Captured merchant vessels, voyages to England, heroic deeds or sunk without trace… NNPC was founded shortly before the Second World War and so there’s a treasure trove of tales about the fleet that we insured at the time. What happened to “our” ships—where did they go and did they come back?
In this series of articles, we dive into the Dutch Merchant Shipping Database for 1940-1945 to find out what happened.
Famine and balloon barrage vessels
In this fourth and final part, we will look at the ships that delivered food aid to the Netherlands at the tail end of the war, during the Hunger Winter of 1944-1945. There was a desperate shortage of food and fuel then, particularly in the cities in the west of the Netherlands and twenty thousand people ultimately lost their lives as a result. In addition, we will be highlighting two ships that were given a very unusual task in England: they were deployed as balloon barrage vessels. Large, rocket-shaped balloons were attached to the ships, which sailed alongside convoys to prevent German fighter aircraft from getting close enough for low-level attacks. The balloons could be raised or lowered using winches.
Kuwi
The motorised freighter Kuwi managed to escape in May 1940 and was used for a long time for cargo transport around the British Isles. The ship’s most important contribution, however, was probably in 1945 when it crossed the North Sea in a convoy with other Dutch vessels (the Alcyone, the Martha, the Njord and the Twee Gebroeders) to take food supplies to the liberated part of the Netherlands. The convoy sailed via Vlissingen to Bergen op Zoom. The most cruelly bittersweet aspect is that the famine was most acute in the western part of the country, which they could not reach because it was still occupied.
Alcyone
As you just read, the coaster Alcyone was part of the same food convoy. Like many others, the ship got away in May 1940 and made the crossing before being used for numerous cargo voyages. In March 1941, while sailing from Partington to Par (both in England), it came across a lifeboat with thirteen survivors from a Belgian coaster called the Eminent, which had earlier hit a mine. The Alcyone also took part in Operation Neptune, the Allied invasion of Normandy, and carried food in March 1945 to the recently liberated areas of the Netherlands.
Helena
The motorised freighter Helena was moored in St. Malo in France with a cargo of coal when war broke out in the Netherlands on May 10th, 1940. The ship, which had been built in 1934, immediately set sail for England. Once it got there, it was used in Liverpool as a balloon barrage vessel, the important role that we described earlier. It is not known what happened to the Helena after the war.
Westlaan
The Westlaan, built in 1931, was another that managed to escape in May 1940 and sail to England. This coaster was also deployed as a balloon barrage vessel on the River Mersey near Liverpool. So it’s highly likely that the Westlaan would have come across the Helena, each with its own balloon. The ship is known to have had a crew until at least 1946, so it made it through the war years. Moreover, it was still largely manned by its original crew, under the captaincy of Geert van der Laan from Groningen.
Read the rest of the series “Our fleet during World War II” as well!
- Part 1 – Operations Dynamo and Neptune
- Part 2 – Seized by the Germans
- Part 3 – Ships that were badly damaged or sunk
- Part 4 – Food aid during the Hunger Winter