Delfshaven, South Holland

When this card popped through our letter box a few weeks ago I was delighted by it.  In spite of our recent wintry weather, I'm still attracted by lovely snow scenes.  What I hadn't realised was that it captures something historic as well as beautiful.

The scene is a canal in an area in Rotterdam called Delfshaven.  Delfshaven means the port of Delft, and it was created in 1389 because Delft itself had no access to a major river.  Since then it first became an independent city in 1811, and later a part of Rotterdam.

In the scene on the card there is a church just to the left of the barge's mast.  In 1417 there was a Roman Catholic church on the site, the church of St. Anthony.  During the reformation it became a Protestant church.

In 1608 a group of English dissenters left the Anglican church to found their own community in the Netherlands.  After 11 years in Leiden they decided that they would go to America so that they could worship how they wanted and in July 1620 they left from Delfshaven in the ship "Speedwell".  The group of pilgrims knelt on the quayside near the church to pray before they set off.  The Speedwell set sail for England and joined forces with the Mayflower in Southampton before they both set off to cross the Atlantic.  After a while the Speedwell started to leak so both ships turned back to England where many of the Speedwell's passengers transferred to the Mayflower, which finally left Plymouth in September 1620.

The church later became known as the Pilgrim Fathers' Church because of this association but it's also known as the Old Church, De Oude.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday.