Profile | Hong Kong Maritime Museum’s Dutch director on how a boy who grew up far from the sea came to devote his life to the history of seafaring
- Though he grew up a long way inland, Joost Schokkenbroek has spent his career as a maritime historian in his native Netherlands, North America and now Hong Kong
- He tells Thomas Bird about the Hong Kong museum’s ‘third chapter’ – adding marine science to its existing focus on history and art – and exploring the city
I was born in 1961 in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, a wonderful city of 165,000 inhabitants located near the German border and probably as far away from the coast as you can get. It’s not a natural place to nurture a maritime historian but it’s one of the oldest cities in the country and is located with two major rivers close by, the Waal and the Maas.
So I guess you could say the focus of the waterways and the history of the place oriented me towards an interest in the sea to come.
Made in Hong Kong
I have mostly fond memories of growing up. It was an optimistic time in the Netherlands as the country was rebuilding after the destruction of World War II. In the mid-1960s my parents moved to a new home where there were some ponds close by and you could find interesting creatures like salamanders.
Unlike kids today, with their digital games, I played with toys, wooden blocks for building, that kind of thing. Many of these toys said “Made in Hong Kong” on the box. The name invoked a mysterious, distant place. It wasn’t Amsterdam or London. It sounded very strange but also fascinating.
Now, of course, I know the city emerged from World War II to become a manufacturing powerhouse.
Ship shaped
Home life was really stimulating. My mother, Anke, loved literature and music. My dad, Johan, loved painting. Looking back it was his influence more than any that shaped my outlook. He was the one who really got me interested in museums, and the stories behind artefacts, paintings, collections or whatever.