Soborg

SOBORG

Gordon Mumford's first ship
with a brief summary of her history

(This voyage is included in The Black Pit . . . and Beyond

Soborg*
The Ship: General cargo, 1,993 gross tons. Danish. Built in 1924 by W. Gray & Co. Ltd., West Hartlepool for C.K. Hansen, Copenhagen. Taken over in July 10, 1940, by British M.O.W.T. (managed by Claymore Shipping Co. Ltd.). Returned to Denmark (C.K. Hansen) in September 13, 1945. In 1948, sold in Denmark, and renamed Hamlet. Sold in 1956 to German owners, renamed Rugard in 1957. In 1960, sold to Lebanese owners, renamed Agia Trias. After being grounded in the Suez Canal on March 10, 1966, towed back to Suez and anchored. Sank June 26,1969 (hit by shell fire during hostilities), and presumed to have subsequently been broken up.

Voyage: September 22, 1942 - November 23, 1942
It was three weeks after his father's unexpected death, when Gordon joined the Soborg in Tilbury Docks, London. A newly-qualified radio officer, he was barely seventeen. The crew were Danes, but the Chief Radio Officer and Gordon were English. The ship had just been in dry-dock for repairs. She'd made port with her stern badly damaged by a bombing attack. Some of the crew died, trapped and burned to death trying to escape from their quarters in the stern. The portholes were now enlarged, but the imagery of those men, trapped half in and half out of the portholes, remained with him. They sailed for Iceland with coal from Blythe in northern England. In Hvalfjord, a lonely, barren fjord west of Reykjavik, they bunkered a Murmansk-bound convoy, then, loaded with barrels of fish, returned to Newcastle.

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