[4] This company bought two steamships, which sailed from Amsterdam to Harburg in the Kingdom of Hanover and Altona in (Danish) Holstein.

Due to fierce competition with the ASM and other problems, the Harburg company lost about 50,000 guilders in its first two years of operation.

[5] In April 1856 a committee of influential people announced their intention to found a public company for steam navigation.

[8] The KNSM appointed several agents in the harbors were her ships were destined: Fauré Frères in Bordeaux; Fiedler & Co. in Copenhagen; Schröder en Co. in Riga; R. Kleyenstüber in Königsberg; and Kapherr in Saint Petersburg.

However, in August 1856 KNSM succeeded in buying the small iron screw vessel Nina for 8,500 GBP, or about 102,000 guilders.

Here British and German companies expanded and made excellent profits, while Dutch exports to North America declined by 31% from 1857 to 1867.

[21] In 1869 the navy officer Marin Henry Jansen brought the Transatlantic trade situation to the public attention in a brochure.

Jansen applied to the finance ministry for a 10-year subsidy of 624,000 guilders a year for a steam line from Vlissingen to New York, which he would found.

Meanwhile, the North Sea Canal was close to completion, so that after using Nieuwediep for a few years, the line could leave from Amsterdam.

[33] During the same meeting, the KNSM decided to get involved in founding the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland, which would have a very difficult start.

Of the two ocean liners, Stad Amsterdam twice sailed to the East Indies, but proved unsuitable for the climate.

On the other hand, the opening of the North Sea Canal in 1876, and that of the Amsterdam–Zutphen railway led to great cost reductions.

In 1880 it even chartered KNSM's Pollux and Castor for its trade to New York, even though these ships were too small in an economic sense.

Some merchants, and also the Netherlands Trading Society then offered KNSM some guarantees against losses, if it would start a line from Amsterdam to New York.

The year started successfully, but then a deadly disease killed 13 babies on board Nemesis, which turned migrants away from KNSM.

The outbreak led to many KNSM ships spending considerable time lying idle in quarantine while cost continued.

While inland navigation on the Rhine became more important in the nineteenth century, Amsterdam's part in this traffic had decreased from 25% in 1850 to about 5% in 1870.

This decrease had to do with the increasing size of inland navigation vessels, which the canals leading to Amsterdam could not handle.

The KNSM reacted by taking part in the Amsterdamsche Beurtvaart Maatschappij, which opened lines to Cologne (1893), Frankfurt (1894) and Strasbourg (1897).

Both the Oosterdok Lock and the Kattenburg Bridge seriously limited the size of some of the KNSM ships, and led to many delays.

[47] That same year the KNSM suddenly expanded again, probably due to an improved financial situation and a rejuvenated board.

This allowed KNSM to expand to the Caribbean, and gave KWIM the means to acquire bigger ships.

Over the same period, the surface of the KNSM warehouses expanded from 16,545 m3 to 63,564 m3[54] After World War I, many felt that shipping would rebound.

[57] Dutch shipping companies suffered disproportionally, because of the collapse of the German economy due to the Treaty of Versailles.

[63] On 1 February 1927 a process to liquidate the Koninklijke West-Indische Maildienst (KWIM) and to integrate its business into KNSM started.

[70] In 1934 the volume of cargo and passenger traffic increased, but the devaluation of the British pound meant that KNSM did not profit that much.

The net loss was still in the millions, and so the government demanded a financial restructuring of the company if it wanted to get support in 1936.

[77] In 1938 results were also good, but KNSM still had to assign profits to reserves, because the book value of many ships was still higher than their replacement value.

The company headquarters building on the Prins Hendrikkade in Amsterdam is still called the Scheepvaarthuis (Shipping House) and is now a hotel.

The Geschiedenis der Amsterdamsche stoomvaart was written on demand for several Amsterdam steam navigation companies.