Steamships
by Willem Frederick Ten Broek
KNSM
Magnificent oceanliner docks against a rose-colored sunset.This docked behemoth, its golden hull reflecting off the mirroring waters of some far-flung port as it dwarfs the goods-laden delivery skiffs, provides the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company with the omnipotent ideal of oceanic mastery: romantic, powerful and impervious to harm. Ten Broek's trilingual calling card supplies the company's name as its primary text, for what other information is necessary for a firm whose pedigree stretches back to 1856, the year Royal Netherlands began to provide regular steamship service to the world. In 1970, KNSM incorporated with W. H. Muller & Co. of Rotterdam to create KNSM-Kroonburgh, a member of the Ahlers Group of Companies.