How the Word War convoy sailors risked their lives — and were dumped by society afterwards
They risked their lives while working under pressure in wartime: The Norwegian merchant fleet sailors suffered not only during the wars but also in the aftermath of them being imprisoned, black listed and shunned from public life.
The term “war sailor” came to be in Norway after the Second World War, but traces of Norwegian sailors serving on merchant ships and during wars go way back, even when Norway was in union with Denmark. During the Napoleonic Wars, many Norwegian merchants equipped their merchant ships with cannons and other weapons, trying to defend themselves from attack from British ships venturing the Norwegian coast. Denmark had sided with Napoleon and as a result, Norwegian sailors and ships suffered trade blockade and attacks from Brits. The poet Henrik Ibsen’s famous poem Terje Vigen describes the famine that arouse in 1808–1809 as a result of British import blockade. The main hero, a Norwegian sailor trying to save his family, were arrested by a British ship and serving a prison sentence in England for many years. When he finally came back home, his family had died of starvation.
Claims from colleagues who worked with the young apothecary apprentice Ibsen in 1850 described him often walking to the docs in the small coastal town he lived in, and talked to the local sailors about their experiences and life. Many sailors had sailed during the Napoleonic Wars, and Ibsen were likely inspired by their stories. The poem Terje Vigen became one of the most known and first stories of the sacrifices of sailors in wartime. As time passed, Norway became an independent country and shipping grew to be the main trading transportation. It wouldn’t take long until the industry were responsible for thousands of sailors who risked their lives on supply routes across the Atlantic from New York and Halifax to Liverpool, to England from Norway or to Sierra Leone or Murmansk.
The biggest trauma
During the First World War and the Second World War Norway continued shipping as nothing had changed. The neutral position during WWI made an economic boom which came through Norwegian shipping companies, and stock traders sold shares like never before — many an “average Joe” could earn ten times his salary overnight buying stocks in shipping companies, and thus the popular character “Bør Børson Jr.” became a comedic figure of a newly rich person without class or taste, just with a lot of money. By the start of the war in 1914 Norway had the fourth biggest fleet in the world with it’s 1800 ships. Sailing to Arkhangelsk in Russia, the Baltic Sea and further down in Europe, transporting coal became the most important cargo. In this “war profiteering circus” the sailors suffered the most. The freight had to be shipped from A to B, and since England and other nearby countries ran short on materials because of the war, sailors had to work under hard schedules to deliver supplies and avoid German submarines.
The most important supply line went between Norway and England, where convoys of ships tried to protect themselves from the German submarines. As 1917 escalated the submarine war, ships were attacked without a warning. During this spring 423 ships were torpedoed or blown apart by mines and 733 sailors died. In total Norway lost 2123 sailors, 889 ships and 1,3 million tonnage these years.
The Second World War proved more disastrous than the previous. With Norway being occupied by Nazi-Germany in 1940, the Norwegian trade fleet became a split entity of ships trying to escape the occupants back home. Being the fourth biggest fleet meant many supply lines and harbors run by allied countries in which Norwegian ships sailed to instead of seeking German or Norwegian harbors. 30 ships with 700 sailors stayed in France and French colonies in Africa until they capitulated and then tried to escape to British shores as recommended by the Nortraship organization run by the exiled Norwegian government. The sailors were left on their own to get out of France while avoiding German imprisonment. Some ran away, others were rescued by American ships in North-Africa in 1941 and 1942. In Sweden 29 Norwegian ships were stuck while German marine ships surrounded and claimed them. 15 ships managed to sneak through the German blockade during the winter of 1942 to the Orkney Islands, but the 14 others with 277 crew members onboard were captured and sent to German concentration camps. 43 sailors died there.
The biggest trauma for sailors were the same as in the First World War — the submarines. Survivors of torpedoed ships were either left to die or luckily rescued by other convoys sailing by: The Norwegian trade ship M/T Nyholt was torpedoed by their own colleagues working in a German submarine the 18th of January 1942. The survivors including Dr. Adam Egede-Nissen who later told his story, desperately set sail for Newfoundland while caring for 9 injured and saving a bit of rations. While freezing and starving, the Doctor helplessly watches his crew dying in front of him, until they were seen and picked up by a Canadian destroyer ship. Many such stories came from sailors who survived and in the end of the war came back home to Norway. Traumatized, exhausted and isolated from friends or family for many years left them alone and vulnerable. Many were only given low-paid jobs due to the lack of education, others got severe health problems and became unemployed while the third could simply not adjust to a life on the mainland and continued to work on merchant ships. While the First World War caused nationwide charities, tributes and help to the sailors as the war was raging on, the Second World War forgot about them entirely. 3700 sailors abroad, 1133 sailors and passengers died here at home, but for those who came home in 1945 it was no one waiting to help them.
The war sailor syndrome
It took 25 years before the public and researchers started to understand the problems surrounding the “war sailors”. Dr. Adam Egede-Nissen wrote in 1974 about the “war sailor syndrome” as a list of symptoms in which most sailors experienced long after the war was over. Senior physician Finn Askevold spoke to the local organization of war sailors the same year, and added that tiredness, memory loss, concentration issues, irritability and nightmares often followed. Many sailors experienced during sleep the dreamed sounds of alarms and bombs, and then desperately grips for their lifeline or wife. Dr. Askevold also compared between Leo Eitinger’s study of survivors of German concentration camps, and the war sailors mental health issues in a research paper. The many similarities got recognition by Eitinger and other researchers abroad, except here in Norway. Dr. Egede-Nissen explained that “no doctors thought about that consequences may follow the survivors for the next 20–30–40 years of their lives” and while the concentration camp survivors got celebrations and healthcare when arriving home, the sailors became nervous, drug addicted and sometimes violent on their families. The consequences were not something doctors were open to take seriously, neither the government: the message had been clear, to simply move on and forget about it. Most had to organize and fight the government and welfare system to get help and recognition of the health issues the war had caused them, not to mention the pension from Nortraships organization. In 1966 it was only 377 out of 33 000 sailors who got their pension.
It was not until 2013 that the war sailors received an official apology, when then Defense Minister Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen apologized on behalf of the Norwegian state for the treatment the Norwegian war sailors received after the Second World War.
Sources:
Regjeringen: Prime Minister’s speech on the premier of the movie “The War Sailor” https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/statsministerens-tale-ved-spesialvisning-av-spillefilmen-krigsseileren/id2925853/
Psykologtidsskriftet: https://psykologtidsskriftet.no/anmeldt/2018/10/et-norsk-traume
