Historic ship visit 'a poignant reminder'
The S/S Hestmanden, which served as a convoy vessel during World War Two, will be berthed in Newcastle until Thursday as part of a UK tour marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
For Chris Flanighan, its arrival is a poignant reminder of his grandfather, Karluf Thorsen, who fled Nazi-occupied Norway and served throughout the war in the merchant navy.
He said: "This ship symbolises the life he lived, and the risks he took".
Built in 1911, S/S Hestmanden played a vital role in transporting medicine, food, fuel, ammunition, and weapons during the war.
It also formed part of a covert flotilla of fishing boats used to smuggle soldiers, agents and freedom fighters between Norway and Shetland, and on return trips helped to evacuate refugees and Allied soldiers.
Now a national treasure in Norway, it serves as a floating war sailors' museum, preserving the legacy of those who kept the supply lines open.
Mr Flanighan, from Wallsend, North Tyneside, has spent years uncovering the legacy of his grandfather.
"He left Norway around the age of 17 or 18 and didn't return home until he was 22," he said.
"Germany had occupied Norway, and he was part of the convoys supplying the Allied effort from Britain.
"This ship symbolises the life he lived, and the risks he took".
In a tribute to his grandfather's legacy, Mr Flanighan has been invited to join the Maritime Volunteer Service on one of their vessels as part of a ceremonial escort up the river.
"When I heard the ship was coming to Newcastle - the last stop on her UK tour - I was over the moon," he said.
"It's not just a ship visit. For me and my family, it's like she's coming home."
During the visit, people have a chance to go on board the floating museum until Wednesday and explore its interactive exhibitions.
There will also be events including a wreath-laying ceremony at Norwegian war graves in Jesmond.
Capt Stephen C. Healy of Trinity House, Newcastle, said: "This historic visit reaffirms the deep maritime bonds between Norway and the north-east of England.
"It is a tremendous privilege to help honour the legacy of the war sailors."
Follow BBC Newcastle on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
How the 'Shetland Bus' helped Norway resist Nazi Germany
Maritime Volunteer Service
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
American Press
3 hours ago
- American Press
River trip across Europe: 500 miles, six countries in 15 days
By Mary Richardson Sometimes travel is like a French meal with seven courses. It tells you about a particular cuisine and immerses you in its deliciousness. Other times, traveling can be like a tray of appetizers. You get a taste of this, a taste of that. The river boat cruise that Joe and I took from Budapest to Amsterdam was full of appetizers. And, like a good appetizer should, it left us looking forward to the whole meal. We know we are going to have to return for longer visits if we want dessert. A trip across Europe via the riverways was one of our dream trips that had not yet materialized. Then our travel agent, Anne Rose, found a speci al, last-minute price of $6,000 — including airfare — for a 15-day river cruise on Emerald Cruises. We booked it immediately. Over two weeks, we traveled almost 500 miles by river, going through six different countries and stopping at 15 different cities. We sailed on three famous, immensely important rivers – the Danube, the Main, and finally, the Rhine when going into Amsterdam. I saw breathtaking beauty, both man-made and natural. Each day had some new wonder. But the greatest takeaway from the whole trip was a realization of the extent of my ignorance — how much I didn't know, didn't understand, and didn't appreciate. My first inkling of this ignorance came from looking at the itinerary. I had never heard of many of the places we would be visiting. Yes, I knew about Budapest, Vienna, Amsterdam and Cologne (kind of), but Bratislava, Melk, Dürnstein, Passau, Regensburg, Würzburg, Wertheim, Bamberg, Rüdesheim, Miltenberg and Český Krumlov? Not so much. And, while I knew something about Germany and the Netherlands, I was pretty vague about Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and even Austria. Each place had a distinct story to tell. Here are just a few of the highlights for me: BRATISLAVA The realization of my ignorance started in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia and a city of about half a million people, nestled on the banks of the Danube and within view of both Austria and Hungary. I was in a city that had gone through World War II on the Nazi side, and had only recently transformed from communism to a democracy. A lovely young woman, probably in her mid-20s, led us through the old part of the city up to the Bratislava Castle. As we looked over the walls toward the modern city and the river, she told us how