Maarten Michiel van der Mey (1950), lives in Kleve (Germany) with his family and works as a representative for the Benelux countries in a German high-tech firm. He was born and raised in a naval family in the Netherlands, where his parents named him after Holland’s most famous admirals: Maarten Harpertszn Tromp and Michiel Adriaanszn de Ruyter. The family roots lie in the Dutch East Indies.

With such a background it is no surprise that his interests in ships and aircraft evolved, initially resulting in a box filled with photographs and documentation on the pre-war Royal Netherlands Navy. In the course of time, he developed a deep passion for the Dutch Navy’s Dornier Wal flying boat, as it mastered the seas and skies like a flying frigate over the countless green islands of the wonderful Indonesian archipelago. The latter is the home country of his parents and maternal (great-)grandparents.

His studies and research of the so-called ‘Pisa’- boats (a nickname of the Dornier Wal in the Dutch Navy) brought him to Italy, the people, the culture and the language of which he learned to appreciate deeply in the course.
The long-held passion for the flying boats led to his first, successful Dutch book about the ‘Dornier Wal’, in 1987. Meanwhile, ‘collecting’ developed into more research and the dissemination of information on flying boats. In 1999 an old film of the Italian Air Force was rediscovered, restored and adapted. It is shown regularly all over Europe at sparkling presentations about the flying boat, combined with other supporting publications, presentations, films and/or b/w (black & white) slides (in English, German, French, Italian and Dutch) under the umbrella of his newly founded ‘Dornier Wal Documentation Center’ (DWDC).