Tony van Eijk

Thanks to Tony van Eijk for these photos.  Tony said in his email:  I was a rating onboard of HNlMS Snellius. This surveying vessel of the Royal Netherlands Navy was sailing home to the Netherlands after our dispute with Indonesia regarding the possession of Netherlands New Guinea was settled by the Russians and the Americans in favour of Indonesia.

In the middle of October 1962 we made a stop on the Sembawang Naval base where the vessel was berthed in an almost empty port. Only two Australian frigates were already moored, one off was HMAS Quiberon. We were not allowed to leave the base as the high brass feared for problems between our crew and the natives because of the situation

I am working on a study. I have been working at Wilton-Fijenoord Shipyard, Schiedam, the Netherlands. This yard has built 24 Doxford Ships Diesel Propulsion Engines over the period 1948-1958. I am reconstructing the sailing period of these ships. One off, a tanker named Buena Trader (built as Hilversum 1953) suffered damage because she struck a floating object on the Singapore Roads in August 1969.

For that she spent some time on Sembawang Shipyard, that was recently handed over by the Royal Navy to civilian authorities. It would be fine whether one or more photo's of the yard around this period, or somewhat earlier during the naval period could be found to be used for my publication.