The Art and Architecture of the Nieuw Amsterdam

She is the fourth reconverted passenger vessel to rejoin the company’s post-War fleet. Her running mates are the Veendam, 15,450 gross tons, which reentered service in March of this year, and the companionships Westerdam, 12, 149 gross tons, running since July 1946, and the Noordam, 10,726 gross tons, since August of the same year. The Veendam carries 552 passengers in first and tourist classes, and the other approximately 150 in “First Class only” accommodations.

The addition of the Nieuw Amsterdam to the seventy-five year old route will increase the berth capacity by 1,228 in First, Cabin and Tourist classes, formerly Cabin, Tourist and Third.

The flagship’s gross registered tonnage of 36,667 (an increase of 380 tons over her pre-war measurement) makes her the third largest vessel at present in normal transatlantic operation.

Her builders’ claim that the Nieuw Amsterdam is probably the most thorough re-conversion job ever made is supported by the fact that eighteen months were consumed in restoring her from the effects of hard usage which 378,361 troops and others gave her in five and a half years of continuous war service, over a distance steamed of 530, 452 miles. Every square inch of her interior and exterior received the same meticulous care and attention for which Dutch shipyard workers are world renowned.

In addition to restoring the vessel to her pre-war standard of exceptional luxuriousness, several new features have been added. These include the complete  redesign and redecoration of the main public apartment, the Grand Hall, on the Promenade Deck. The color scheme has been entirely changed, and the room has received new carpeting, furniture and drapes. There are two entirely new rooms. A second, air conditioned, motion picture theater, for use of Cabin and Tourist class passengers makes her the only vessel afloat to be equipped with two such popular entertainment features. A Tropical Bar has been constructed for particular appeal to cruise passengers, on the Main Deck, aft, adjacent to a newly installed Delft-tiled swimming pool. Another innovation is the enlargement of the Cabin class lounge with “wings” extending to the sides of the vessel, following arrangements of the First Class smoking room, which was so popular before the war.

The other public rooms, such as the domed dining saloon, Ritz-Carlton room, smoking room; two indoor pools, Turkish Baths, and the twelve unique cabins de luxe, have been fully restored.

The vessel made a great reputation for herself with the traveling public in seventeen and a half round trips of the Atlantic and on several cruises until the fall of 1939 when war broke out in Europe. During the “phony war” period she was tied up at her Hoboken pier, but in the early part of 1940, Holland still being neutral, she was scheduled for a short series of West Indies cruises to neutral ports. The Netherlands was invaded by the Nazis on May 10, 1940. The Nieuw Amsterdam was between the two Venezuelan ports of la Guaira and Puerto Cabello, with 600 American tourists. The cruise was immediately curtailed and the vessel raced back to New York where she arrived on May 14. This was the day the terrible “token bombing” of Rotterdam occurred and every member of the crew, from Captain Johannes J. Bijl down, was inflamed with rage. They got their revenge alter when their ship became a large factor in the downfall of the Third Reich by the services she performed in the  Allied cause.

The largest vessel in the Netherlands merchant marine was converted into a troop transport in September 1940 and, together with some three million tons of other Dutch shipping, did an outstanding job. She carried, from September 12, 1940 to April 10, 1946, 378,361 persons on errands of war, steaming 530,452 miles or a distance equal to twenty-one times around the world. This represented an average of 8,599 persons on each of forty-four voyages of 12,056 miles apiece!

The work of breaking out the beautiful public rooms and living quarters on the  ship was performed largely in Singapore by Chinese labor. That which could not be removed was protected as well as possible, but much of it suffered grievous damage through haste, carelessness and misuse. Furniture, carpets and decorations remained in piles, in all kinds of weather, on the Singapore docks for weeks. It was later reloaded into the ship’s holds and put ashore again in Australia where it remained for two years before being transported to San Francisco for storage.

Part of the breaking out for war service included the complete stripping of the whole of “C” Deck, and part of “B” Deck, of cabins , and fittings for more than a thousand hammocks installed. The Grand hall was turned into a “duplex dormitory” to accommodate 600 men in three tiered standees. The motion picture theater slept 386 and each cabin de luxe 22 officers.

She carried Australian, British, Canadian, Netherlands, New Zealand and South African troops, prisoners of war, and repatriated persons.

Fifteen weeks were required to break out the troop equipment and fittings, such as kitchens, wash places, special electrical installations, hammocks, alarm installations, and defensive armament (there were 36 guns) standees, etc. the breaking out list comprised thirty eight pages in single space type. By the beginning of August, 1946, the vessel was ready for rebuilding.

