Storm on Texel meant anxious ship-owners. One of the storms with enormous consequences was that of the Christmas night of 1592. At the height of the force 11 gale, many ships (in this case nearly 200) lay waiting for favourable winds on the Texel Roads. The adverse wind, along the coastline, threw several of the ships from their anchors. They hit others ships and finally there was so much damage, that nearly twenty ships sank. One of the worst stricken ship-owners who lost as many as four ships was a merchant from Amsterdam, called Roemer Visscher. Several months after this tragic event his second daughter was born, so he called her Maria TESSELSCHADE (meaning TEXEL-DAMAGE)

The Texelstroom is a sailing vessel that, after being built in 1906, has served the pilotage for 50 years. First as tender and later as buoy-layer. It was then sold and used as private yacht by several owners.
In 1999 the Stichting tot Behoud van Loodsbotter Texelstroom (Society for Preservation of Pilot-vessel Texelstroom) was incorporated, with the objective to keep the Texelstroom sailing and to preserve and maintain traditional nautical skills. Both objectives are being carried out by volunteers that sail with passengers on the Noordzee and Waddenzee every summer. Bookings for a sailing tour can be made in the Maritiem & Juttersmuseum. The museum exhibits a beautiful model, leeboards and old ballast of the ship.

Sea-Rescue tells the story of heroes and disasters, of the lashing seas and ships in distress. In the Netherlands, the Royal Dutch Rescue Society (KNRM) is the organisation that saves life on the inland waters and at sea. A large group of volunteers is in continuous readiness for help when somewhere a ship, windsurfer, water-scooter or even canoe is in trouble. There used to be several rescue stations, with each their own boat and boathouse, on Texel. Today there are two stations left: De Koog and De Cocksdorp. On the museum premises, in the former rescue-station of Den Hoorn, the history of sea-rescue on Texel is exhibited. Between life-jackets, oars and pictures from back then, you may form a notion of the heroes of the KNRM-Texel rescue teams.

“De Traanroeier” is the windmill at the site of the museum. The name of the mill stems from whaling. A product from whaling was train-oil (traan). A “traanroeier” was the man that checked quality and quantity of the train-oil supplied by the whalers. This profession was practised a lot around Zaandam where the windmill was built originally in 1727 as peeling-mill. In 1902 the Traanroeier was sold to Texel where it served as corn-mill until 1960, whereupon it was transformed again into an automatically operating energy-mill. In 1999, after standing idle for some years, the windmill had fallen into disrepair so much, that action was taken by the villagers of Oudeschild to save this monument from destruction. The windmill is now manned by volunteers and mills virtually every day as corn-mill again.