page_title: MS Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft
section_title: A fire destroys the ship
hierarchical_section_title: MS Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft / The ship is destroyed by fire / A fire destroys the ship
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Beschrijving Brand op het mailschip Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, voor anker in het IJ bij Schellingwoude Documenttype foto Vervaardiger Onbekend Anoniem Collectie Collectie Stadsarchief Amsterdam: foto-afdrukken Datering november 1932 Geografische naam Afgesloten IJ Inventarissen http://archief.amsterdam/archief/10003 Afbeeldingsbestand ANWJ00333000001
context_page_description: Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft was a Dutch ocean liner built in 1925. An onboard fire destroyed her passenger accommodation before she was completed. In 1932, another fire damaged her so severely that she was sold for scrapping, only to catch fire again before she was scrapped.
context_section_description: In the night of 13–14 November 1932 at about 12:20 am, a fire was noted on the boat deck behind the bridge by guards walking on shore. Another guard had entered the ship in the previous evening at about 10:15 pm in order to power up the dynamo, the fans and the ventilation system. At about the same time as the guards on shore, he had noted the fire in the first class cabins behind the bridge. No wonder that a short circuit in the ventilators would later be thought to have caused the fire.
  The fire spread very quickly. It was not stopped by closed doors and bulkheads, and was aided by an eastern wind blowing through the open corridors, creating a chimney effect. Soon the saloons were on fire, and soon after the first class stairs were, soon followed by the first class dining room and the bridge. By 1:00 am the whole midships was ablaze. The fire department in Amsterdam was very capable to handle these kinds of events. It used the vessels Jason and Jan van der Heyden, that could both put an enormous amount of water on a fire. The normal fire department also used an enormous amount of equipment, and so over 40 fire hoses were used. In spite of this, the fire department was rather ineffective because the hydrogen cyanide prevented her from entering the ship. Attempts to extinguish the fire from the waterboard, from shore, or from the decks did nothing to stop the fire eating away on the inside. There was so much water put on the ship, that is listed, but water in the hold did not put out a fire higher up in the ship.
  At 2:30 AM the rear of the ship also started to burn, and the fight was lost. Now the SMN and the fire department wanted to prevent the burning ship from causing damage on shore. A scenario that would be very likely once the fire reached the 1,000 tons of fuel stored at the bottom of the ship. Moving the ship meant stopping the attempts to extinguish the fire, but it had to be done before the fire reached the (upwind) bow of the ship, otherwise the ship could not lower its anchors on the IJ. At 3:45 am five tugboats started to pull the P.C. Hooft backwards, with only three men on board near the anchors. At 4:00 am tugboats start to pull the burning ship eastwards to the compass buoys near Schellingwoude, on the north side of the IJ. At 4:30 it arrived there, just as the oil bunkers were catching fire. Here it was left to burn out On 17 November the fire then increased in intensity again. By then, the stern had sunk to the bottom of the IJ, but the bow was still afloat thanks to the bulkheads. On 21 November a last fire erupted, and after quenching it, the fire department declared that the fire had ended. This proved still too optimistic, because on 22 November a locked in fire of burning oil was found in the bow section. After this had been eliminated the fire had lasted for 232 hours, or almost ten days.
  After the fire had been put out the owners and the insurers could rather quickly determine that the ship was a total loss. At the time P.C. Hooft was insured for 7,500,000 guilders. 80% at Anglo-Dutch insurers, and 20% at own risk. On 25 November the insurers agreed to pay the full amount of 6,000,000 guilders to the SMN, and declared that they did not want to have the wreck.
caption: P.C. Hooft burning near Schellingwoude
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