I have completely restructured my web pages about the voyage of the ZEEMANSHOOP from Scheveningen on the 14 May 1940, see:
http://www.holywellhousepublishing.co.uk/Zeemanshoop.htmlSCHEVENINGEN was "the only way out" -
The German invasion of the Netherlands began at 4 am on Friday 10 May with the bombing of an airfield south of Rotterdam followed by the dropping of parachutists. German troops were soon entering the southern outskirts of Rotterdam, the commercial heart of the Netherlands. The capital was twenty miles to the north west and Scheveningen, The Hague's main beach resort, had a small fishing harbour where the lifeboat, Zeemanshoop, was berthed.
By Monday 13 May it was clear that the military situation was hopeless and that morning Queen Wilhelmina left for England from the Hook of Holland aboard HMS Hereward. In the early hours of Tuesday the14 May the British Naval Attaché at The Hague, Admiral Sir Gerald L. Charles Dickens, with his assistants, Charles M. Morrell and Louden, arrived in Scheveningen (the Hook of Holland was now in German hands) and the skipper of the Zeemanshoop, M.J. Bruin, took them out to a Royal Navy destroyer which they boarded under fire from German aircraft. The Zeemanshoop returned to harbour safely.
A few hours later a party of fourteen Dutch naval officers (including Vice-Admiral J. Th. Furstner) and five members of a French military mission (including Général d'Armée Mittelhauser) arrived at Scheveningen. They hoped to escape to England on the Dutch torpedoboat Z-5. Half of them embarked on the Zeemanshoop and the remainder on the Johanna, a fishing boat, but the Z-5 did not turn up and they transferred to the Johanna which took them to Dunkirk while the Zeemanshoop returned to harbour.
The four university students hijacked the Zeemanshoop on the evening of Tuesday the 14 May by breaking the padlock on the hatch to the engine compartment but would not have succeeded in starting the engine without the help of a fisherman engineer from Scheveningen.
The quayside was crowded with whole families, mostly Jews, some Dutch and others refugees from Germany, all desperate to escape death in the concentration camps. A soldier fired a warning shot over the heads of those trying to board the overcrowded lifeboat and a man fell in the water while making a desperate leap to join his family and was hauled aboard as the final passenger before the Zeemanshoop chugged out of the fishing harbour at 21.00 hours and headed north west on course to England.
Bill Forster
Het is ongelooflijk wat Bill allemaal naar boven heeft gehaald. O.a. een nieuw verslag van een deelnemer aan de vlucht met de Zeemanshoop (ook in het NL op de WEBstek).
J. Pronk en M. Rog: dat zal wel moeilijk worden met deze bekende Scheveningse namen en dan 70 jaar terug.
Ik heb altijd begrepen dat de toenmalige motordrijver van de boot een handje heeft geholpen.
Auteur