Rotterdam April 24, 2016 D.J. Hoogstad:

Out of love for sailing heritage and flatboat sailing, I completely restored the ship about 20 years ago to the oldest image I had of the ship.

Research through the archives of the “Schuttevaer” (I knew the place and approximately the date of the launching) had put me in touch with the heirs of the skipper in Goldenrak on whose behalf the ship was built. These had a drawing of a clipper, the Paulina, on which their father, grandfather had sailed. The proportions on the drawing corresponded very nicely to those of the Pauline Elisabeth. The drawing was later placed in the book “Skippers and Ships from Goldenrak.” It later turned out that that drawing was the skipper’s desired clipper of the time but that the ship was originally built shorter. The ship was lengthened in the middle of the last century which then made it very much in line with the desired original dimensions. Because further information was lacking at the time, the ship was restored back to the desired original image.

Later, much more was known of the ship’s history through the ship’s survey logs at the Maritime Museum.

Heritage Ports:

The Pauline Elisabeth was built as a clipper of over 24 meters. According to the owner as a two-masted river clipper, with a mizzen mast for sailing under the bridges. The only “evidence” of this is a drawing that came from lore, but is certainly not common for a ship of that size. The ship was motorized early (1920s) and also received a new deckhouse at that time. Furthermore, the pine was also replaced and rigging and mast deck were removed, thus making one hatch head. In 1960, the ship was lengthened to over 30 m. Probably at that time, much of the buoyage was also removed. The ship has been rebuilt as a sailing river clipper since 1993. A mast deck has been made again and the gunwale has been neatly returned to the line of the ship.