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The Country That Wants to ‘Be Average’ vs. Jeff Bezos and His $500 Million Yacht

Why did Rotterdam stand between one of the world’s richest men and his boat? The furious response is rooted in Dutch values.

By David Segal

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — The image would have been a social media phenomenon: a few thousand citizens of the Netherlands’ second-largest city, standing beside a river and hurling eggs at the gleaming, new 417-foot sailing yacht built for Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and one of the world’s richest men. By the time the boat passed the crowd, it would have been spattered with bright orange yolk, plus at least one very bright spot of red.

“I would have thrown a tomato,” said Stefan Lewis, a former City Council member. “I eat mostly vegan.”

One recent afternoon, Mr. Lewis was standing near the Hef, as the Koningshaven Bridge is affectionately known, and explaining the anger that Mr. Bezos and Oceanco, the maker of the three-masted, $500 million schooner, inspired after making what may have sounded like a fairly benign request. The company asked the local government to briefly dismantle the elevated middle span of the Hef, which is 230 feet tall at its highest point, allowing the vessel to sail down the King’s Harbor channel and out to sea. The whole process would have taken a day or two and Oceanco would have covered the costs.

Also worth noting: The bridge, a lattice of moss-green steel in the shape of a hulking “H,” is not actually used by anyone. It served as a railroad bridge for decades until it was replaced by a tunnel and decommissioned in the early 1990s. It’s been idle ever since.

In sum, the operation would have been fast, free and disrupted nothing. So why the fuss?

“There’s a principle at stake,” said Mr. Lewis, a tall, bearded 37-year-old who was leaning against his bike and toggling during an interview between wry humor and indignation. He then framed the principle with a series of questions. “What can you buy if you have unlimited cash? Can you bend every rule? Can you take apart monuments?”

In late June, the city’s vice mayor reported that Oceanco had withdrawn its request to dismantle the Hef, a retreat that was portrayed as a victory of the masses over a billionaire, though it was much more than that. It was an opportunity to see Dutch and American values in a fiery, head-on collision. The more you know about the Netherlands — with its preference for modesty over extravagance, for the community over the individual, for fitting in rather than standing out — the more it seems as though this kerfuffle was scripted by someone whose goal was to drive people here out of their minds.

The first problem was the astounding wealth of Mr. Bezos.

“The Dutch like to say, ‘Acting normal is crazy enough,’” said Ellen Verkoelen, a City Council member and Rotterdam leader of the 50Plus Party, which works on behalf of pensioners. “And we think that rich people are not acting normal. Here in Holland, we don’t believe that everybody can be rich the way people do in America, where the sky is the limit. We think ‘Be average.’ That’s good enough.”

Ms. Verkoelen was among those who considered Oceanco’s request a reasonable concession to a company in a highly competitive industry. But she heard from dozens of infuriated voters, all of them adamantly opposed. She understood the origins of the fervor, which she illustrated with a story from her childhood.

“When I was about 11 years old, we had an American boy stay with us for a week, an exchange student,” she recalled. “And my mother told him, just make your own sandwich like you do in America. Instead of putting one sausage on his bread, he put on five. My mother was too polite to say anything to him, but to me she said in Dutch, ‘We will never eat like that in this house.’”

At school, Ms. Verkoelen learned from friends that the American children in their homes all ate the same way. They were stunned and a little jealous. At the time, it was said in the Netherlands that putting both butter and cheese on your bread was “the devil’s sandwich.” Choose one, went the thinking. You don’t need both.

Building the earth’s biggest sailing yacht and taking apart a city’s beloved landmark? That’s the devil’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

The streak of austerity in Dutch culture can be traced to Calvinism, say residents, the most popular religious branch of Protestantism here for hundreds of years. It emphasizes virtues like self-discipline, frugality and conscientiousness. Polls suggest that most people in the Netherlands today are not churchgoers, but the norms are embedded, as evidenced by Dutch attitudes toward wealth.

“Calvin teaches that you’re given stewardship over your money, that you have a responsibility to take care of it, which means giving lots of it away, being generous to others,” said James Kennedy, a professor of modern Dutch history at Utrecht University. “Work is a divine calling for which you will be held accountable. It’s considered bad for society and bad for your soul if you spend in ostentatious ways.”

There are billionaires in the Netherlands and a huge pay gap between chief executives and employees. Statista, a research firm, reported that for every dollar earned by an average worker, C.E.O.s earned $171. (The figure is $265 in the United States, the widest gap of any country.) The difference is that the rich in the Netherlands don’t flaunt it, just as the powerful don’t highlight their cachet. The Dutch once ran one of the world’s largest empires but there’s a certain pride here that the prime minister of the country rides a bicycle to pay visits to the king — yes, the Netherlands has a royal family, which is also relatively low-key — and locks the bicycle outside the palace.

There’s a premium on equality that has survived the country’s struggles to assimilate immigrants and a gentrification boom that is pricing the middle- and working-class out of cities. An ethos endures that nobody is any better than anyone else, or deserves more, and it stems from an unignorable geographic fact. Roughly one-third of the Netherlands is below sea level and citizens for centuries have had little choice but to band together to create an infrastructure of dikes and drainage systems to remain alive.

