Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij
The Dutch shipping company Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij ( KNSM ; German Royal Dutch Steamship Company ), also known internationally as the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company , existed from 1856 to 1981.
history
It was founded in Amsterdam in 1856. It initially operated liner services to the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean for over 20 years. With the ships Pollux and Vesuvius , however, individual trips to New York were undertaken from 1869. From 1881 there was a regular passenger line service from Amsterdam to New York, which was discontinued in 1883 in consultation with Holland America Lijn . In 1912, the KNSM took over the shipping company Koninklijke West-Indische Maildienst (Royal West Indian Mail Service, KWIM), but let them continue to operate as an independent company until the dissolution of KWIM in 1927.
The main shipping areas of the passenger and freight services of the KNSM were then concentrated on lines, starting from northwest Europe to the Caribbean, Central America, the north and west coast of South America.
The following liner services were operated in detail:
- From 1883 from Amsterdam via Paramaribo, Demerara and Trinidad to Curacao (later extended to other ports in the Caribbean and the north and west coast of South America)
- From 1888 from Amsterdam via Suriname, Demerara, Trinidad, Curacao and Port-au-Prince to New York.
- From 1905 from Paramaribo to New York
- From 1912 From the Netherlands via Barbados, Venezuela and Colombia to Colon
- From 1913 From the Netherlands via Barbados, Venezuela, Curacao and Colombia to Colon
- From 1913 from Paramaribo via Venezuela and Haiti to New York
- From 1920 from Curacao to Maracaibo
- From 1920 from Curacao to the Dominican Republic
Despite the rapidly declining demand for scheduled passenger services in the 1960s and the increasing containerization of sea traffic and the associated capital requirements in the 1970s, the KNSM retained its independence for a long time, but was eventually forced to cooperate. In 1981 the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij joined the Koninklijke Nedlloyd Groep in Rotterdam, which had existed since 1970, and thus ceased to exist as an independent shipping company.
A hallmark of the KNSM ships were black funnels with two white rings set high above and below.
literature
- Knap, GH: One hundred years of shipping - history of the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij NV, Amsterdam, Holland - 1856 - 1956 . Drukkerij en Uitgeverj JH De Bussy, Amsterdam 1956.