Destroyer HMCS Haida

Rindert van Zinderen Bakker was born in 1944 during the Battle of Arnhem. When he was eight he lived in Paramaribo where he discovered the model sets of ships and planes from a friend's father. Because you could not only play but also build them he became addicted to modelling. Over the decades he has assembled scores of models of aeroplanes, cars, arms and figurines. But it was the background information given with the models on the boxes or the assembly instructions that made him curious about their historic background. Over the years Rindert van Zinderen Bakker became more and more interested in building models of Dutch navy ships of the recent past. Models which were christened on board of the actual ship gave him many a day's sailing on a Netherlands frigate. After his retirement in 2009 as principal of a comprehensive modelling fills a good part of his leisure time.