“The Netherlands is built on cooperation,” said Paul van de Laar, a professor of history at Erasmus University. “There were constant threats of disaster from the 15th and 16th century. Protestants and Catholics knew that to survive, they could not quarrel too much.”

Chip in. Blend in. Help others. These are among the highest ideals of the Netherlands. Does this sound like a country eager to cut some slack to a man with $140 billion and a $500 million boat?

It didn’t help that Dutch critics of Mr. Bezos believe that employees at Amazon are underpaid, which, given his fortune, strikes them as not just grotesquely unfair but immoral. “He doesn’t pay his taxes,” is a common refrain in this city, and it doesn’t mean that Mr. Bezos is considered a tax cheat. It means that he isn’t fighting inequality by sharing his money, an obligation that transcends the tax code.

(Emails to Amazon were not returned. Mr. Bezos did not respond to a ProPublica article last year, based on leaked Internal Revenue Service files, that showed he paid a tiny percent of his fortune in federal income taxes, using perfectly legal methods.)

The Rotterdam vs. Bezos brawl first made international headlines in February, when news broke that Oceanco had been granted city approval to briefly take apart the middle of the Hef. (The cost of this operation was never made public.) The assent had come from a civil servant who apparently didn’t see the harm. An uproar ensued.

“I thought it was a joke,” said Mr. Lewis, who learned about the permission on Facebook from incredulous friends. “So I called the vice mayor’s office and asked, ‘Is this for real?’ And they said, ‘We don’t know anything about this.’ It wasn’t on their radar. It took them a day to get back to me.”

When word of the accommodation reached the public, fuming residents became a staple of local TV news and a Facebook group formed to organize that mass egg pelting. (“Dismantling the Hef for Jeff Bezos’ latest toy? Come throw eggs…”) One aggrieved council member soon likened the masts of the yacht to a giant middle finger, pointed at the city.

Oceanco, which employs more than 300 people, has not spoken publicly about its decision to rescind its Hef request and did not respond to an email for comment. News reports stated that the company was concerned about threats against employees and about vandalism.

It’s unclear how the yacht, now known as Y721, will be completed. In February, the City Council’s municipality liaison, Marcel Walravens, was quoted in the media saying that it was impractical to float the mast-less yacht to another location and finish it there.

To Professor van de Laar, the real villain in this tale is not Oceanco or Mr. Bezos, who probably had never heard of the Hef. It’s the City Council, which completely misunderstood the depth of feelings about the bridge and bungled the messaging about its decision.

“Emotions are important,” he said. “The council didn’t grasp that, which is incredibly stupid.”

The issue wasn’t just this particular billionaire and this particular yacht. It was this particular bridge. To outsiders, the Hef looks like an ungainly industrial workhorse that no longer works.

That’s not what locals see. When opened in 1927 it was considered an architectural marvel, one celebrated by the Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens, in his 1928 film “The Bridge.”

“There are poems about the Hef,” said Arij De Boode, co-author of “The Hef: Biography of a Railroad Bridge.” “Anyone who makes a movie about Rotterdam includes the Hef. It’s more than a bridge.”

Rotterdam is one of the few European cities in which nearly all the buildings, both commercial and residential, are new because the place was bombed to devastating effect by the Nazis in World War II. It turned this into a city of the future, always looking ahead, tearing down whatever doesn’t work or isn’t needed.

Except for the Hef. It has become the city’s most recognizable landmark. After the war, it became a symbol of resilience and to locals of an older generation, the Hef is a rare link to the past.

When there was talk decades ago of tearing it down, residents protested. It was declared a national monument in 2000 and underwent a three-year restoration that ended in 2017. Today, the Hef stands as a triumph of function over form that no longer functions, a monolith that can’t be altered, even temporarily — no matter who asks, no matter the price.

David Segal is a Business section reporter based in London. More about David Segal

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Watch: Jeff Bezos’s Polarizing 417-Foot Megayacht Just Made a Stealth Escape Into a Dutch Port

No bridges were harmed during the making of this video., rachel cormack.

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After causing quite the controversy, Jeff Bezos ’s multimillion-dollar megaycht just made a very quiet escape.

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Koninginnebrug Bridge in the Netherlands will, thankfully, remain in tact.  Wikimedia Commons

Suffice it to say, Rotterdam locals were none too pleased about the idea. Thousands of residents even went so far as committing to egg the billionaire’s schooner in protest. Following the public outcry, Oceanco withdrew its request to dismantle the bridge. Lo and behold, Y271 has still managed to escape.

Local yachting enthusiast Hanco Bol witnessed the yacht’s stealthy departure at 3 am on August 2 and subsequently posted a video of the three-hour journey on YouTube. Bol speculated that Oceanco opted for an alternate route (we’re guessing one with fewer bridges) to keep the launch and transport under wraps. The yacht reportedly hit an average speed of 8 knots and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam at 6 am. By Bol’s account, it was a quiet and quick getaway.

“We never saw a transport going that fast,” the YouTube post reads.

Oceanco has been tightlipped about the gigayacht and did not immediately respond to Robb Report ‘s request for a comment. Upon completion, Y271 will not only be Holland’s largest superyacht to date, but it will also be the world’s biggest sailing yacht. It just might be the most controversial, too.

