Topic starter
26/07/2011 10:11 pm
Last week while in Rotterdam I had the unexpected delight of visiting the paddle steamboat DE MAJESTEIT tied up at her landing on the Maas River. Unfortunately, she was not going out anytime soon, but her gracious, mostly English speaking crew welcomed me onboard for a brief visit. Her captain gave me the royal deluxe 50 cent tour, and he mentioned that he's quite familiar with this website.
She began life as a Koln-Dusseldorf steamer on the Rhine River in 1926. After daily passenger service on the Rhine she became a stationary restaurant boat until being restored and returned to excursion service in Rotterdam.
The brass, copper, and chrome sparkles in the engineroon, where her cross compound engines fill the bulk of the space. She has a modern oil-fired Scotch marine boiler forward of the engineroom, and aft of the engines is a spotlessly clean kitchen. Up on the roof is a modern pilothouse with a six inch joy-stick to steer her by. Behind that is the streamlined stack and calliope that was built especially for her.
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07/08/2011 12:06 pm
Frank, a few years ago I also had the chance to see De Majesteit. What a wonderful steamboat she is. Too bad she's only doing charter cruises, no regular harbor sightseeing cruises, so it's almost impossible to ride her.
I did a picture gallery on our German steamboat website: www.schaufelraddampfer.de - Steamboats in the Netherlands
Just click on the picture of De Majesteit and the picture gallery will open.
Franz
Topic starter
07/08/2011 5:41 pm
The captain of DE MAJESTEIT mentioned that he is familiar with Steamboats.Org. during my tour. I told him that when I returned home I would make a posting here, which I obviously did.
Her schedule is rather sparse. I toured her on Thursday, and she was not going out until the next Sunday.