In the preceding February, March and April, 200,0000 cubic feet (about 2,000 tons measurement) of furniture and decorations had been brought back to Rotterdam from the U.S. in various ships. This was the equipment which had been taken out nearly six years before, and it was in poor condition. There were over 3,000 chairs and 500 tables, for instance, which were sent back to the original contractors for repair and reupholstering. Twenty percent had to be entirely replaced. Factories all over Holland tooth combed their storage facilities for material and fabrics, much of which had been concealed from the Germans during the occupation. In many cases, small metal parts, such as door hinges, and clamps, had to be made by hand because machinery for their manufacture had been stolen by the enemy.

The entire rubber flooring of the ship was renewed and eighty five percent of the carpeting. All steel work was scaled and preserved and all pipes throughout the vessel cleaned. All ceilings and walls were removed; all closets and fixtures in cabins replaced, and all of the vessel’s 374 private bathrooms were entirely replaced with new equipment, obtained in the face of discouraging shortages of material and skilled help. In 268 first class cabins, the  irremovable wooden paneling, which had been scarred scratched and mutilated, was planed down to half its thickness and then refinished and re-lacquered. All electric wiring throughout the ship was renewed, a stupendous job.

Other items which made the rebuilding of the ship a more difficult job than the original construction included: 12,000 square feet of glass renewed, which had been painted over for the blackout and had cracked in the tropic sun; decks renewed with 2,700 square feet of teakwood, and all rails scraped free of carved initials; rubber packing for 2,200 portholes replaced and the entire brass work re-burnished.

(Holland-America Line press release, November 5, 1947)

Counting the rivets

The Nieuw Amsterdam had an overall length of 758 feet, 6 3/8 inches. Her length at the waterline was 725 feet, 11 inches, and her length between perpendiculars 700 feet. Her beam, molded, was 88 feet, and her depth molded to the Cabin Class Sun Deck was 99 feet. Her height, from keel to funnel tops was 147 feet, and keel to masthead 205 feet. The Nieuw Amsterdam’s load draft was 31 feet 6 5/16 inches. Her gross registered tonnage was 36,667 (1947) her displacement tonnage 36, 235  (1947) and her net tonnage 21, 744.

She was powered by two sets of Parsons quadruple expansion single reduction geared turbines, which developed 34,000 S.H.P. for propulsion purposes. Her three turbo generators developed 3000k.w. 220 volts direct current. Two sets of Werkspoor Diesel generators developed 950 k.w. 220 volts direct current, available while the ship was in port or in emergency situations. Two emergency Diesel rotors of 50 k.w. each were placed under the after funnel. The boiler installation consisted of six Schelde-Yarrow boilers with a capacity of 30 tons of steam per boiler per hours. Five boilers were sufficient to maintain the pressure necessary to operate the ship. The sixth boiler served as a reserve. The working pressure of the boilers was, at the outset, 550 lbs per square inch, and 743F. A Scotch boiler with a heated surface of 2,800 square feet and a working pressure of 150 lbs per square inch was placed in the same boiler room and used when the ship was in port for heating and galley purposes. All of the boilers burned oil. Each of the turbines had a gearwheel of 14 feet, diameter, weighing 50 tons. The turbines contained approximately 160,300 blades. The blades in the super high pressure, high pressure, and intermediate pressure turbine were made of ATV steel to provide sufficient resistance under the high temperature conditions. The blades of the low pressure turbine were made of manganese copper. Steam of 142 lbs. per square inch led directly from both high pressure turbines to the high pressure feed heater and to the laundry; steam of 85 lbs. square inch was also taken from the high pressure turbine for hotel service and fuel oil heating. Steam of 60 lbs,. per square inch was used for the intermediate pressure feed heater, and steam of 50 lbs. per square inch was led directly from the turbine driven feed pumps to the evaporator. In that way only about 70% of the total steam weight reaches the condenser. Each set of turbines was connected with one main condenser, having approximately 13,300 square feet of cooling surface. The condensers were of the Ware regenerative type and had a mean vacuum of 28.75 inches when the engines were developing the normal shaft horsepower. Salt detectors with electrical alarms were fitted in condensate pressure lines of each condenser.

She was a twin screw liner, with triple-bladed manganese bronze air-flow propellers, weighing 22 ½ tons each. At full speed they made 131 revolutions per minute.

During the summer of 1967, The Nieuw Amsterdam experienced the first near-catastrophic event of her 29 year career, when a mechanical breakdown forced the cancellation of most of her peak-season crossings. The end might have come there, but boilers were acquired from a U.S. Navy vessel being scrapped in California. They were exported to the Wilton-Fijenoord shipyard in Holland and, after a huge hole was cut in the liner’s side, installed, buying the “old favorite” more time.

The Nieuw Amsterdam’s funnels measured 41 feet from base to top and had an extreme diameter of 35 feet and a circumference of about 85 feet. The after funnel contained a complete set of fresh water filters with a capacity of 80 tons per hour, fuel tanks, sanitary tanks and suction ventilators for galley odors. Six Vortex dust collectors were installed in the uptakes with suction fans to eliminate solid particles from combustion gases. Each funnel carried an electrically operated steam whistle. A Jensen Howler foghorn was installed at the liner’s bow which could be heard for 15 miles across the water but was inaudible inside the ship’s public areas.

