Site Map | Search Warsailors.com |Merchant Fleet Main Page | Warsailors.com Home 

D/S Gudveig

To Gudveig on the "Ships starting with G" page.

Owner: D/S A/S Gudvin
Manager: H. Gjerpen, Oslo
Tonnage:
1300 gt

Completed as Robert Maersk by Odense Staalskibsværft, Odense in 1920. According to Ron Young's "The Comprehensive Guide to Shipwrecks of the North East Coast", Vol. Two, she was 73.5m x 11.04m x 4.95m, had one deck, a single propeller powered by a 3 cyl. triple exp. steam engine developing 106 hp using one boiler. Became Norwegian Gudveig in 1935, owned by D/S A/S Gudvin.

 Final Fate - 1940 (Norway neutral): 

I've come across some information in connection with the Norwegian Vim, stating that she rescued 4 men from Gudveig in the North Sea; year is given as 1939, but no further details are provided. Not sure if anything had happened to Gudveig at that time, or whether the year is simply an error. Gudveig is listed in the Norway-U.K. Convoy HN 7 in Jan.-1940, and as can be seen, Vim is also included. This might be a coincidence, but it's possible that Gudveig and Vim were both returning to Norway later that month when Gudveig was sunk, and that Vim rescued 4 of her survivors(?).

In a war time diary for the northeast of England (external site by Roy Ripley and Brian Pears) I found the following (may not necessarily be correct):
"Thursday, 25th January,1940 - 'SS Gudveig' (1,300t) a Norwegian ship was torpedoed and sunk by a U Boat, 5 miles NE by E of Longstone Island, Farnes at 55 42 15N 01 30 30W and lies in 50 metres of water". The Jan.-1940 entries start here.

Ron Young adds that she was on a voyage from Tyne to Bergen with a cargo of coal. Jürgen Rohwer's "Axis Submarine Successes of World War Two" provides the additional information that the torpedo came from U-19 (Schepke). A visitor to my website, using the source "Shipwreck Index of the British Isles" (which says she was built in 1919) adds that Gudveig was torpedoed at 9.30 pm on the above date. This same source also provided me with the previous name Robert Maersk and the fact that she was renamed in 1935. U-19 had also sunk the Latvian Everene in the same convoy an hour earlier, also included in the above mentioned war time diaries. Note also that according to this thread on my Ship Forum, survivors from both ships were rescued by a ship named Dole (ex Everhope).

Norway was still neutral at the time of Gudveig's loss.

The Stavern Memorial for Seamen, which I've linked to below, commemorates the following 6 Norwegians:
Steward Bredo Adriansen, Able Seaman Ellis Andersen, Chief Engineer(?) Rudolf Andersen, 2nd Engineer Augen Beier, Seaman Henry Olav Bjerke, and Mate Jens Aage Kjeld Johannessen.

Related external links:
Stavern Memorial commemorations - The Norwegian text here states that Gudveig was on a voyage from Tyne to Bergen with coal when she was torpedoed on Jan. 26-1940, 37 n. miles north of Newcastle, off Langstone light vessel. 10 died, 8 were rescued and taken to Methil.

U-19 | Joachim Schepke

Back to Gudveig on the "Ships starting with G" page.

This company had another Gudveig from 1954, see Post War info for M/S Nordnes.

The text on this page was compiled with the help of: Sources named within the above text.

   Be   
C
   D   
E
F
G
   He   
I
J
   K   
L
M
N
O
   PQ   
R
   So   
   To   
U
V
W
   Ø   

 Site Map | Search Warsailors.com |Merchant Fleet Main Page | Warsailors.com Home