times had changed. Because of democracy, she knew she had to work for a living, and whether or not she succeeded was up to her. However, she said, her parents had grown up in communism, and it was harder for them to realize that the state was not going to provide for their every need. They missed the old way. Bratislava was not always in Slovakia. It was in Czechoslovakia, which was formed after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. In 1939, Czechoslovakia was dismantled. It became the First Slovak Republic, a Nazi puppet state. I hadn't known this. We walked down the hill from the castle and came to a plaque on an old stone wall. It read, 'In this house in 1847 Sigmund Steiner established the Antiquarian Bookstore STEINER. The Steiner family lived here from the 19th century (except during the Holocaust) through the first half of the 20th century. The memorial plaque is also in memory of 16 members of the family who died in concentration camps in 1942-44. May their souls be bound up in the bond of everlasting life. Remember and never forget.' During World War II, more than 15,000 Jews were de port ed from Bratislava, and most died in concentration camps. Bratislava's Jewish Quarter was largely destroyed. I hadn't known that. The city was bombed by Allied forces in 1944 and liberated by the Soviet Red Army in April, 1945. Czechoslovakia was re-established. 'The people welcomed the Russians,' our guide told us. 'But we didn't know they were going to stay and occupy us.' Then came 1989. A huge public, student-led demonstration against the Russians began in Bratislava and Prague. It was called the Velvet Revolution because of its peacefulness; no shots were fired. I hadn't heard of it. Our young guide remembered another political split — the Velvet Divorce, so called because it was also non-violent. She recalled a morning in 1993. 'I woke up and my mother told me we were no longer Czechoslovakians,' she said. 'We were now Slovakians.' She explained that the two most powerful men in the country had both wanted to be prime minister. 'So they decided, just the two of them, to divide the country,' she said. Overnight, they created Slovakia and The Czech Republic. 'I was pretty surprised,' she said. I was, too. VIENNA Vienna was once the imperial capital of the all-powerful Habsburg monarchy. Today it identifies itself as the 'City of Music,' as it produced Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss. It is also the home of the artist Gustav Klimt, and every souvenir store was filled with cups and plates decorated with reproductions of his gold-gilted figures. Sigmund Freud lived and worked here, as did many other Jewish intellectuals, artists, and scientists before World War II. The magnificent, iconic St. Stephen's Cathedral rose almost 500 feet into the air. The roof was dazzling, as sunlight illuminated every one of its 230,000 colorful glazed tiles. But the commercial nature of the town intruded. All the expensive brands like Louis Vuitton had palatial-looking façades on the main square. And a huge sign for Coca-Cola hung from a building adjoining the church. It was so large it almost overshadowed the church's architecture. Walking through the historic center, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I felt like I was in the political and cultural heart of Central Europe. But there was another side. World War II has not been forgotten; history is not whitewashed here. In March, 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in what is called the Anschluss. Hitler was extremely popular and his speeches in Vienna received massive public support. Before 1938, Vienna had a Jewish population estimated at 200,000, and was one of the largest and most vibrant Jewish communities in Europe. After Anschluss, Jews were fired from their jobs, evicted, assaulted and deported. In November of 1938, synagogues were destroyed during Kristallnacht. Viennese Jews murdered in the Holocaust numbered 65,000. Today, Holocaust memorials dot the area, especially on the historic street, Judengasse, and include the Shoah Wall of Names. Our guide told us there is a cultural focus on remembering what happened, not forgetting. I knew some of this, but somehow it felt more real when standing on the streets where all this took place. ČESKÝ KRUMLOV Sometimes traveling brings you pure unexpected delight. This was how we felt when we 'discovered' Český Krumlov, a village in the Czech Republic that looks like a medieval stage set for a movie. Never mind that it was filled with tourists; we had never heard of it, so for us it was a personal discovery. Český Krumlov, also a UNESCO World Heritage site, is probably the best preserved medieval town in Europe. We walked through streets dating back to the 13th century. The original Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings have now been repurposed into hotels, restaurants