Catharina Maria van der Corput (1921-2012)
Catharina Maria van der Corput (1921-2012) worked in inland shipping. As the daughter of the skipper couple Anna Snel and Arnoldus van der Corput, she grew up on board and was part of the crew, just like her youngest sister Marie van der Corput.
The family lived on the ship where father was hired as a skipper, and sailed both on the Rhine and the Meuse, in the Netherlands and Belgium. She worked with them from a young age. She once said that as a 10-12 year old she stood “crying from the cold” with the metal mooring cables in her hand, when they had to moor to go through the lock, for example.
In the forties she was formally a crew member, and both she and her mother had a certificate stating that they were familiar with shipping and had the necessary physical fitness.
