My father Ivar Oernulf Olsen hailed from Horten and joined the Norwegian merchant marine as a teenager, I believe first as a cabin boy on one of Norwegian America Lines's ships - that would have been during WWI. He came back to Norway, went to school to become a ship's telegraph operator (possibly in Toensberg) and later attended "styrmandsskolen". I believe he made Captain just before WWII. He used to sail to the Far East and my mother travelled out there to marry him in Norwegian Seamen's Church, but I'm not sure where at the moment - maybe Shanghai or Singapore or Hong Kong. They established a home in Oslo, but he kept working at sea. During WWII he sailed between North America and Murmansk or North America and the UK. He got back to Norway after the war, but the separation and no doubt the war experience had changed him significantly, and my parents divorced in the late 1940s. My father set himself up in Antwerp, Belgium, and contracted repairs for a shipyard there, something he did very well.

I am very interested in learning about ships he may have sailed on and also about his shipmates, both before and during the war.