and breweries (supposedly Budweiser got its start there). We watched people kayaking on the pretty Vltava River that encircled it, and, of course, we each drank a Budweiser 'Budvar.' Although in the medieval era, Český Krumlov was a thriving trade and administrative center, by the time World War II came along, it was no longer important. After the Munich Agreement in 1938, Nazi Germany annexed it as part of the Sudentenland, but no battles occurred in Český Krumlov. No bombs fell. Being too unimportant to bomb turned out to be very good for today's tourism industry. WÜRZBURG Würzburg, located in northern Bavaria, is another beautiful medieval town. The Main River curves its way through a city of half-timbered houses and architectural wonders. I walked across the famous 15th -century Old Main Bridge to get to the narrow, winding streets of the old city. A fortress sits above hills of vineyards and church spires punctuate the skyline. Then I entered the Würzburg Residence, a Baroque paradise. It looked like a palace but actually it had just been the main residence for the high-ranking church leaders of the Holy Roman Empire. Gold leaf adorned the walls, glass chandeliers hung over magnificent Rococo- style furniture, a grand staircase of gleaming marble rose from the main hall, and Italianate frescoes covered the ceilings. I felt like I was in the Palace of Versailles. Maybe it was a little smaller, but it was just as grand, just as ornate. The beautiful town of Würzburg was a Nazi garrison town, with military barracks and training facilities. Enthusiastic Nazi rallies took place in the medieval town squares. On March 16, 1945, the RAF carried out an air raid that lasted 17 minutes. About 90 percent of the city, including the Würzburg Residence, was destroyed by the bombs they dropped and in the resulting firestorm. And 5,000 people were killed. War-time photographs in the Würzburg Residence showed such destruction that restoration seemed impossible. Yet, in the 1940s – with much American help and a multitude of art historians, craftsmen and stonemasons – restoration began. It continued for 40 years, until, in 1981, the old city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. By 1950, artisans restored the old bridge to its formidable 15th-century Gothic form, even using some of the original huge stones. Without our guide, I would never have known what happened here. COLOGNE Our guide told us we would never get lost in Cologne if we just looked up. Towering above everything were the twin towers of the Cologne Cathedral. She was right. The towers soared 500 feet toward the heavens. They were never out of sight. Then she told us that Cologne was one of the most heavily damaged cities in Germany during World War II (90 percent of the city center was leveled), but that the cathedral had survived because the Allied bomber pilots needed it for navigation. They didn't bomb it because they needed it to know where they were. That was a nice story, and I wished it were true. Later, I found out the truth. It was hit 14 times. It was indeed damaged, but the cathedral's robust structure was built from incredibly durable Gothic stones. It was not intentionally spared, but it survived anyway. Seeing those still-standing towers must have felt like a miracle to the people in Cologne in 1944. Today, the town is bustling, lively, clean, and full of tourists. The buildings are a patchwork of medieval, Gothic, postwar modernist, and contemporary styles. Cologne did not try to recreate the pre-World War II city. With the help of the Marshall Plan, the political leaders decided instead to build modern buildings. They concentrated on infrastructure — roads, bridges and utilities. The most important old buildings were restored — the Cathedral, key churches, and a few Old Town facades. Today these historic buildings are right next to new modern blocks for commerce and living. I had never fully realized the complications, the controversies, and the effort required to rebuild a historic city that had been 90 percent destroyed by war. Many miracles occurred here. IN CONCLUSION…. Each time we toured a city, I heard new stories, especially about a war that I previously thought I had understood. I heard about the people who supported the Nazis. Two of our guides told me that their grandparents considered the Americans who came in after the war to be 'occupiers,' not 'liberators' as I had been taught. These new perspectives kept surprising me. I heard about living under communism. No one had anything good to say about that. And everywhere I saw miracles of rebirth, of reconstruction, of making the old new again. Each place called to us to come back. In these 15 days on the rivers, we had just had a taste, just the appetizers. We needed to stay longer to experience the rest of the courses. Maybe someday, with enough time, we could even find dessert.
