Damen Naval is a Dutch shipyard, and a continuation of the Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde, responsible for a number of ships used by the Royal Netherlands Navy. It is owned by the

Damen Group The Damen Group is a Dutch defence, shipbuilding, and engineering conglomerate company based in Gorinchem, Netherlands. Though it is a major international group doing business in 120 countries, it remains a private family-owned company. Dame ...

. Damen Naval is situated in

Vlissingen Vlissingen (; zea, label= Zeelandic, Vlissienge), historically known in English as Flushing, is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the former island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river ...

History

The company was founded October 8, 1875, as the ''NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde'' (KMS) after shipbuilder Arie Smit had taken over the ''Marine Etablissement'' the wharf owned by the Dutch navy. Besides shipbuilding and repair, the company also builds machines, engines, steam turbines, airplanes, and light-metal products.

Koninklijk or (, Dutch for 'royal') is an honorary title given to certain companies and non-profit organisations in the Netherlands and to a lesser extent Belgium, by the monarchs of each country. It was first introduced by Louis Bonaparte in 1807, then Ki ...

is a royal title granted by the

Dutch Crown The Council of Ministers of the Kingdom ( nl, Ministerraad van het Koninkrijk or ''Rijksministerraad'') is the executive council of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which is a state consisting of four constituent countries: Aruba, Curaçao, the Ne ...

. In 1965 the company merged with the NV

Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij The Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM) was the largest pre-World War II shipbuilding and repair company in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, existing from 1902 to 1996. It built 355 mostly major seagoing vessels, 18 of which were submarines. R ...

(RDM) and the NV Motorenfabriek Thomassen of De Steeg, which resulted in the founding, on March 4, 1966, of the Rijn-Schelde Machinefabrieken en Scheepswerven NV (RSMS). Pressured by the Dutch government the Verolme Verenigde Scheepswerven NV was added, and this was the start of Rijn-Schelde-Verolme Machinefabrieken en Scheepswerven NV (RSV). RSV went under and split up, and its shares were taken over by the government and the province of Zeeland. Its name was changed to ''Koninklijke Schelde Groep BV'' (KSG) in 1991. In 2000 the government and the province sold their shares to the

Gorinchem Gorinchem ( or ), also spelled Gorkum, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of of which is water. It had a population of in . The municipality of Gorinchem al ...

, and KSG became the company's branch charged with building larger ships for naval and coastguard duty.Ibidem.

Aircraft projects

* De Schelde Scheldemusch * De Schelde S.20 * De Schelde S.21

Warships built

Bibliography

*G.A. de Kok, ''De Koninklijke Weg: Honderd jaar geschiedenis Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde te Vlissingen 1875–1975'', Vlissingen, 1975. . *Piet Quite, ''Koninklijke Mij. 'De Schelde': 125 jaar scheepsbouw in Vlissingen'', Alkmaar, 1999. . *Jeroen Verhoog, Jessica van der Hulst, ''Luctor et Emergo: 125 Jaar Koninklijke Schelde 1875–2000'', Vlissingen, 2001. *Harm J. Hazewinkel, ''Vliegtuigbouw in Fokkers schaduw'', Sassenheim, 1988. . *B. van der Klaauw, Armand van Ishoven, Peter van der Gaag, ''De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse en Belgische Luchtvaart'' (series ''De geschiedenis van de luchtvaart''), Lekturama, 1982. *Theo Wesselink, Thijs Postma, ''De Nederlandse vliegtuigen'', Haarlem, 1982. . *Hugo Hooftman, Nederlandse Vliegtuig Encyclopedie ''Scheldemusch en Scheldemeeuw'', Bennekom: Cockpit, 1978.

References

{{Reflist

External links