After 120 years ago where it was built. Sailing ship Ora et Labora is again in Meppel this weekend for the canal festival. The Zeiltjalk was built in 1906 by the Meppeler Scheepswerf Worst. Many wanderings and transfers later, the ship seems to be very much how sausage once built her.
They are proud, Dave Bazuin and Marischka Lind. She and their predecessors have not only sailed the ship again but also made as authentic as possible. They have converted the former cargo hold of the freight pastor into their home.
Bazuin and Lind have only written one fifth of the history of the Ora et Labora itself, the other almost 100 years has been done by their predecessors. But they try to reconstruct that history. Bazuin: “We know very little of the first owners, only some names. The ship sailed with peat between Drenthe and the west of the country. Leiden and Gouda, about the then open Zuiderzee.”
Around 1926 the Tjalk was bought by Schippers family Troost from Meppel. It remained in the Turfvaart. But Around 1955, Troost’s son had the ship renovated from sailing ship to motor ship. The mast, sailing and many other parts were demolished and there was a wheelhouse. For example, the ship remained in cargo shipping until the end of 1960.
It was ultimately not demolished like so many peers. “In the 70s the ship was converted into a houseboat, that was a time of pioneering because that didn’t happen that much,” says Bazuin. With which he meant: it was not the way he and his wife wanted it, so they emptied the entire ship to build everything in again. But the previous owners had also converted the Ora et Labora from motor ship to sailing ship and Barzuin and Lind were very happy with that.
Lind: “This is sailing heritage. It is preservation through use, otherwise it will go away from you. And when it goes away, it will never come back,” she says as the ship sails towards an honorary spot: at Molen de Vlijt. “A photo was taken there during the Second World War, with the piled peat high on the deck.” Whoever wants to see that picture, but in the present, must go to the Sluisgracht or the Bleekerseiland opposite Molen de Vlijt in the coming days.
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