Ships, Folk Art, and Whimsey in Bottles

Pictorial Guide to Building Tjalk Plus in a Bottle

- by Frans Dekker

The following is a pictorial guide showing the steps Frans Dekker took in building his Tjalk in a Bottle. This is a a typical ship of the area of Friesland, the Northern part of Holland. Also in the bottle is a push tug. Both are from about 1920. The cargo ship was too small to put an engine inside so they built a small push tug with an engine and attached it to the cargo ship with no one in the tug. The ship man started the engine in the pushz tug and then stepped over on his cargo ship. With a long boom he could stop the engine. It was steered with the steering wheel from the cargo ship.

This is best viewed by clicking on the first picture and then moving your curser to the right middle side of each picture to reveal the ">"  (forward symbol).  Click on the > symbol to advance to the next picture in sequence.