Westerschelde

The first ship of dredging company van Oord.

Since old times the family van Oord were willow ground workers from the Biesbosch and came from Werkendam. In the beginning of the fifties Mr. Jac. Van Oord left the family and started his own company. This became the: “Aannemings Mij. Jac. G. van Oord N.V. – Utrecht”

He was a man of courage and had keen business insight. He understood that the future was to be found in the dredging industry. To enter into that world he bought, with assistance of Belgian relations, the steam dredger “ESPÉRANCE” which was built in 1926 at J. & K. Smit at Kinderdijk. The new addition was named “WESTERSCHELDE”.

Coal burning was replaced by oil heating and the hull was provided on both sides with extra floats. In fact they constantly rebuilt this old dredger on their own shipyard in Utrecht. The flood disaster of 1953 resulted in a large amount of dredging in The Netherlands which brought the young company a lot of work. However the dredger did not prove to be profitable, as the machine was not powerfull enough. But the company gained a lot of experience and thereby grew into a global player in the dredging industry. The old dredger did not participate in that anymore. She was scrapped in 1963