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Another ship token from the Netherlands: Fop Smit & Co

Started by Henk, October 23, 2020, 05:05:12 PM

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Henk

In the 2017 November Coins, Currency and Medals auction of MPO (Heritage Europe) a hitherto unlisted ship token was sold, lot number1669. The specification of this token, illustrated below (courtesy MPO), is as follows:
Brass, 18 mm
O: REEDERIJ * FOP SMIT & Co= * | (circle of dots)
R: 5

Fop Smit (1777 –1866) built his first ship in 1838 in Kinderdijk, a village near Rotterdam. The shipping company (Reederij) was established in 1849.  It is the precurser firm for the present companies of Smit Internationale, Royal IHC and SBM Offshore. The Fop Smit company both built ships and operated ferries. One of the best known was the ferry between Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Gorcum. These boat trips, which were started in 1887 were advertised as Watertochtjes (Water Tours) and were operated with several large paddle steamers. These were luxury ships, that were spacious and had heated saloons. The ships was fitted with electric lights. The attendants were customer friendly and there was a restaurant and a bar on board. In the first class saloons paintings by well-known painters like H.W. Mesdag, were on display. Up to a 1000 passengers could be accommodated on each ship. One of these ships was the W.F. Leemans which entered service in 1897. The ship was built by L. Smit and Son, a successor firm. The ship is shown in the photo below (Foto: Gemeente archief Rotterdam).  This ship had a length of 55 meters and was 6 meters wide.

The token was probably used as a waiters token in the restaurants aboard these ships. It is likely that further values exist, e.g. 10, 15, 25 an 100 cents. As far as I know the token illustrated here is the only one known of this issuer.

Figleaf

Fun discovery token. The style of the 5 and the toothed border is that of the generic Werth-Marke made in Germany in the interbellum years. The denomination and general design are a good match for the tokens in the category CC (waiter's tokens) in Kooij.

I actually made that water tour trip from Rotterdam to Gorcum past Dordrecht and Loevestein and back again with my grandfather in the summer of 1970. Unfortunately, the paddle steamers had gone, but the boats were otherwise remarkably like the ones you describe, including the bar and restaurant.

For more on the Smit family, see here.

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.

eurocoin

Interesting topic. The pieces indeed seem to be extremely rare. I came across one other piece. It is part of the collection of the Museum Rotterdam. It has a denomination of 100.




Figleaf

Excellent! That makes it quite likely that intermediate values exist.

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.

Henk

Nice find! for completeness: diameter is 29 mm as stated in the museum description

johnkooij

The value 10 is listed in the Kooij Catalogue #CC023A.1 (20 mm, brass).

malj1

Malcolm
Have a look at  my tokens and my banknotes.