Rachel Cormack is a digital editor at Robb Report. She cut her teeth writing for HuffPost, Concrete Playground, and several other online publications in Australia, before moving to New York at the…

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• Netherlands

Jeff Bezos’s New Superyacht to Force Dismantling of Dutch Bridge

J eff Bezos’s massive new superyacht is nearing completion, but getting it to its owner will require taking out a bridge.

The 417-foot-long sailing yacht, code-named Y721, is being built by Alblasserdam, Netherlands-based Oceanco. For the boat to reach the ocean, it will have to pass through Rotterdam, and navigate a landmark steel bridge known as De Hef. A lift bridge, De Hef’s central span can be raised more than 130 feet into the air, but that’s still not high enough to accommodate the yacht’s three giant masts.

So the city has agreed to temporarily take apart the bridge’s central section this summer for Bezos’s yacht to pass through, according to Frances van Heijst, a Rotterdam spokeswoman. The NL Times reported the bridge plan earlier Wednesday.

The Y721 will be one of the largest sailing yachts ever built in the Netherlands, the unofficial capital of boat building for the very wealthy. Rotterdam council project leader Marcel Walravens defended the city’s decision to allow the bridge to be dismantled, telling local broadcaster Rijnmond it was the “only alternative” to complete what the municipality considers “a very important project” economically.

Oceanco, and not the city, will foot the cost of the bridge demolition, van Heijst said. It’s likely some of those costs will be passed on to Bezos, the world’s second-richest person with a net worth of $175.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

De Hef is considered an icon of Rotterdam’s industrial heritage as a shipbuilding hub, and news of its partial demolition has caused a stir among locals.

“This man has earned his money by structurally cutting staff, evading taxes, avoiding regulations and now we have to tear down our beautiful national monument?” Rotterdam politician Stephan Leewis wrote on Twitter. “That is really going a bridge too far.”

It’s not the first headache caused by Y721’s tall masts. The enormity of the yacht’s sails will make it unsafe to land a helicopter onboard, so Bezos has commissioned a support yacht equipped with a helipad to trail alongside.

Surging levels of personal wealth pushed superyacht sales to record levels last year. A total of 887 such ships were sold in 2021, a 77% jump from a year earlier and more than double the number in 2019, according to a report from maritime data firm VesselsValue. Boat builder Burgess reported more than 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in superyacht sales last year.

—With assistance from Brad Stone.

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The Dutch vow to egg Jeff Bezos' yacht if a bridge is dismantled to let his boat pass

Rachel Treisman

Rotterdam residents appear to be up in arms over a plan to temporarily dismantle the Koningshaven lift bridge, popularly called "De Hef." Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Rotterdam residents appear to be up in arms over a plan to temporarily dismantle the Koningshaven lift bridge, popularly called "De Hef."

It's not exactly smooth sailing these days in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, where locals are voicing their objection to a plan that would temporarily dismantle a historic bridge to enable the passage of a record-breaking yacht reportedly owned by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

In fact, some are already making plans — albeit in jest — for what they will do if the project comes to fruition: throw eggs at the yacht as it traverses the water under the Koningshaven Bridge, known locally as "De Hef."

Some 13,000 people are "interested" and nearly 4,000 have said they will attend a Facebook event titled "Throwing eggs at superyacht Jeff Bezos," which has been shared more than 1,000 times in the week since its creation.

Tens Of Thousands Sign Petition To Stop Jeff Bezos From Returning To Earth

"Calling all Rotterdammers, take a box of rotten eggs with you and let's throw them en masse at Jeff's superyacht when it sails through the Hef in Rotterdam," wrote organizer Pablo Strörmann.

He told the NL Times that the protest started as a joke among friends and has quickly gotten "way out of hand." (The English-language news site also notes that this isn't Strörmann's first campaign to go viral.)

The news of De Hef's potential disassembly, however brief, has clearly struck a chord with both locals and international observers.

It all started last week when Dutch broadcaster Rijnmond reported that the city appeared willing to grant a request to dismantle the decades-old steel bridge so that Bezos' yacht could pass through.

De Hef was built in 1927 as a railway bridge, with a midsection that can be lifted to allow ship traffic to pass underneath, according to The Washington Post . It was replaced by a tunnel and decommissioned in 1994, but was saved from demolition by public protests and later declared a national monument.

The ship's three masts are apparently too high for the bridge's roughly 130-foot clearance.

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The sailing yacht in question was reportedly commissioned by the billionaire Amazon founder and is currently being built at the Oceanco shipyard in the Netherlands, according to Boat International . It will consist of three masts with aluminum and steel construction and will measure more than 415 feet in length.

"Once delivered, not only will she become the world's largest sailing yacht but she will also hold the title for the largest superyacht ever built in the Netherlands," it added.

The waterway where the bridge sits is the only way the ship can get from the shipyard in Alblasserdam to the open seas, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . So Oceanco asked Rotterdam officials to temporarily remove the middle section of the bridge.

City spokesperson Netty Kros told the CBC that "the applicant" would cover the costs of the project but did not clarify whether that refers to the yacht's owner, the shipbuilder or both. Bloomberg reports that Oceanco will foot the bill. NPR has reached out to Amazon and Oceanco to confirm these details.

