Koninklijk Instituut voor de Marine

Geschiedenis

The Royal Naval College was the service academy of the Royal Netherlands Navy. From 2005 it is part of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Marine ("Royal naval institute" or KIM) as part of the Nederlandse Defensie Academie ("Netherlands defence academy") in Den Helder. It offers a program of four or five years and also a short course of 16 to 22 months. Upon the completion of the program a graduate is awarded a bachelor's degree and is commissioned in the Royal Netherlands Navy. The training of officers for the Royal Netherlands Army and Royal Netherlands Air Force is done by the Koninklijke Militaire Academie in Breda.HistoryThe Royal Netherlands Navy was officially founded in 1815, but existed in various forms since 1488. In the early years of the Navy, officers were trained in service aboard ships. In 1785, the 'Kweekschool voor de Zeevaart' the first land-based training school for future officers, opened. This school was the predecessor of the KIM. During the time of the Batavian Republic (1795–1806), as the Dutch Navy began to become more organized, the training school was improved as well. With the forming of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on 10 January 1816, an institute for training naval officers was founded in Delft. Twelve years later, it was moved to a site near Medemblik, and many improvements were made for the move. A boarding school system was introduced, and the institute applied for officer training. On 28 August 1829, the opening of the institute was celebrated in the great church of Medemblik. That date is now observed as the anniversary of KIM's founding. In 1854, the current campus at Willemsoord in Den Helder was opened. In 2005 the academy was fused with the KMA to create the 'Nederlandse Defensie Academy' (NLDA) and the KIM was reshaped to play a technical educational role for the NLDA, which was followed by the arrival of a lot of army and air force cadets and the departure of most of the midshipmen from the academy, effectively ending its role as a 'maritime' academy.