Stories: A.W. Kik’s memoires

I am going to try to relate a sea voyage I made some 57 years ago. To be exact from August 1941 till November 1942 from England to England. Mind you, these are memories, which means that some aspects of ...

It was a nice summer's day in Holland. In the port of Colombo the Captain of the Abbekerk ordered the officers and crew members to the saloon under the bridge. Here he told us that he had received news from ...

There were already quite a few other ships at anchor and several more were maneuvering to anchor. Suddenly we heard an enormous bang causing everybody including the crews on the other ships to rush to the railings just in time ...

Yet our trips ashore were spoiled by the regularly recurring air-raid alarms. Often one did not see a single aircraft. Most likely the Germans only flew just over the channel to reconnoiter the area and sometimes to drop a bomb ...

At night the Germans came back and had no trouble finding the docks again. The whole dock area was in flames and they just dropped their bombs into the middle of this. The situation on board was such that with ...

Months had passed and it was now March 1941 and the repair of the ship had progressed slowly. It is worth mentioning that a cable was installed right around the ship and was meant to demagnetize the ship to prevent ...

PK: In his memoirs (written 50 years after it happened) my Dad 'forgot' one entire voyage around the globe in the summer of 1941. I have reconstructed her route but thats about all I Add a translation in Nederlandshave found ...

Early in November 1941 we left the Clyde to form our convoy which consisted of a number of middlesized passenger liners fully loaded with people in army uniforms, a few more freighters, and four destroyers busying themselves to follow the ...