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CENTURIES OF SERVICE
Balk is one of the oldest shipyards in Holland. The company was established on April 20, 1787 on the northern side of the harbour in the fishing port of Elburg
(today about an hour’s drive north east of Amsterdam). The Balk family were employed there
from the outset and it was Sijbrand Balk (1774-1841) who bought the premises on May 8, 1802 for the princely sum of 1220 Dutch guilders.
 In the first year Sijbrand built a wooden fishing smack
for the price of 812 guilders and another smack left the slipway in 1803. But
the main business over the decades that followed was repair. The Balk yard quickly established and maintained an excellent reputation among the large number of
fishermen who called Elburg their home port.
At the heart of the community  The next man in charge was
Hendrik’s son Hartger, who took over the yard in 1880. His tenure was short-lived, however, as the recession of the late 1800s forced
Hartger to sell up. Another shipyard bought up the premises
and ‘sold’ it back to younger brother Cornelis Balk (1863-1933) in return for a
large piece of ship’s wood.
We shouldn’t imagine the yard in modern terms – there were often only one or two other folk in service. In the first decades of the 20th century the workforce consisted of two sons of Cornelis, Hendrik Roelof (1892-1967) and Daan (1904-1986). Hendrik moved to Amsterdam in 1927, leaving Daan in sole charge, with just one man to help him (Kees van Loo). Read more... |
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