The city appeared to agree to the arrangement last week, with municipal project leader Marcel Walravens telling Rijnmond that the project would proceed for logistical and economic reasons. He said an exact plan was being developed but estimated it would take about a week to prepare and another week to "put everything back in place."

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"At the Koningenne Bridge, we can press a button, and it opens. That's not possible here because De Hef has a maximum height," Walravens said, according to a translation from the NL Times . "The only alternative is to take out the middle part."

That prompted an immediate backlash from locals, lawmakers and social media users, with the Rotterdam Historical Society pointing out that city officials had promised never to dismantle the bridge again after completing a major restoration in 2017.

Officials then walked back the reports, with Rotterdam's mayor telling a Dutch newspaper on Thursday that "no decision has yet been taken, not even an application for a permit," according to The Guardian .

He said the municipality would consider an application and assess the potential impacts, like whether the dismantling can be done without damaging the bridge and who would cover the costs.

Postcard from Rotterdam

Proponents of the plan say the project will bring more economic opportunities to the region, while critics say there's a double standard at play.

"Normally it's the other way around: If your ship doesn't fit under a bridge, you make it smaller," Strörmann told the NL Times. "But when you happen to be the richest person on Earth, you just ask a municipality to dismantle a monument. That's ridiculous."

With a net worth of more than $188 billion, Bezos is the third-richest person in the world behind Tesla founder Elon Musk and French businessman Bernard Arnault, according to Forbes' real-time list .

Hypothetically, if the project does come to pass, and locals do show up with eggs, just how hard of a moving target would the yacht be? The website Curbed set out to find out.

After examining several studies and making a few calculations, reporter Clio Chang says an egg would have to travel about 238 feet to hit the hull — "a difficult, but not impossible, feat."

This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog .

• Netherlands
• shipbuilding

Rotterdam Now Won't Dismantle a Historic Bridge for Jeff Bezos's Superyacht

The Amazon founder's new sailing yacht is too tall to pass under the historic Koningshaven bridge.

"We’re happy it’s not happening," Marvin Biljoen, a councilman for GroenLinks, the Dutch Green Party, told the New York Times . "T he bridge is a national monument, which shouldn’t be altered too much. That you could still do that with money anyway bothers us."

Last week, Oceano quietly towed the yacht up the river in the early hours of the morning to a different shipyard, and now, Bezos's boat is nearly completed. The YouTube channel Dutch Yachting shared a video of the boat, and it has three large masts completed:

Expect the superyacht to be on the open seas soon.

Original 2/7/22 : The European port of Rotterdam will dismantle part of its iconic Koningshaven bridge for Jeff Bezos. The billionaire's new yacht is being built in Alblasserdam, in the western Netherlands, and will be too tall to pass under the bridge.

"It's the only route to the sea," a spokesperson for the mayor of Rotterdam told AFP , confirming the news of the bridge's dismantling. According to Dutch news , ship builder Oceanco convinced the city to dismantle part of the bridge. The Rotterdam mayor's spokesperson also confirmed that Bezos would pay for the dismantling and rebuilding of the bridge.

In November, Oceano's chairman, Omani businessman Dr. Mohammed Al Barwani, spoke of the 127 meter (416 feet) sailing yacht the company was working on without mentioning Bezos. Later, Boat International identified the 127m yacht as the one commissioned by the Amazon founder.

The Koningshaven bridge, known locally as the De Hef bridge , was built in 1877. During World War II, the bridge was significantly damaged and rebuilt, subsequently recognized as a historic monument. Between 2014 and 2017, the bridge underwent a restoration, and officials promised it would not be dismantled again.

"From an economic perspective and maintaining employment, the municipality considers this a very important project," Marcel Walravens, the leader of the proposed dismantling project, told Dutch broadcaster Rijnmond . "Rotterdam has also been declared the maritime capital of Europe. Shipbuilding and activity within that sector are therefore an important pillar for the municipality." Walravens says the project will likely take place sometime this summer.

Dennis Tak, a Labor Party city councilor, said he was OK with the dismantling of the Koningshaven bridge because Bezos is paying for it, and it would create jobs. "As a city, this is a great way to take some of his money," Tak told the New York Times .

Dutch residents are not happy, however; they plan to throw rotten eggs at Jeff Bezos's superyacht as it passes through the Rotterdam harbor. Business Insider reports Rotterdam locals are planning an event called "Throwing eggs at Jeff Bezos' superyacht" in protest.

"Calling all Rotterdammers, take a box of rotten eggs with you and let's throw them en masse at Jeff's superyacht when it sails through the Hef in Rotterdam," the event description reads on Facebook. "Rotterdam was built from the rubble by the people of Rotterdam, and we don't just take that apart for the phallic symbol of a megalomaniac billionaire. Not without a fight!" 3,300 people have RSVP'd as going, and 11,600 are interested in the event.

When Bezos's yacht, known as Y721, is delivered later this year—after the bridge is dismantled—the boat will become the world's largest sailing yacht, a title that has been held for nearly a century by American socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post's 1931 boat Sea Cloud .

