Every design for Maassluis

Ever stood on the quay at Maassluis and wondered which river you were looking at? It is the Scheur, not the Nieuwe Waterweg, whatever the town's old slogan claimed. The water has shaped this place from the start: around 1340 a settlement grew up beside a lock in the sea defences, and the name still says so.

Maassluis lies between the North Sea and Rotterdam, and these days it is mainly a commuter town for the city upriver. For centuries, though, its people fished the coast and the waters off Iceland, and later the tugs of L. Smit and the salvage crews of W.A. van den Tak made the name known around the world. Inland, the Maaslandse Bos and the Calandpark give the town its green edges.

In the harbour lies the Stoomzeesleper Furie, the steam tug that once towed timber rafts across the Baltic. Wear the map, and you carry the harbour she still calls home.