The East Indiaman Prins Willem

While I was in Amsterdam five weeks ago, Ab Hoving showed me "the famous model" of the East Indiaman Prins Willem. There is a page in English about the model. There are references, used by Herman Ketting in his book, that give the length as 181ft (Amsterdam feet). Ab Hoving's position is that it could not have been that long. That the ship was probably less than 170ft long. Herbert Tomesen's position some years ago was that the Prins Willem and the Oranje were both built to the 170ft charter for retourschepen, and that the Prins Willem must have had dimensions of about 170ft x 38ft x 14ft and had three decks.