Did Germany/Italy/Japan hire foreign merchant sailors?

[boltgunner]

We all know that the "big three" Axis powers hired foreign military personnel (French, Russians, Yugoslavs, Albanians, Chinese, etc. etc.) but did any of them also hire foreign sailors to work in their merchant shipping fleet? The only example I'm aware of is the crew of a Finnish merchant ship named Tornator who stayed and worked on their vessel for a period after it was chartered into Japanese service in 1941.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi boltgunner,

Yes. The pre-war German merchant fleet used a lot of foreign sailors

For example, 38 of the crew of the Goslar interned in Surinam were Chinese, and only 16 were Germans. Similarly, only 10 of the crew of the Durazzo interned in Venezuela were German, whereas 19 were Ecuadoran and one Spanish.

Cheers,

Sid

[boltgunner]

Hi boltgunner,

Yes. The pre-war German merchant fleet used a lot of foreign sailors

For example, 38 of the crew of the Goslar interned in Surinam were Chinese, and only 16 were Germans. Similarly, only 10 of the crew of the Durazzo interned in Venezuela were German, whereas 19 were Ecuadoran and one Spanish.

Cheers,

Sid

Thanks Sid. Did such foreign sailors continue to be found on German ships after 1939? Sorry I probably should have clarified in my first post that I was asking specifically about wartime shipping (I gather the sailors on the two ships you mentioned must have already been aboard pre-war, based on their dates of internment).

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Boltgunner,

I think the pre-war foreign sailors technically continued to serve on the German ships interned in neutral countries until they were seized. This was in early 1941 for most of the vessels in Latin America. Reportedly in Argentina desertions of foreign crewmen had already meant not all the interned ships could be fully manned.

However, during the northern winter of 1939/40 numbers of German ships had evaded the, as yet, porous British blockade, presumably with their foreign sailors still aboard. Thus there may have been a thousand or more foreign sailors trapped in Germany by mid 1940. However, I do not know if they were used as seamen during the war.

You might like to ask the same question on Sir Holm's Warsailors forum: http://warsailors.com/ships/viewforum.php?f=5

Cheers,

Sid.

[boltgunner]

Thank you Sid, that's worth looking in to.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi boltgunner,

It appears that the pre-war German merchant marine used a good number of sailors from British India.

According to p. 29 of Valiant Voyaging, the wartime history of the British India Steam Navigation Company, its SS Domala was bombed and seriously damaged by an He111 on March, 1940, while evacuating around 90 of them from Antwerp to Southampton. 108 out of the 191 passengers and crew died.

Of the 108 dead, 45 were Indian sailors being evacuated from the following German ships:

Treuenfels - 13
Lauterfels - 11
Birkenfels - 5
Falkenfels - 16

All these ships belonged to the German Hansa Line, which was reportedly recruiting 4,000 Lascars a year before WWI - second only to P&O. It looks as though this tradition continued in the 1920s and 1930s.

Given that Hansa had a big fleet with dozens of vessels, it is likely that it alone had around a thousand Lascars (most of them British Indians) in its crews in 1939.

Cheers,

Sid.

[OpanaPointer]

Nobody had enough sailors dumb, er, brave enough to sail on those largely unarmed slow trash haulers*, so if you were breathing and not blatant an enemy agent you'd get a bunk.


*Unofficial USAF term for cargo planes.