A Royal coastal steamer
Many Hurtigruten ships have had royal names, but some ships have been more royal than others.
What do you do when you’re standing on the bridge responsible for many lives on board, and the fog settles, thick as soup, so you can’t see so much as a meter in front of you?
On board today’s ships, we have a lot of technical equipment that can be your eyes while you yourself can’t see anything out of the wheelhouse window. We steer our ships with the help of satellites that orbit the Earth, so-called satellite navigation. We get on screens what the landscape looks like around us and which ships are moving nearby. The vast majority of us carry GPS in our pocket wherever we go.
But what about the old boys? The ones who stood out on the open bridge with a Thompson compass, a pocket watch, inadequate paper maps and notebook and pencils? Sailing in those days often meant knowing the route. To know the whims of the ship. On the bridge, all senses was in use. What do you hear? The ship’s bell alerted other ships that here we are. Then one could only hope that other ships also used their bells.
There are many fantastic stories about life at sea in the time of the old steamships. We do not know the specific origin of the vast majority of the stories, and they must often be perceived as modern legends. Such wandering tales are nevertheless worth passing on and passing on. Often there may be some truth in them, and sometimes such stories can tell us something about what those who have told them must have thought or felt.
One such story can be found about the steamship Finmarken (1912), and it’s captain Fredrik Hegge.
We find this story told in Leif B. Lillegaard’s anniversary book De blå skipene VDS langs fjord og fjære i 100 år. Lillegaard writes warmly throughout about the ship DS Finmarken and the captain of the ship, Fredrik Othar Hegge.
Here comes our retelling:
Hegge was the captain of the ship and Ragnar Falck acted as helmsman. Falck would later go on to become captain himself. On this day, there was very thick fog when DS Finmarken was going ashore in Svolvær. First officer Falck was standing down on the front deck.
-Do you see the quay, mate? Captain Hegge is said to have shouted from the top of the bridge.
-No, Falck shouted back. -I don’t see the hand in front of me.
Then the captain is said to have shouted back, “But then feel it with your hand!”
When mate Falck did, he immediately recognized the quay in Svolvær just outside the ship’s railing.
Whether it is true that Captain Hegge managed to steer the steamship so precisely, with zero visibility, that the ship was so neatly in its rightful place at the quay when he contacted his mate, we cannot of course know for sure. Maybe it’s just tall tales, maybe there’s some truth to it.
In any case, the story of Captain Hegge in the fog tells us of a respect and a devotion to these early sailors, those who sailed on open bridges in storms and in fog in the beginning, among those who have told the story further. And that is perhaps something worth taking with us.
Source:
Leif B. Lillegaard. De blå skipene VDS langs fjord og fjære i hundre år. 1981. Vesteraalens Dampskibsselskab