Along with making history as the largest sailing yacht, Bezos's Y271 is the longest yacht to have ever been built in the Netherlands, and Oceano's largest ever superyacht. It is also rumored to come with a "support yacht," also called a shadow vessel. The superyacht likely cost more than $500 million to build, per Bloomberg .

Bezos is also reportedly the owner of the Flying Fox, a $400 million megayacht.

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma , a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram .

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Jeff bezos gets a historic dutch bridge dismantled so his $500 million yacht can pass.

The rich are different from you and me, as the writer Scott Fitzgerald once said. More proof (if any is needed) is a deal struck between Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos and officials in the Dutch city of Rotterdam to dismantle a historical landmark, so he can move his brand-new superyacht from the shipyard to the open sea.

In negotiations revealed this week, Rotterdam officials agreed to take apart (and later reassemble) the steel Koningshaven bridge that spans Europe’s busiest cargo port, and which has stood in place since 1927. That is in order for Bezos’s new 412-foot vessel—one of the biggest private yachts on the planet —to leave its construction site and set sail. The bridge is one of Rotterdam's best-known local landmarks, called a “must-see” by one tourist on Tripadvisor.

It is a “must-remove” for Bezos, however. His vessel—estimated to cost about $500 million to build— includes three 229-foot masts , too tall to sail under the bridge, which has the height of a 13-story building and a clearance of 131 feet.

That meant the bridge, which locals affectionately call “De Hef,” or “the lever,” has to be temporarily taken apart sometime this summer and then reconstructed once Bezos’s yacht leaves town.

“On the one hand, economic importance, employment, due to the construction of this ship. On the other hand, our concern for De Hef,” Rotterdam spokeswoman Frances van Heijst told the Washington Post (which is owned by Bezos), to explain the thinking behind the decision. “We attach great importance to preserving employment,” she said, adding that the city would not cover the costs of removing and reassembling the bridge.

That was hardly reassuring to some politicians.

"This man has earned his money by structurally cutting staff, evading taxes, avoiding regulations, and now we have to tear down our beautiful national monument?” Stephan Leewis, a member of the Rotterdam council from the environmental party GroenLinks , told the local broadcaster Rijnmond, which broke the news on Wednesday. “That is really a bridge too far,” he said.

The deal also sparked anger among preservationists. “Jobs are important,” Ton Wesselink of Rotterdam’s historical society Historisch Genootschap Roterodamum told Rijnmond . “But there are limits with what you can and should do with our industrial heritage.”

Yet there are few limits, it seems, to what can be negotiated by a tech titan like Bezos, whose wealth grew by $5 billion last year to $195 billion, making him the world’s second richest individual after Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Last September, Bezos committed $1 billion to climate projects—including those focused on restoring the oceans.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Recommended

Jeff bezos’ unfinished mega yacht towed away after bridge drama, threats of egging.

Jeff Bezos’ unfinished mega yacht was towed away from a Dutch shipbuilding yard before dawn Tuesday just weeks after Rotterdam residents threatened to pelt the luxury vessel with eggs if the city went through with plans to dismantle a landmark bridge to make way for the $500 million ship.

The 417-foot long, three-masted yacht, which goes by the name Y721 , was relocated from the Oceanco shipyard in Alblasserdam to the Greenport yard just 24 miles away in Rotterdam, according to the German-language daily Der Spiegel.

Video of the towing was posted to YouTube by Dutch yacht enthusiast Hanco Bol.

“We never saw a transport going that fast,” Bol writes of what he witnessed. It took less than three hours for the ship to travel southwest along the Noord canal even though it normally requires nearly twice as much time to traverse the route, according to Bol.

He speculates that Oceanco, the company that was commissioned to build the yacht, chose the timing of the move in order to keep it under wraps given the considerable publicity it has generated.

Rotterdammers who were furious about plans to dismantle “De Hef” bridge , also known as Koningshaven, had threatened to pelt the yacht with eggs if it made the journey.

Bol writes that the yacht’s route was designed to avoid traveling through the Rotterdam city center and underneath “De Hef” — even though it would have saved more time.

Oceanco last month announced that it had dropped its request for the Rotterdam city council to approve the temporary dismantling of the bridge.

The company had indicated that Bezos, the Amazon founder and second-richest person in the world, was willing to foot the bill for the removal of the middle section of the span so that the yacht would be able to sail through the Nieuwe Mass River.

Bol speculates that Oceanco intentionally avoided towing the unfinished yacht underneath “De Hef.”

“I think that was intentional,” he told Der Spiegel. 

“When I was standing on one of the bridges, they shined a searchlight on me, so it wasn’t easy for me to take pictures.”

According to Dutch media reports, it will take several more months for the ship to be completed.

The Post has reached out to Amazon and Oceanco seeking comment.

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Jeff Bezos’s $500m yacht stealthily towed out of Dutch shipyard after bridge dismantling controversy

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Jeff Bezos ’s yacht was quietly towed out of a Dutch shipyard this week, German magazine Der Spiegel reports . The ship previously attracted boatloads of controversy after its manufacturer asked the city of Rotterdam to dismantle a historic bridge to let it through.

