harbor. The name “IJmuiden” first appeared as IJ-muiden in lines written in 1848 by the professor and journalist (and, later, a liberal finance minister in the Van Lynden van Sandenburg Cabinet) Simon Vissering. The present IJmuiden form was eventually adopted in 1876, as the North Sea Canal was being completed in this section.
In 1890 it had about 1,500 inhabitants, but boomed when the Koninklijke Nederlandse Hoogovens steelworks settled in IJmuiden in 1918. At that time shipping was at a low, because during World War I minesweepers laid many mines off the coast of IJmuiden. Also the canal mouth needed constant dredging due to the littoral drift in both directions on an open, sandy coast, due to winds blowing alternately from opposite quarters, sand accumulates in the sheltered angles outside the harbour between each converging breakwater and the shore.
World War 2
After the German invasion of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, the Dutch Royal family left the country from IJmuiden in the late evening of May 12, on board the British destroyer HMSCodrington. The quays at IJmuiden were crowded at that time with people desperate to be transported across the channel, sometimes at great expense. During the German occupation, the canal was out of operation and the Germans destroyed most of IJmuiden to create what they called Festung IJmuiden (Fortress IJmuiden), a heavily defended area in which the entire civilian population had been removed.
IJmuiden became the site of two separate fortified pens constructed by the German navy to house their Schnellboote (fast torpedo boats, known to the Allies as "E-boats") and Bibermidget submarines. The older structure, codename Schnellbootbunker AY (SBB1), was protected by a 10-foot (3.0 m) thick concrete roof. The newer one, codenameSchnellbootbunker BY (SBB2), had 10–12 feet (3.0–3.7 m) of concrete, with a further 2–4-foot (0.61–1.2 m) layer separated by