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
How a 'moth-eaten rag' became a war memorial
A small coastal town is home to an unusual World War Two war memorial created by soldiers in memory of comrades who died while prisoners of war (POW). It was made by men from the 4th Battalion, The Suffolk Regiment, who were captured at the fall of Singapore in 1942. They spent more than three years as slave labourers for the Japanese army, much of it at Chungkai camp in Thailand. The centrepiece of the memorial in Leiston, Suffolk, is a union jack, used in the camp during funeral services and brought home by Corp Herbie Bailey after he and the other survivors were finally liberated. In 1952, the veterans transformed the "moth-eaten rag" into a tribute to the POWs of the 4th Battalion who died and to mark the 10th anniversary of their capture. "Sometimes people just refer to it as a flag, but it's not just a flag - the flag is just the centrepiece of a very, very interesting and unusual war memorial," said Taff Gillingham, chairman of the Friends of the Suffolk Regiment. In 1942, the 4th Battalion was among many Allied divisions rushed to defend Singapore, in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour. After fierce fighting but against impossible odds, the British, Australian and Indian forces were ordered to surrender. Somehow the 11ft by 6ft (3.3m by 1.8m) flag went with the men of the 4th Battalion when they were transferred to Chungkai camp, said Mr Gillingham. This was a POW camp used during the construction of the infamous Burma-Thailand Railway, and today it is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery. About 13,000 Allied prisoners of war died during the railway project, plus an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians, according to the commission. Mr Gillingham said the 4th and 5th battalions of the Suffolk Regiment were about 2,000 strong when they disembarked at Singapore in 1942, but more than a third of them had died by the end of the war. The POWs were allowed to build a little wooden chapel at Chungkai for church services, where the flag rested on its altar. "And every time one of the soldiers died, it was used for the funeral service," Mr Gillingham said. "Starved, beaten and executed for the slightest misdemeanours - the thing that inspires me is their resilience and their ingenuity, making medicines from plants that they'd find in the jungle, for example." Every aspect of the memorial has a specific link to the 4th Battalion, a territorial unit which recruited from the Leiston area. Mr Gillingham said: "The frame is just as interesting [as the flag], in that it's made from wood salvaged from Southwold Pier and the metal frame it sits on was made by the engineering works of Garretts, the engineering works in Leiston, so it was a proper local project. "And the colours behind the flag mean something too - they are the colours of the Pacific Star, the medal that all the Far East prisoners of war were given." Today, it is owned by the Friends of the Suffolk Regiment and is on long-term loan to the town's Long Shop Museum. When the men of the 4th Battalion were liberated at the end of the war, many, including Corp Bailey, continued to serve in the territorials for years, with weekly training and annual camps. Underneath the memorial is a plaque which describes it as "a moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole". It also records how the union jack was "hoisted to the top of the pole in the camp by the men of the battalion who survived three years of living hell". Mr Gillingham said: "It's often said to be the only war memorial based on an artefact brought back from the field, and it's certainly the only one I can think of, but it's a lovely thing because it has a direct connection with the place, and the people, with those who died." A service to mark the 80th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day and the end of World War Two will be held at the memorial at 10:30 BST. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X. More on this story 'Death railway' soldiers honoured with exhibition Film to tell regiment's 'poignant' war battles 'VE celebrations muted due to Far East prisoners' Related internet links The Long Shop Museum, Leiston Friends of the Suffolk Regiment
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Pembrokeshire town's special services to mark VJ Day anniversary
Tenby joined the nation in marking Victory over Japan (VJ) Day yesterday (Friday August 15) to honour the end of World War Two and remember those who served in the Far East campaign. Commemorative events in the town began at 11am with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tenby war memorial, with town mayor Cllr Dai Morgan amongst the many representative of local groups and organisations paying tribute. VJ Day marks 15 August 1945, the day Japan surrendered and brought World War Two to a close. Tenby Royal British Legionchairman Shane Roberts lays a wreath, watched by the mayor of Tenby. Cllr Dai Morgan. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) Piper Graham Phillips played during the service. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) A large and respectful gathering stood in Tenby's South Parade for the wreath-laying, remembering the sacrifices of thousands of servicemen and women, including those who faced extreme conditions as prisoners of war or served in some of the most challenging theatres of war. Town Crier Erin Morgan proclaimed the start of the war memorial service. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) One local resident who served in the Far East is 99-year-old Duncan Hilling of Saundersfoot, who has just been honoured by Wales First Minister, Eluned Morgan. Read more Pembrokeshire war veteran, 99, personally thanked by First Minister Mr Hilling is the senior member of Tenby Male Choir, whose proud fellow choristers said they saluted his service. Dyfed-Powys Police was amongst the organisations represented at the service. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) The ceremony at the war memorial was followed at midday by a special service of commemoration in St Mary's Church, Tenby conducted by the Rev Steven Brett. Youth organisations joined in the Tenby tribute. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) The chairman of the Tenby branch of the Royal British Legion, Shane Roberts, then led a presentation celebrating the lives of veterans and loved ones connected to the conflict, as well as local organisations affiliated to the Royal British Legion. The mayor of Tenby, Cllr Dai Morgan, lays a wreath on behalf of the town. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) The beautiful floral cross in the Tenby war memorial grounds. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) Members of Tenby Town Council joined in the service. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) VJ Day 80 marks the end of World War Two in 1945. (Image: Gareth Davies Photography) The mayor of Tenby, Cllr Dai Morgan said: "VJ Day allows us to pay tribute to those whose service and sacrifice in the Far East are too often overlooked. "These commemorations are a chance for our community to come together, to remember, and to ensure that their legacy lives on." Tenby Town Council also acknowledged the ongoing efforts of the Tenby Branch of the Royal British Legion, who continue to ensure the stories of these veterans are remembered and respected.
