When Norman Hanlin saw the great masts and yards of the squarerigger Herzogin Cecilie soaring above in the wharf sheds at Port Adelaide as he rode by in the bus in 1933, he knew he must make a closer inspection.
So he climbed off the open-topped, double-decker bus at the next stop and hastened to the wharf
It was about lunchtime. Nobody seemed around so he crept aboard and climbed the fore-rigging and clung there imagining he was taking in sail in the windy world of the open sea.
The next year the dream became a reality. At 19 he joined the squarerigger at Wallaroo on a voyage that would lead to 24 years at sea, and involve rounding the Horn in two other great squareriggers, the Moshulu and Archibald Russell and rounding the Cape of Good Hope in a third, the Passat. It was a life that would bring him some terrible moments clinging to a plank in the Atlantic after his steamer was torpedoed by a German U-boat. He’d also work on coasters in the Baltic Sea and learn to speak Norwegian.
Norman Hanlin, now 69 and long home from the sea, lives at Aldgate. He is one of many interested in Brian Verco’s voyage on the Herzogin Cecilie (Saturday Spread 11/2/84) and Mrs. Gwen Henley’s recollection of the rescued crew coming to her husband’s police station after the ship’s grounding off the South Devon coast in 1936. Indeed the fine old ship has stirred a host of squarerigger memories.
Mrs Kate O’Neill, of Oaklands Park, sent pictures she took from the steamer Paringa in February, 1929, of the squareriggers Hougomont and Olivebank loading wheat at Port Lincoln.
Philip Sims, of Firle, saw the Herzogin Cecilie the day after she grounded at Sewer Mill Cove and later photo- graphed her awash at Starehole Bay, her last resting place.
Bruce Arrowsmith, of Cumberland Park, was 15 when the Herzogin Cecilie sailed for the last time from Port Lincoln in 1936. He with his brother, Doug, and a couple of young friends, Bill and Jack Martin, got aboard “the lovely white windjammer” for the first few miles of her last trip, returning in the pilot launch.
Ian Short, who came to South Austra- lia in 1974 and is now senior English master at Para Vista High School, dived on the wreck of the old ship in 1969, 33 years after she had sunk. Norman Hanlin found his first voyage had its trials.
He said: “I was so seasick and useless on deck that the hard-case chief mate Elis Karlsson made me clean the pigsty, which had been a former washroom. The ship was rolling heavily.
“The pigs, squatting on their back-sides, skidded backwards and forwards, squealing loudly with me hanging on the rail and being sick.
“The crew howled with laughter and never mind icebergs or storms or the danger of being swept overboard, or the wetness or hunger… in all the hardships I ever had that was the worst in 24 years of seafaring.”
There was also the vocal black Orpington rooster that disturbed the sleep of the apprentices each dawn until Norman, coming off watch, put paid to the bird. A muster of the crew and an invitation from the furious master, Sven Eriksson, for the culprit to step forward, brought no response.
Norman said: “Every old salt likes to boast about his favourite ship but the Herzogin Cecilie was an outstanding vessel, more shapely lines than most, strongly built and with massive rigging.”
He recalls how, nearing the Horn, the fully laden squarerigger was foaming along at 15 knots when she was caught aback by a sudden shift of wind. She keeled over on her beam ends until the lower yards were trailing deep in the water.
He said: “All hands thought that she would be dismasted but nearly all the heavy storm canvas blew out, sounding like cannon fire. Relieved of the pressure, she righted herself.”
He mentions that the Herzogin Cecilie was a goer in a gale and twice made bursts of speed of 19 knots. She introduced Norman to the sea and ships. There were more squarerigger voyages, then a spell in steamers when a torpedo attack on Norman’s ship, the SS Glendene, put him into the Atlantic.
He watched as the attacking U-boat passed within a few metres of the plank to which he clung with another seaman. “But the U-boat captain had seen us and told one of the lifeboats which picked us up.”
Later the steamer which rescued them was itself torpedoed and it was into the ocean again until the survivors were picked up by the corvette Petunia.
But of all the events and ships, Norman Hanlin remembers the Herzogin Cecilie with affection almost bordering on reverence.
English master Ian Short’s recollection is of a sadder and quieter time. He says that he made his dive at Starehole Bay in one of his first open-water training dives with the British Sub-Aqua Club.
The club had chartered a fishing boat at Salcombe and anchored over the wreck.
Ian said: “The moment we entered the water we could see the ship below us on a light sandy bottom.
“The stern section had completely disappeared and there was no trace of the masts or upper structure. The bow section had broken off and lay a short distance away nearer the cliffs.
Ian Short, then 23, swam down the divers’ anchor rope to the remains of the hull. The hull was pointing towards the cliffs, and although the keel had sunk deeply in the sand, the hull was still level and upright.
He said that the ribs stuck up about two and a half metres from the seabed. No decking remained and most of the plates and planking was missing from the sides. As he swam along the length of the ship it was like swimming through a valley formed from the skeleton of some long-dead sea monster.
He said: “The sea had been kinder to the bow section. As the ship had gone down, the bow had reared up before it sank. It lay on the bottom like a slender pyramid with its prow pointing towards the surface.
“The deck was now vertical and I swam through a hatch into the chain locker. Light came in through irregular holes to form a brownish twilight in the curiously still water’.
He said that the rear bulkhead which would have formed the floor of the sunken bow, had collapsed and a huge pile of chain had slid to the sealed.
He said: “The links were each as long as my forearm but were now welded together by corrosion and marine growth into an immovable heap. This was the only recognisable artefact to testify to the work of the people who had sailed on her.”
As Ian Short surfaced and looked down on the scene, the group of divers exploring the wreck created the momentary illusion of a living ship with sailors busy at their various tasks.
He said: “I watched from the surface as each pair of divers made their ascent. Below me an eerie solitude returned to the wreck. Divers spoke about the experience with a kind of reverence, as if they had visited a shrine.”
Vale, Herzogin Cecilie!
Max Fatchen