Kapiteinshuis Pekela

About the museum

The museum is housed in a captain's house that Kornelis Jans Boon and Jantje Roelofs Koop had built in Nieuwe Pekela shortly before 1800. Two hard stone posts beneath the front door bear their initials K.J.B. and J.R.K. and the year 1799. The house was built during a first heyday of the "Veenkoloniale Zeevaart" (peat colony shipping), which had developed out of peat shipping, when peat was long no longer the region's most important source of income.

The ships of the peat colonies initially sailed around the Baltic, to England and into the Mediterranean, and in the course of the 19th century increasingly often across the Atlantic to New York, Recife or Rio Grande do Sul. The crews were often away for months, yet most captains and mates owned a captain's house. Around 1870 more than half of the Dutch merchant fleet was registered in the Groningen peat colonies, and Nieuwe Pekela even had its own navigation school until the 1930s.

Today the house feels as though the family had just gone out for a short walk. On display are ship portraits, photographs from Marseille, Liverpool and Newcastle, porcelain from Russia, woodwork from Riga, Staffordshire mantelpiece dogs, letters from far away and all kinds of souvenirs. The museum is run by a foundation and cooperates with the Veenkoloniaal Museum in Veendam on group packages.

Highlights

• Captain's house from 1799 with a 19th-century atmosphere
• Ship portraits and photographs from European port cities
• Souvenirs and letters from sea voyages
• History of the Veenkoloniale Zeevaart and the navigation school
• Packages together with the Veenkoloniaal Museum Veendam

Permanent exhibitions

• Stap binnen in de 19e eeuw – The house is furnished as it was in the captain's lifetime; caps, coats and household goods convey the life of a captain's family around 1800.
• Zeemanscollege und Souvenirs – Ship portraits, photos from port cities, Russian porcelain, woodwork from Riga and letters tell of the seafaring of the peat colonies and the former navigation school.

Operated by

Stichting Westers

Admission & discounts

Card payment is possible. Donors to the foundation have free admission.

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