Dutch Blue & White Delft Hand Painted Maritime Charger. BEL ESPOIR - 1981. SOLD

The tin glazed earthenware charger decorated in shades of blue with in the centre a sailing vessel surrounded with floral swags on the rim and under the name of the vessel  BEL  ESPOIR. Signed on the back in underglaze blue for:
REGINA 
DELFTS  HAND PAINTED.  HOLLAND
Model number 436 & a crowned WB for
Firma Van der Want & Barras, Kunstaardewerkfabriek REGINA .
Serie 438 = 9  Grandiose Tall Ships (Sail 1980 in Amsterdam.)
V Marcel Keeble Antwerpen vervaardigd voor:
GOUDA  - HOLLAND
ANNO  1981

Diam.:   32,5 cm.  (2,8 inches.)
Weight: 1.000 grams.

The Bel Espoir II is a schooner that was purchased in 1968 by “Amis de Jeudi-Dimanche association” (AJD). L’AJD also bought a second schooner in 1973, the Rara-Avis that has the same objective, sailing with problem youths and addicts so that they can find their way back into society with their sailing traineeship. The Bel Espoir was included as a sailing monument in the national sailing patrimony on the 26th of March 1993.
Built in 1944 in Svendborg (Denmark) at the shipyard J. Ring Andersen for the shipping company A.C. Sorensen. It was baptized as Nette S, and sailed mainly as a Baltic trader in the Baltic Sea and later as a fishing vessel at Terre-Neuve. In 1950 it was renamed Peder Most and used as an animal transport ship between Hamburg and Copenhagen. It was purchased in 1955 by the British Association Outward Bound Trust, which it built as a training sailing vessel for pupils of the Public Schools. Fully adapted to school ship renamed Prince Louis II in 1965.
The association of Michel Jaouen (former chaplain of the prison system), “Amis du Jeudi- Dimanche” (AJD), became owner in 1968 and baptized it to du Bel Espoir II. This association, founded in 1954, aims at the re insertion of problem youths through various employment programs.  The Bel Espoir II sails mostly in the winter in the Caribbean sea and in the summer on the East coast of France.