The shipowners’ association KVNR sees its dream realised with infrastructure minister Barry Madlener’s promise for the establishment of a Dutch Maritime Authority to support shipping with the necessary services.

This is editor-in-chief Antoon Oosting’s editorial accompanying the January 2025 issue.

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SWZ app and archive

Our digital archive is available to subscribers both online and in our new app (available for Android and Iphone) and they can read the digitial version of our January issue there. Not yet a subscriber? Visit our subscription page.

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The articles in SWZ|Maritime’s January issue

In addition to the regular sections such as Dutch news, Markets, Global news, news from the KNVTS and Mars Report, the articles in the January issue are:

  • Marinescheepsbouw en kennisinfrastructuur
  • Onderzeeboten: uitdaging voor marine en industrie
  • Overlevingsvermogen van het marineschip
  • Van Tideman tot Grigson en toepassing van CFD
  • Kennisontwikkeling cavitatie sinds Tideman
  • CEDA – Restoring the Amazon
  • CEDA – Africa: More economic activity, more dredging

Picture: The Atjeh class (with the Tromp visible here), for which Tideman conducted the first Dutch model trials, laid the foundation for today’s naval vessels, such as the Flexship concept (photo Tromp by Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH), image Flexship Dutch Ministry of Defence, compilation by studio DPI).

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