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Letters
Hans Gunni Andersen was on board the Ramses and picked up by the HMAS Adelaide, November 1942 Dear Mackenzie Gregory, It was indeed very interesting for me to read your personal account of the scuttling of the German blockade runner Ramses in November 1942. The reason is that my late father, Hans Gunni Andersen (born 1910) was in fact one of the three Danes, who were on board the Ramses and picked up by the HMAS Adelaide on that occasion. The brief story is that my father was Chief Officer of the Danish m.v. Nordbo, which happened to be discharging in Tokyama, Japan, when Denmark was occupied by German forces in April 1940. For a variety of reasons the Nordbo remained idle in Kobe for more than two years with the majority of the Danish crew on board. However, on 13 July 1942 the vessel was requisitioned by the Japanese authorities and renamed Teibo Maru under Japanese flag. The Danish crew was put ashore and accommodated in a hotel, but according to my father there was an overwhelming risk that the crew would eventually end up in a Japanese internment camp. With these unattractive prospects they were looking at various means and ways to get away from Japan, but in the fall of 1942 this was extremely difficult, if not impossible; until the opportunity to sail to Europe on board the Ramses came about. After due consideration of the possible implications, my father decided to take the opportunity, together with the 2’ Mate from the Nordbo and a Danish engineer, who was also stranded in Japan. Upon their landing in Fremantle from the HMAS Adelaide, the 3 Danes were quite obviously treated with some suspicion by the Australian authorities, but after exhaustive interrogation they were eventually cleared. In April 1943 my father sailed out from Port Kembla on board the Norwegian freighter Vito as ordinary seaman and arrived in San Francisco in May. After that he served as Chief Officer on board the two Liberty ships James M. Goodhue (May 1943 to September 1944) and Amy Lowell (November 1944 to August 1945), actually with numerous calls at Australian ports. After the war my father returned to Denmark to become a pilot. He passed away in 1967, and mainly for the benefit of his grandchildren, who never met him, I am now trying to piece his wartime story together in a small book, which will be published in a limited number (about 300 copies) in the Danish language by our local Fisheries- and Maritime Museum in Esbjerg, Denmark. My father often told me about the scuttling of the Ramses and his subsequent stay on board the HMAS Adelaide, so I thought it would be nice to include photos of the two ships in the book. With the kind assistance of the Department of Defence in Australia, I have just recently been permitted to use a photo of the HMAS Adelaide, but I am still in need of a photo of the Ramses. On this background I would be grateful if you could guide me on the copyright aspects of the photo you have of the Ramses in your article; i.e. how to go about the procurement of the photo and a permission to use it in my book. Thanking you in advance for your kind consideration of this request, I remain Yours sincerely
I have been in Europe and just returned yesterday to Melbourne. Thank you for your interesting mail. I am not sure where I found the picture of Ramses, as it was some time ago, but the Australian War Memorial has a picture and at this site it tells you how to get approval to use the photo commercially, I hope that helps in a small way. back to letters index |