A Grinnell automatic sprinkler and fire alarm system was placed aboard the Holland-America Line’s flagship. 3,600 sprinkler heads throughout the passenger and crew sections of the liner were capable of emitting a jet of water strong enough to reach higher than the ship herself. There were 35 automatic simultaneous alarm bells aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam. She carried 125 hand extinguishers, which were placed at regular intervals. There were 68 fireproof doors above A Deck, and 48 sliding doors on B Deck and below that served as both fireproof and watertight doors. These 48 doors divided the ship into 12 watertight compartments. Her double hull was further divided into 42 watertight compartments, which were used for fresh feed, fuel and lubricating oil.

She carried 22 Birmabright aluminum lifeboats with a total capacity of 1,946 persons. Six of these boats were motorized. The davits were Barclay Gravity types, and the lifeboat gear was arranged with the intent of boarding the boats from the Upper Promenade Deck should the need have arisen. The liner also came equipped with 2,452 life preservers. 23 rafts, with a capacity of 506 persons were carried as reserves.

The Nieuw Amsterdam, fortunately, never had to put her life saving devices to the test: in her 35 years of service it seems that her most serious accident was a collision with a railway barge in New York Harbor in January 1965.

The Nieuw Amsterdam in her 1938 and 1947 configurations, was extensively air conditioned, with both movie theaters, barber shops and all three dining rooms benefiting. The system operated entirely by electricity and was capable of producing cooled air equivalent to an amount given off daily by 300 tons of melted ice. It also dried the air and provided regular circulation in the course of which 25% of it was renewed. The pressure of the air in the conditioned rooms was kept slightly above that of the atmosphere to prevent outside air from flowing in. it was possible to maintain an average of 70F with an outside temperature as low as 10F. All First and Cabin Class staterooms had electric heaters. Two hundred electric heaters in the public rooms supplemented the capacity of the ventilating system.

During the 1956-’57 refit, the entire ship was air-conditioned, allowing her to remain competitive with the new breed of liners being introduced. By doing this before lack of central air conditioning became a complete detriment, Holland-America insured that the liner would maintain her reputation for comfort. Many older liners were not as “fortunate” and would not be air conditioned until after it became the norm rather than the exception, fostering negative word of mouth that the pre-War liners remaining in service were “uncomfortable.”

The Nieuw Amsterdam had 546 cabins, of which 374 had private bathrooms. There were 1,062 portholes and sidelights aboard, with a total surface area of 17,000 square feet. The public rooms and cabins were fitted out with the following woods:

Bird’s Eye Maple; Avodire; Patapsco; Sycamore; Figured Birch; Ash; Burma Mahogany; Chestnut; Silver Sycamore; Aspen; Bird’s Eye Ash; Mountain Ash; Figured Cherry; Rio Rosewood; Laurel; African Cherry; Walnut; Indian Silvergrey; Sapeli Mahogany; Weathered Satinwood; Matore; Macassar Ebony; Silky Oak; Bubinga; Brown Oak; Zebrano.

The Nieuw Amsterdam underwent several refits after her 1947 return to the North Atlantic. In 1952, a balcony bar was added to her Grand Hall; in 1956-’57 she was given an extensive internal upgrade during which time her public rooms and cabins were refurbished and her entire interior air-conditioned. It was at this time that the original hull color was changed from black to dove gray. In 1961, the title “Cabin class” was eliminated, with her former Cabin class being renamed Tourist class, and her redundant Tourist class public rooms replaced by a large-multipurpose room, the Henry Hudson Lounge. Her capacity then became 691 First Class/583 Tourist or 301 First class/ 972 Tourist.. Three groupings of dramatic elongated windows, on either side of the ship, were cut into the hull for the new Tourist class room, making it possible to immediately identify a photo of the ship as being pre or post 1961.

The liner’s garage was capable of carrying 40 cars. Her total cargo capacity was 252,628 cubic feet.

The Nieuw Amsterdam was an exceptionally economical ship to operate, by the standards of 1938 and 1947. Unlike her larger competitors, she had a compact power plant, with only one boiler room, one engine room, and one auxiliary machinery room. Her service speed, of 21.5 knots, was over 2/3 that of the Queen Mary or Normandie and achieved with a total horsepower of 34,000; almost 1/3 those of her rivals. Because of the smaller space allocated for the power and propulsion systems, the Nieuw Amsterdam had a large freight capacity relative to her size: although when the 938 foot, 51,731 ton Bremen passed through the Panama Canal in 1939 she was the longest and largest ship to have done so, the Nieuw Amsterdam in the same year earned the distinction of being the highest taxed ship to pass through-the rate being determined by the liner’s utilized space rather than size. Holland-America incorporated that fact into their advertising.