The yachting firm, Oceanco, eventually withdrew the request, and hauled the Amazon billionaire’s 417-foot vessel to the Greenport shipyard early Tuesday morning, taking a more obscure route outside the city center that didn’t require passing under the bridge in question.

Hanco Bol, a local yachting enthusiast, spotted the transport in progress around 3am and posted a detailed video of the three-hour journey on YouTube.

He speculated that the alternate route was chosen “to keep the launch and transport under wraps”.

"We never saw a transport going that fast," he wrote in the caption of his YouTube video

The Independent has contacted Oceanco for comment.

The yacht, dubbed Y721 and reportedly worth $500m, may have left its original docking in Alblasserdam, Netherlands, but it leaves a checkered reputation behind.

The project came in for a storm of criticism when the shipbuilder asked Rotterdam in February to temporarily take apart the Koningshaven Bridge, a nearly 100-year-old local landmark, to allow the massive, three-mast vessel to pass underneath it.

“There’s a principle at stake,” Stefan Lewis, a former City Council member, told The New York Times , describing the outrage from Rotterdammers. “What can you buy if you have unlimited cash? Can you bend every rule? Can you take apart monuments?”

Locals even planned to egg the yacht as it sailed to its next port.

In July, the Dutch newspaper Trouw reported that Oceanco withdrew its request to dismantle the bridge

"As a result of the reports, shipyard employees feel threatened and the company fears vandalism," Trouw reported, according to public records it uncovered.

Mr Bezos has positioned himself as a leading climate philanthropist, and plans to give away $10bn through his Bezos Earth Fund, but he also lives an extremely high-carbon lifestyle.

The former Amazon CEO is one of the biggest landholders in the US .

Superyachts like the Y721 emit about 1,500 times more carbon than a typical family car per year.

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Watch CBS News

Mayor denies Dutch city will dismantle historic bridge for Jeff Bezos' yacht

By Megan Cerullo

February 4, 2022 / 2:05 PM EST / MoneyWatch

A Dutch city has not agreed to temporarily disassemble a bridge built in 1927 to make room for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ' mega-yacht, CBS MoneyWatch has learned.

A spokesperson for the mayor — and the city — on Friday told CBS MoneyWatch that Dutch press reports that Rotterdam would disassemble an historic bridge to make room for Bezos' boat were false, and that it has not received, or approved any such request. 

If Bezos or custom yacht-builder Oceanco asks for an accommodation, the city will consider it.

"The company that built the ship didn't yet ask for a permit so there is not an issue at this moment. When they ask for the permit, then we have to make a decision if we allow it or not, and how, and things like that," the spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.

Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb also denied earlier press reports, telling Dutch paper Algemeen Dagblad that "No decision has been made yet," noting that neither Bezos nor his yacht's maker have applied for a permit to take down part of the bridge. 

The Amazon founder's $500 million boat, built by Netherlands-based Oceanco and scheduled to be completed soon, measures 417 feet long and must pass through Rotterdam, under its landmark bridge, to reach its owner, NL Times reported . The problem? The Koninginnebrug bridge, a steel bridge nicknamed De Hef, isn't tall enough to accommodate the ship's three masts, which exceed the 130 feet of clearance the bridge offers.   

Dutch press reports said that the city would remove the central section of the bridge to make way for the yacht, the largest ever built in the Netherlands. 

At this point in time, city officials in Rotterdam, who have been in contact with Oceanco regarding the construction of the superyacht, only know that "there is a big ship that has to go through the ocean some day," a spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch, adding that they anticipate receiving a request to make room for the boat to pass under the bridge. 

The spokesperson noted that the city has in the past had to deconstruct parts of the bridge to accommodate large vessels. 

"This is not the first time we have to do something about this bridge so that a big ship can go through. Once every few years a big ship has to go through to the other side," the spokesperson said. "So it's not unusual, in a way."

Rotterdam officials were said to have yielded to the billionaire, the world's  second-richest person , given the significance of the project to the local economy. Rotterdam council project leader Marcel Walravens called the construction of the superyacht "a very important project" economically, according to local broadcaster Rijnmond . Dismantling the bridge was the "only alternative," he said. 

Oceanco had agreed to pay for the cost of dismantling operation, Rotterdam spokesperson Frances Van Heijst told the NL Times. It's unclear if Bezos, who is worth roughly $176 billion , would pay for any of the disassembly cost.

The shipbuilder did not respond to a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch. 

Aboutaleb, the mayor, said the controversial undertaking remains under consideration, but that Bezos still lacks the official approval to move forward. He also said Bezos' wealth and status will not influence his decision. 

"That has absolutely nothing do with this decision. It's about the facts. I want to know them first," Aboutaleb told the Dutch language newspaper.

"It's not an issue of what is going through the bridge," the city spokesperson reiterated. "It's not like if it's a ship for Mr. Bezos all of a sudden the rules are changing. But if there is a call for a permit, we will make a decision based on facts and not emotions. But we are not at that stage at this moment," the spokesperson said.

Some locals oppose altering the bridge on behalf of one of the richest people on the planet. Protesters have organized an event on Facebook at which they vowed to gather to throw eggs at Bezos' yacht when it passes under the bridge, scheduled for June. 

