Dutch Merchant Nay in Picures 1920 – 1929 is the fourth part in a series that shed a light on merchant shipping per decade. With these books we take you back in time to the start of the twentieth century and we follow the ships and the shipowners right into the twenty-first century.
The 1920s of the previous century, also called the ‘Roaring Twenties’, were years when everything seemed possible, partly due to a booming economy after World War I. Parts of Europe too profited from the revival. Germany, however, had been convicted to heavy payments for compensation after the war and this resulted in a disrupted economy. Later on this would lead to the undermining of the early and fragile democracy of the Weimar Republic and eventually to the rise of National Socialism. However, the time that everything seemed possible ended earlier than expected, due to speculation with stocks on the stock exchanges on a large scale. On the 24th of October 1929 the bubble burst with the Wall Street Crash, with a worldwide recession as a result.
The revival of the early 1920s had not been entirely visible in the Dutch shipping industry yet; due to a decrease in freight rates as well as overcapacity ships even had to be laid up. However, as from 1924 recovery followed and the most beautiful ships slid down the slipway. Passenger shipping to America and the Dutch East Indies flourished. The majority of these ships were still steam vessels, thus this episode shows those heydays when ships would blow giant clouds of steam into the air.