Skip to main content

The Fruit Runner, Weser




The M. V. Weser, of the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping company, was fast, having an average cruising speed of 19 ½ knots.  In spite of its working ship, bulldog looks, it was outfitted in a luxurious style in its interior; for unlike most freighters today, there were 21 of the "largest and best-furnished passenger cabins seen in this harbor." At least this was the report given by visitors to the ship in the entourage on Armistice day in 1934. It seems that these cabins were not difficult to fill with passengers; the ship was already booked weeks before arriving on its "fruit run," taking the apples of Hood River and the pears of Yakima to the green grocers of Europe.

Grandfatherly old Captain Franz Voigt appears to have been a friendly fellow, but maybe a little reserved. It was Armistice day, after all, not the best day to be a German in America. The agent referred to this as the North German Lloyd "Christmas Ship" that would arrive in Europe with passengers two weeks before Christmas. I feel a twinge of envy tugging at my heart—to be one of those pampered few—the Weser passengers.

That was 1934. The Weser was here and back quite often, on the "fruit run," in the years following. The photos in this blog post were taken in 1936, and the gentleman with Captain Voigt is the German consul, Robert G. Cloustermann, who appears in town after the war as a maritime lawyer. This ship had been on the "fruit run" for a few years. Originally, after it was completed in 1929, it was named Sud Americano for A/S Linea Sud Americana Lines. Later it was sold to a firm in Bremen and named, Yakima Star, a name fitting to a "fruit runner." The vessel was lengthened in 1934, and renamed Weser for Norddeutscher Lloyd, where it kept on supplying apples, pears, and the like to European markets.

In 1938, when the M.V. Weser made its "fruit run," the papers referred to it as the "Nazi ship, Weser." That is the last Portland saw of the Weser.

After nightfall, on September 25, 1940 the Canadian ship H.M.C.S. Prince Robert spotted the Weser as it was heading out of the harbor of Manzinillo, in southwestern Mexico. The Canadian ship was part of the blockade in force on Mexican ports. The Canadians were close to the shore and in a perfect position to surprise the German vessel before the crew had a chance to scuttle. The Weser was thought to have been turned into a supply ship for the German battleship, Orion. During this raid the German crew was taken captive, but smiling Captain Voigt was not aboard.  The next month Captain Voigt was spotted among the passengers of the Japanese vessel, Rakuyo Maru, leaving Mazanillo for Japan.

The Weser was taken by a small crew of Canadians to Esquimalt in British Columbia where it was renamed the Vancouver Island.  On the night of October 15, 1941 in the middle of the North Atlantic, the unescorted vessel was torpedoed by a U-boat, fore and aft. The ship went down fast; there were no survivors.

This leaves me wondering what ever happened to smiling Captain Voigt, a mystery I am willing to leave unsolved for now, seeing as I have so many other mysteries in my life these days.


These photographs are courtesy of Thomas Robinson's Historic Photo Archive.  They were taken by Oregonian reporter, Larry Barber, and have been negatives tucked away in an envelop since 1936.



Comments

  1. NewView_2011September 15, 2013 at 4:44 PM

    I hope you are monitoring your blog..
    I stumbled across an auction with
    a 1940copy of Mein Kampf. Personalized To
    "franz Voigt" and Katerian geb Lehr! lots of photos of the creepy one armed paper hanger himself
    creepy uncle adoph.

    thought you might want to see it anyway,.

    just goto
    https://www.proxibid.com
    and search for Mein Kampf..its the only entry.

    tlegu

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Word on Shanghai Tunnels - Including 14 reasons why the stories are bogus

I have never been on a tour of Portland's so-called "shanghai tunnels," so I am unable to comment on this attraction, except that I have heard that the tour is quite entertaining. Neither have I been to the Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland,  the Magic Carpets of Aladdin, or the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, for that matter. The closest I have come to this sort of tourist entertainment was while visiting the ancient city of York I took my family on the "York Ghost Walk." This tour is a bit of innocent fun with some old ghost stories mixed in with distorted history—just for the tourists.  It may be true that I have no experience with the tourist tours of these basements in the northwest regions of downtown, but I do know a bit about them. There is a great deal of documentation in the newspapers, and in old court records. They were built by Chinese back in the days when Chinatown was the center of gang activity related to the different tongs...
17 comments
Read more

The Steel Bridge and the Railroad

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this, but the Steel Bridge on old postcards is often designated as being owned by any one of three different companies. Most often you will see the words “O.W.R. & N. Co. Bridge across the Willamette,” or something to that effect. Other times the card might read, “O. R. R. & N. Co. bridge, Portland, Oregon.” Then, on occasion, a card might say, “Union Pacific bridge, Portland, Oregon.” This was confusing to me at one time, until I read a little something on the history of the Union Pacific lines in the west, then I became even more confused. The lines were in and out of receivership, leased, sold, given different, but very similar names, and called different names by different levels of railroad hierarchy. When the first Steel Bridge was built in 1888 the company behind the construction was the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company (O. R. & N. Co.), an old and powerful entity that had evolved from the Oregon Steam Navigation Company...
Post a Comment
Read more

Good old O Dock

O Dock, foot of North Holladay When I started working on the waterfront the first place I was assigned was to a place that was indicated on the dispatch roster as "LDC". This stood for Louis Dreyfus Corporation, but few people called it that. It was known to the longshoremen and most everyone else as "Globe". The dock has gone through a number of names over the years and is now wearing the name O Dock. I am of the opinion that this is an older name than Globe, harking back to the Portland practice of naming docks after the streets of which they were the "foot". "O" referring to Oregon Street. At one time Victoria Street ran all the way down to the river having its foot in this same area. In those days there was a Victoria Dock. It was burned to the ground in 1902 by an arsonist who had spouted threats while spending a bit of time in the Oregon State Penitentiary that he was going to "burn Portland to the ground." He got as far as l...
1 comment
Read more