"Rotterdam was built from the rubble by the people of Rotterdam, and we don't just take that apart for the phallic symbol of a megalomaniac billionaire. Not without a fight!!" event organizers wrote on Facebook. 

• Netherlands

Megan Cerullo is a New York-based reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering small business, workplace, health care, consumer spending and personal finance topics. She regularly appears on CBS News 24/7 to discuss her reporting.

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It’s just nuts: Jeff Bezos is dismantling a Rotterdam bridge for his yacht

Billionaires: they walk around thinking they own the place. Or, in this case, it’s Jeff Bezos trying to make way for his superyacht . How? He’s getting the De Hef bridge taken apart . 🙄

Amazon CEO, and self-appointed space cowboy , Jeff Bezos commissioned yacht building company Oceanco in Alblasserdam, South Holland for a mid-life crisis yacht with a hefty €430 million price tag.

You would think the logistics would be well-thought-out with so much money on the line. But apparently, the landmark Koningshaven bridge in Rotterdam (aka De Hef) is now standing in the way of taking this boat on a spin, reports the NOS .

Bezos’ solution? Throw money at it till it disappears. 🚿

A national monument

Oceanco and Bezos asked the municipality of Rotterdam , the maritime capital of Europe, to temporarily dismantle the 1878 monument so that the megaship can pass. 😶

Rotterdammers feel very strongly about the De Hef. In the early 90s, they resisted demolition plans after the bridge lost its function as a train passage. From 2014 to 2017, the bridge underwent a complete restoration and is now generally considered a national monument.

To make it completely clear: asking to take the De Hef bridge apart for your superyacht is a bit like asking if it would be possible to take down the Eiffel Tower because it’s in the way of your private jet or something. Rude!

Where’s your logic? I can’t see it!

Worst of all, Rotterdam’s municipality seems to be game, according to Rijnmond . “Employment is important, but there are limits to what you can and may do with our heritage,” comments Ton Wesselink of the Historical Society Roterodamum.

Municipality liaison and De Hef project leader Marcel Walravens explains that “De Hef has a maximum height. The only alternative is to take out the middle part.”

So, will Bezos actually get his well and have the bridge taken apart? The possibility is present, as “from an economic perspective and the perspective of maintaining employment, the municipality considers this a very important project,” says Walravens.

People ain’t happy, Bezos

As expected, people made room for their anger, surprise, and disbelieve over this foolishness on Twitter:

Hoe regel je zoiets? ‘Ja hoi… Bezos hier. Luister, haal even een stuk uit de brug wil je? Ja… boot te groot, ja. Gezeik…’ Dat verzoek is op iemands bureau geland. Vreemde werkdag. https://t.co/kPk19PT6Bq — Myrthe Hilkens (@MyrtheHilkens) February 2, 2022

“How do you ask something like this? ‘Yes, hello, Bezos here. Listen, could you quickly take a piece out of the bridge, will ‘ya? Yes…boat too big, yeah. Annoying…’ This request ended up on someone’s office desk. Strange workday.”

We at DutchReview are taking it out in a news rant as you can see, but Twitter folks had other ideas. 👀

Eat the rich. https://t.co/XfqQxUSfAo — Dr Lieke Smits (@Lieke_A_S) February 2, 2022

What do you think of this very usual request to the city of Rotterdam? Feel free to rant and tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Feature Image: DutchReview/Supplied

Take his ‘boat’ apart.

I’m a little puzzled regarding the Bezos yacht/bridge controversy. I would assume that the architects and Oceanco (not the first yacht they built) were aware of the construction limitations. Common sense dictates that when you built something e.g. house, ship, bridge, rocket etc., you take all the parameters into consideration. In this instance one would consider the length, the depth and very important, the height of the masts. Obviously, something was overlooked! In that case we’re talking about stupidity. On the other hand, did they inform the city of Rotterdam that the bridge would be a problem? Could it be that Mr. Bezos believes that the sky is the limit and obstacles can be overcome with money? In which case we’re talking about capitalist arrogance.

Don’t worry too much about this poorly researched ‘news’ article. Little investigation and much speculation is a strategy to gain attention, not to report on happenings around us. The constraint was indeed known from day one. The constraint has been known for this shipbuilder since it became one in the 00’s. The bridge was re-designed (back to its original design) and rebuilt in the ’00s. The bridge was destroyed in WW2 and a swing bridge had been used for the following 60 years which is why the shipbuilder was able to be a viable business for this size ship. The new (old design) bridge was designed to be able to be partially disassembled specifically for these reasons to allow the shipbuilder to not lose business. This is not the first and will not be the last time it accommodates the shipbuilder.

Too much money corrupts people. Mega-money corrupts governments.

Come on… The flip side of the coin, besides that he is paying for all costs, the boat was built in The Netherlands generating jobs and taxes. How can people complaint about it??? Dutch people don’t realize the good life they have….

tell bezos to fuck him self

I just don’t get it, the Dutch Review have this space to comment the articles, you leave your thoughts and they simply ignore it and don’t publish….

Bezos is a effing idiot! WhoTF needs a 500 MILLION dollar yacht anyway? Go learn how to weld Bezos and restore a classic AMERICAN hot rod!

