Nortraship
The Norwegian Shipping & Trade Mission (NORTRA), better known under the abbreviation Nortraship , was a Norwegian shipping company that was founded in the Second World War after the German occupation of Norway .
history
At the beginning of the occupation of Norway by German troops on April 9, 1940, there were around 1,000 Norwegian merchant ships with around 27,000 to 36,000 seafarers (numbers vary) out of the country. The future Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling thereupon issued an order to the merchant fleet to join the German troops. On April 10, 1940, however, King Haakon radioed an appeal to the ship's crews to disregard this order and to go to neutral ports. After other mostly smaller ships joined the ships that had been "diverted" in April in the following May, Norway, now almost completely occupied, had withdrawn a fleet of around four million gross registered tons from the control of Germany.
Advised British authorities to continue these vessels under the British flag, which the meanwhile in London formed government in exile under King Haakon and Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold refused. Instead, the “Norwegian Shipping & Trade Mission” was created officially on April 20, 1940, based in London and later also in New York , in order to operate the world's largest fleet of a single shipping company at that time. Many smaller vehicles were assigned to the Norwegian Navy Sjøforsvaret , the rest served in the following war years to supply Great Britain . In 1942 around 40% of the oil and 20% of the food imported into Great Britain are said to have been transported in Nortraship units.
After the end of the war, the remaining ships were returned to their original owners on September 30, 1945, and the organization was dissolved on July 30, 1958, after all pending matters had been dealt with. Nortraship had gained 110 million pounds sterling in freight during the war and lost around 500 ships with about 1.9 million GRT; around 3,000 seafarers were killed.
The Nortraship Secret Fund
Under pressure from the British government, an agreement was signed in June 1940, according to which the wages of Nortraship seamen were brought into line with the considerably lower wages of the British merchant navy. The retained difference was paid into the so-called Nortraship secret fund ( Nortraships Hemmelige Fond ), which was to be paid out to the seafarers after the war. At the end of the war the fund held a total of NOK 43 million . Efforts by the veterans in the first post-war years, led by Leif Vetlesen , to pay out these funds directly to the seafarers and not, as intended by the government and the seafarers' union, to provide for needy seafarers or their widows, had failed after a long legal battle when the Colonel Norway's court in February 1954 denied the veterans' claims. This decision caused considerable and long-lasting bitterness among those affected.
Only after the former Commander in Chief of the Norwegian Navy , Vice Admiral a. D. Thore Horve , who had become chairman of the Union of War Sailors in 1968 and vigorously advocated the concerns of war veterans from the war and merchant navy, the matter got back into flux. Horve took up the issue of paying out the wages withheld in the Nortraship secret fund, and after years of efforts a definitive solution was found in 1972 when Parliament, the Storting , decided to make payments totaling NOK 155 million with which the Nortraship seamen - or their bereaved - received a one-time allowance of NOK 180 for every month of war they drove for Nortraship.
literature
- Ellmann Ellingsen: Nortraship at 50: Norwegian Defense Shipping and the Challenges Ahead , Den norske Atlanterhavskomite, Oslo, 1991, ISBN 82-90161-38-7
- Atle Thowsen: Handelsflåten i krig 1939 - 1945, Nortraship, profitt og patriotime . Grøndahl og Dreyers Forlag, Oslo, 1992, ISBN 82-504-1895-6
- Erling Mossige: Storrederiet Nortraship - Handelsflåten i krig . Grøndahl & Søn Forlag, Oslo, 1989, ISBN 82-504-1704-6
- Memorandum regarding chartering of additional Norwegian tonnage, 20 June 1940. Ministry of War Transport, 59/1646, Public Record Office, London, United Kingdom
- United States Maritime Commission: Report to Congress for the Period ended October 25, 1941, House Document No. 554, Washington 1941, p 2, USMC, National Archives
Web links
- Thore Horve, in Store Norske Leksikon (norweg.)
Individual evidence
- ^ Leif Vetlesen, in Store norske leksikon , accessed March 10, 2012
- ^ Thore Horve, in Store Norske Leksikon