Une plongee dans le temps... des vieux grements

Ferme les yeux respire et imagine, surcouf, le capitaine crochet, une bande de pirates... et toi.
Maintenant, ouvre les yeux et regarde; tu es sur le Ijsselmeer un joli weekend de septembre 2007.
ils sont venus, ils sont tous la, mais sont ils jamais partis... 







 
Un petit texte en anglais pour que j'ai ecris comme legende a mes photo pour le boulot:

As the sun goes down, sailing the Ijsselmeer lake in the north of Amsterdam , it's always really nice to see dutch taditional boat mooving slowly in the quiet water.

And if Ijsselmeer is now a shallow lake of 1100 km², one of the heart of Sailing in Nothern Europe. We should no forget the high historical importance of all the small villages all arround.

What is the link between TheCap Horn, the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, Jakarta, and the Ijsselmeer?

Coming from Hoorn, Now a small village boarding the Ijsselmeer at 40 kilometers of Amsterdam, the explorer Willem Corneliszoon Schouten braved furious storms as he rounded the southernmost tip of South America in1616, He named it Kaap Hoorn (Cape Horn) in honour of his hometown.

During Holland's 'Golden Age' the 15th centery, The south of Zuiderzee called now Ijsselmeer was an important home base for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and a very prosperous centre of trade. In the East Indies the VOC had a hundred of settlements in the world.

The Zuiderzee fleet plied the seven seas and returned with precious commodities. Exotic spices such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and mace were sold at vast profits. With their skill in trade and seafaring, sons of Hoorn established the town's name far and wide.

The More Important were Ternate, Ambon, the Banda Islands, Coromandel in India, Ceylon and Java. On the island Java in 1619 the town of Batavia was founded now called Jakarta. Half way between the Dutch Republic and East India on the Southcoast of Africa lay the Cape of Good Hope. In 1652 the VOC equipped this location to be a permanent refreshing station for their ships

The VOC was in existence until 1799, then the company - for a long time the largest private company in the world - went bankrupt. During the near 200 hundred years of its existence the VOC operated 1772 ships making a total of 4789 voyages.

Hoorn's fortunes declined somewhat in the eighteenth century. The prosperous trading port became a sleepy fishing village on the Zuiderzee.

The IJsselmeer was created in 1932 when an inland sea, the Zuiderzee, was closed by a 32 km dam.

The dutch taditional boat are of course not the vessel of the Golden Period but were build in the last century and used for cargo carrying in the Netherlands. Many of which have been family owned are now converted for pleasure or residential use and are the subject of great pride!