The tow and the sailing vessel.

[Thonys]

the first help for the sailing vessel

1823 a wooden coppered vessel 300 tonnage and 60 hp called the" Noord Holland"

Sea towage originated from the simple towage on inland waterways and canals. As soon as the steam engine made its appearance, there was a certain urge for mechanical navigation, which made it possible to make independent of the elements that the sailing vessel needed: wind and weather. The fact that the large sailing trade - the sea sailing - was also directly interested in steam shipping, even if it was only in connection with the tugboat, may be regarded as a logical phenomenon, even if the same steam cruise ultimately meant the death of sailing. It is remarkable that this evolution did not happen so quickly. For even though small steamer ships appeared at sea in the first decades of the 19th century, it took almost a century for the last sailing ships to lay their heads in the lap and no longer could compete with the mechanical speed.
The first tug that was put into service in Dutch waters was fully equipped to assist sailing ships like those who surrendered to the whims of wind and weather, from narrow waterways and ports to open sea or, conversely, our certainly not harmless coast. approached after a long journey. On those first or last miles, surrounded by the dangers of the lower shore, to be independent of the elements that were necessary for safe and fast navigation, drag was a great win for the sailing ship.

 The first tugboat that came into operation in the Netherlands to assist with the large sailing trade was the paddle-steam tug North Holland. Built on behalf of the province of North Holland in 1825 on the shipyard 'Het Roopaard', (shipbuilding master C.E.Duyts of the province of North Holland), on the Kadijk in Amsterdam. It was a wooden, copied ship of 300 tons and had 60 horsepower in its compound machine (two-cylinder machine). On June 28, 1825, the trial run took place and among the invited guests were King Willem I and HRH Prince Frederik of the Netherlands. On the recommendation of the State Council Governor, the sea pilot Jan Pieter Duinker, who lives in Texel, was appointed as captain. His salary was initially set at f 60.-, later at f 80.-, per month. The crew of the tug consisted of eight people, namely the captain, the machinist, two stokers, and four sailors. The tugboat was stationed at the Nieuwe Diep in 1826. However, it had a lot of feet in the earth before the New Deep got this tug in the harbor. Amsterdam had recently received its new connection with the sea by means of the Noordhollands canal, a long and certainly not ideal way out to sea, narrow and winding as the canal was, but which meant a profit compared to the shallow Zuiderzee that the centuries through Neerland's capital should have given its way out to the North Sea. The canal certainly could not be sailed, so that the ships had to be hunted to and from Amsterdam, a not so fast mode of locomotion.

[van der Clam]

Reminds me of the famous painting The Fighting Temeraire (the death of the age of sail)