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Jeff Bezos reportedly buys fourth private jet for $80M that flies near the speed of sound

Jeff Bezos has reportedly bought a fourth private jet — and it carries a stratospheric price tag of $80 million.

The billionaire Amazon founder last month purchased a Gulfstream G700, luxury business jet manufactured by Gulfstream Aerospace that’s considered one of the largest and most advanced private jets in the world, according to Business Insider.

With a maximum range of around 7,500 nautical miles, the G700 is also said to be capable of reaching top speeds of Mach 0.925 — or around 92.5% of the speed of sound, around 710 m.p.h.

The G700 also boasts 20 panoramic windows and “whisper⁠-⁠quiet cabin with 100% fresh, plasma⁠-⁠ionized air replenished every two to three minutes.”

Last Sunday, the G700 took off from Ibiza.

At around the same time, Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sánchez were photographed on the island near the mogul’s $500 million superyacht.

Publicly available flight data showed that Bezos’ plane made 28 flights in 39 days — leaving a carbon footprint of 264 tons, or 17 times what the average American emits in a year, according to JetSpy .

Reps for Bezos have pointed to the face that he uses sustainable aviation fuel for his travels and pays for carbon offsets, which fund projects that reduce greenhouse gas pollution and cancel out carbon emissions generated by the trips on his planes and yachts.

Bezos apparently tried to keep his acquisition of the plane out of the public eye by using the Federal Aviation Administration’s program that allows jet owners to keep information about their aircraft private.

The FAA Privacy ICAO Aircraft Address (PIA) program allows aircraft owners to use temporary, randomized addresses that changes the aircraft’s identity numbers so as to make flights less traceable by the public.

News of Bezos’ latest purchase was also posted by Jack Sweeney, the Florida-based college student who drew the ire of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift for posting publicly available flight-tracking data about their private jets on his social media accounts.

The Post has sought comment from Amazon, where Bezos remains a board member. He stepped down as CEO in July 2021.

He was succeeded by the current boss, Andy Jassy.

Bezos is also said to own two other predecessor models of the G700 — the Gulfstream G650 and a Pilatus PC-24.

Jeff Bezos has another new jet A brand new Gulfstream G700 N11AF delivered on 7/10/2024 pic.twitter.com/nyZAfJByqk — Jack Sweeney (@Jxck_Sweeney) August 20, 2024

As of Wednesday, Bezos’ net worth was valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $203 billion — making him the second richest person in the world behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

In March of last year, it was reported that Goldman Sachs abandoned plans to buy the G700 , which comes equipped with a private shower, as part of a cost-cutting measure.

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Jeff Bezos superyacht will cause historic Rotterdam bridge

There are plans to take apart, and then reassemble, a historic bridge in Rotterdam to allow a superyacht built for billionaire Jeff Bezos to leave a shipyard.

Axar.az reports that the luxury yacht, linked to the world's richest man, is being built by Dutch firm Oceanco. The vessel is reported to be 127m long and too tall to fit through the Koningshaven Bridge.

Rotterdam's mayor has denied any decision has been made to dismantle the bridge, saying he has not received a request.

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The Princess of Wales joined the Royal family at Crathie Kirk in Balmoral on Sunday as she was seen at church for the first time since her cancer announcement.

Hundreds of families fall foul of seven-year inheritance tax rule

A growing number of families are being hit with inheritance tax on gifts after falling foul of the seven-year rule, official figures show.

Jeremy Clarkson BANS James May from Oxfordshire pub

Jeremy Clarkson has banned James May from his new pub, The Farmer’s Dog.

Zoë Kravitz Ditched Her Bra and Rocked a Nipple-Baring Tank Top for Date Night with Channing Tatum

The actress wore The Row and was styled by Andrew Mukamal

A woman got tired of her mail getting stolen. She sent herself an Apple AirTag to help catch the thieves

A California woman whose mail was recently stolen used technology as bait to track down the thieves, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.

'I live in Mallorca – this is what locals really think of you when you come on holiday'

A wave of anti-tourism demonstrations have swept across mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands in recent months, and a Brit living in Mallorca has revealed what locals really think of visitors

Tesco has made a 'bonkers' change to using cash so we tested it out

Tesco has made 40 of its cafes cashless in a move that has been described as 'bonkers'

UK heatwave 'could break 118-year temperature record' next month, forecaster warns

A scorching heatwave appears to be on the cards next month, according to weather forecasters, with temperatures possibly breaking a record that has stood for more than 100 years

What to expect from the new Boeing 777-9 – the world’s longest and widest passenger plane

Last week Jack Hayward, senior first officer at British Airways, tweeted: “Exciting times as BA announces the intention to operate Boeing 777-9 aircraft as part of our fleet.

Vladimir Putin declares state of emergency in Russian region after Ukraine attack

Assault comes around third Ukrainian independence day since war broke out

‘Shock’ minimum wage rise would bankrupt Iceland supermarket, boss warns Labour

The boss of Iceland has warned Labour that a “shock” increase in the minimum wage would bankrupt his business, months after switching to support the party from the Conservatives.

Drone described by Ukraine as ‘a completely new class of weapon’ hits Russia for the first time

Ukraine has used a new class of domestically-produced drone to attack Russia for the first time, Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on Saturday.