Postcard m.s. Koningin Juliana ferry Hook of Holland-Harwich, SMZ

Dutch postcard from the nineteen-seventies showing a printed colour photograph of the motor vessel Koningin Juliana, the ferry of the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland on the Hook of Holland-Harwich line. The image shows the ship at full speed in the Nieuwe Waterweg or the North Sea, with a lighthouse and the harbour pier of the Hook of Holland in the background. The characteristic SMZ livery is clearly visible: the black hull with red waterline, the white superstructure, the ochre funnel with the Dutch red-white-blue band, and the Dutch flag at the stern mast. The ship's name "Koningin Juliana" appears in white lettering on the bow. On the verso the technical specifications "m.s. KONINGIN JULIANA 6682 B.R.T., 21 mijl - STOOMVAART MAATSCHAPPIJ ZEELAND - HOEK VAN HOLLAND - HARWICH V.V." and the publisher's indication Vita Nova in Schiedam, sold through bruna tax-free shop. The verso also bears the s.m.z. mark in the stamp frame. The card shows a fold in the upper left corner and damage on the verso near the stamp frame.

The m.s. Koningin Juliana was built in 1968 by Cammell Laird and Co in Birkenhead, England, and delivered on 14 October of that year to the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland in the Hook of Holland. Queen Juliana herself came aboard before the commissioning for a cruise in the North Sea, to which the ship owes its name. The maiden voyage on the Hook of Holland-Harwich line took place on 17 October 1968; the vessel formed part of the day service in cooperation with the British Sealink, with a capacity of twelve hundred passengers and a speed of twenty-one knots. The Koningin Juliana remained sixteen years on the line and was withdrawn from the SMZ fleet in 1984. In 1985 the ship was sold to the Italian shipping company Navarma Lines and renamed Moby Prince; on 10 April 1991, in dense fog in the harbour of Livorno, it collided with the oil tanker Agip Abruzzo, resulting in the death of one hundred and forty-one people in one of the greatest maritime disasters in Italian post-war history. The wreck was salvaged and scrapped in Turkey in 1998. This postcard dates from the SMZ period and documents the ship in its original livery and function, before the tragedy that would catch up with its later nomenclature.