The Iris

She was built as a fishing vessel, sailed for decades in coastal navigation and for a quarter of a century has been one of the
finest and fastest sailing ships of Dutch professional sailing.
Her story begins in 1915, in the middle of the First World War.

Ship type

The lugger ship type was introduced to the Dutch herring fishery in 1866.
It is originally French, although the hull form is also widely known in England. It stands out for its
sharp lines, good sea behavior and especially its speed. It leaves the traditional Dutch
ships such as cornerers and tubes far behind and within ten years the entire Dutch herring fleet was replaced by luggers.
Replaced by loggers. At that time they were built only in wood.
Around 1900 the logger got competition from a bigger and stronger sister,
the iron steam lugger. The development of sailing ships in herring fishing comes to a halt.
It is World War I that changes this again. The Netherlands is neutral and can,
unlike the English, French and Germans, continue to fish. Food prices rise and fishermen
are doing good business. At the same time, oil and coal begin to become scarce.
Against this background, shipping companies order a number of new ships and they become not steam, but
sailing loggers. Wind, regardless of the course of the war, will always be there.
For this reason, the last generation of sailing luggers comes into being. They are modern steel ships,
generally slightly larger than their nineteenth-century predecessors and more heavily rigged. Several hundred of them are built in 1915 and 1916.

The shipyard

The history of shipyard “s Lands Welvaren” in Vlaardingen begins in the golden age.
In 1638 the company was founded and in the following three and a half centuries it would grow into one
of the most important shipyards of the Dutch sea fishery. In 1880, shipbuilding master
Isaäc Samuel Figee took over the shipyard and with it began a new heyday. In 1890 he builds his first
iron lugger, in 1899 the first iron steam logger.
Around this time, Figee works out a number of interesting designs. His sailing loggers, which for a few years had already exceeded the standard length of 25.25 over per
standard length of 25.25 over perpendiculars (28.00 meters over all), become both slimmer and
wider. Head and butt are more swept while overall width is nearly half a meter (to 6.66 meters)
greater. Depth is set at 2.75 meters.
This lugger type will go down in history as the “Figee logger”; not the cheapest but by far the
most beautiful and fastest sailing within a fleet of five to six hundred ships.

IJM 287 Pallas

In the summer of 1915 the then just founded N.V. Exploitatie Maatschappij ‘Nereus’ under
headed by C. Verver & H. Kleibrink of Bloemendaal, placed the order for the construction of three sailing loggers
at Figee in Vlaardingen. The ships are to be delivered in 1916 and will have the fishing marks
IJM 285, 286 and 287.
The IJM 287 Pallas will be the first. The vessel will be launched on January 5, 1916 and will leave for her first fishing trip at the end of May of that year.
May of that year for her first fishing trip to the waters around the 60th parallel. On June 17, she sails under
Maarten Haasnoot from Katwijk aan Zee to IJmuiden with 336 tons of salt herring on board. That
year the Pallas will market 1683 canteens of herring in five voyages, which is well above (177%) the
average catch of the sailing lugger fleet that year.
The IJM 287 Pallas will remain in service as a sailing herring logger for ten years. She is a “lucky ship” that both
gets through the war and the time after without mine explosions, collisions or groundings.
Her catches are generally above average, but around 1926 the sailing lugger as a ship type is really dated.
really dated. Hundreds of her kind have been laid up, scrapped or motorized.
Since 1920, the Pallas has been owned by our country’s largest fishing company, the Vereenigde
Exploitatie Maatschappij (VEM) in IJmuiden, and in 1926 it decided to add the sailing vessels to its fleet of several dozen loggers and trawlers. It takes three years for a buyer to presents itself.
In September 1929, the Pallas departed with three other sailing loggers behind a tug to the Swedish
Karlshamn where a shipyard will convert the hulls into cargo ships on its own account.

Aage

In 1930, the Karlshamn Skeppsvarv offered the former Pallas for sale.
The ship had two hatches, a deckhouse with a wheelhouse behind it, a fixed bowsprit and
mainly received a 104 hp auxiliary engine. As a steel motoryacht with a carrying capacity of
160 tons, it has become a modern, medium-sized coaster for the Baltic Sea area.
The new owner is Captain N.J. Møller from Svendborg, Denmark. He named the ship after
his infant son Aage.
The Aage will be a familiar face in Danish coastal shipping for more than forty years. Until 1943
she sailed for successive owners from Svendborg, then from her home port of Rønne on the island of Bornholm.
Her sailing area is the entire Baltic Sea to the Gulf of Bothnia in the northeast and western Sweden and southern Norway to the Skagerak in the south.
South Norway to Skagerak in the west.

In 1950 a new engine was installed, a 2 cylinder Grenaa glow head of 166 hp. One year later
Kaj V. Pedersen buys the cargo lugger. He is known as a good sailor and sails it across the water.
Over twenty years later, Kaj Pedersen is then past seventy and his ship begins to approach sixty
, the time has come to stop. As a coaster, the lugger begins to get too small.
The fact that the real sails have long since been replaced by a trestle with a plastic sling sail and the
wheelhouse is equipped with an autopilot and radar, cannot remedy that. Moreover, the ship is
in urgent need of major maintenance, and the elderly owner decides to put it up for sale in its
home port of Rønne.

Geesje van Urk

In this condition, Gert Loomeijer and Marileen Biekart found the former sailing lugger in the summer of 1975.
After purchase, it is renamed Geesje van Urk and sailed to Groningen. An inventory of
work at the shipyard shows that restoration of the old hull with the still original wooden deck will be
will be a major job. It began in 1978 at the Van den Berg machine factory in Lemmer. Three years
, in the spring of 1981, the Geesje van Urk was launched for the second time in her 65 years of
existence, as a sailing ship under the Dutch flag.
The old Grenaa glow-head engine that gave up the ghost in 1976 on a trip from Vlaardingen to
England, has since been replaced by a 280 hp Caterpillar (for which in 1994 a revamped GM
Detroit Diesel 320 hp in its place).
The Geesje van Urk is used as a sailing passenger ship and also for sailing and management training.
Her sailing area from the respective home ports Vlaardingen and Rotterdam, extends from
Brittany, Ireland and the Lofoten Islands in the west to the Åland Islands in the east.
In 1991-92, the ship was again extensively rebuilt and refitted, adapting it to the
class requirements for worldwide sailing.
On July 17, 2001 the Geesje van Urk was sold to Frits and Riemke Leusink, Ben Bos, Udeke Huiskamp, and
renamed Iris.

Iris

On July 17, 2001, the Geesje of Urk was sold to Frits and Riemke Leusink, Ben Bos, Udeke Huiskamp, and
christened the vessel Iris (Zeillogger Iris VOF). Of all the owners, over time Ben and Marianne Bos remained. Under their management, the Iris sailed between the Netherlands, France and England and along the Irish and Scottish coasts. Home port of the ship was the beautiful Veerhaven in Rotterdam. At the end of 2022, after 20 years, they sold the ship to Floris de Waard. Summer season 2023 then several captains sailed on the ship.
The ship has been very lucky in her histories with the loving owners who took care of her.
Since Jan. 11, 2024, Jans Beekhuizen and Liv Stammberger are proud owners. They saw the acquisition as an opportunity to preserve this beautiful sailing ship, continue its care while breaking new ground. In the future, they plan to use the ship for sailing trips on various waters (including the North and Baltic Seas).
They offer day trips as well as multi-day trips, individual bookings and group tours.

Origin of the name IRIS

IRIS comes from Greek mythology. She is the goddess of good and was sent by the chief god Zeus to bring good news to mankind. Equipped with a torch and beautiful wings, she is carried by the rainbow and is faster than the wind. The ship IRIS also wants to bring good news and is fast of its kind.