South Africa - You too can travel to the land where the Oceanos Sank

It's amazing how many hits this website gets on a daily and weekly basis, I get messages from people who have never left their own country, but have heard that South Africa is a beautiful country yes it is. If you are interested in travelling to South Africa, go to this link http://www.southerndestinations.com/ and they will help you tailor your unforgettable trip of a life time to South Africa, if you contact liesl at southerndestinations dot com, please tell her you heard about them through this web site. http://oceanossinking.blogspot.com/ alternatively if you want help organising a low cost budget holiday to South Africa, contact me and I can help you plan it.

Have a look at some amazing photographs of nature in Southern Africa on : http://blog.earth-touch.com/index.php/archive/tags/bird

(c) photos taken by Rose-Marie Rowe

Discovery

Sunday morning ... I am up at about 8 too nervous to eat breakfast and then down to the study to look for all my Oceanos paraphernalia, which luckily did not take me long to find. Then quick bath get dressed and wait, they got lost so ended up only arriving after 10:30. Eric & Chris, they transformed our lounge into a Studio in a very short time, D took Em off to the dump to take all the garden refuse and then to feed the ducks just so that she was out the way. And then the interview started, I must say that they are the nicest people I have met in a long time, besides the French guys who interviewed me, but they were equally as nice. They made me feel really at ease and the interview although it went on for over an hour did not feel like it.

They then did some shots of me in the kitchen paging through my scrap book, D and Em came home just as Eric & Chris had finished packing up, we all got in the car and went off to the Dockland to get something to eat, Eric treated us to lunch at Milano's. It worked out really well as Milano's which is an Italian restaurant really caters for the children, they had a children's section with a box of toys and all the kids just congregate round the box of toys, giving the adults a time to chat and not really have to worry about them. After lunch and a bottle of wine, we went out to the River and Chris did some more shots and then some of D, Em and I. We had a lovely afternoon and headed home, only got home at about 4:30 but it was really nice.

I was exhausted by last night and fell into bed at 9:30, only to wake up 3 times and then get out of bed at 6:30 this morning (on a bank holiday). Em and I are going shopping today so lets see how the day pans out, till later have a wonderful week!

Wolraad Woltemade

Ever since I was a little girl of 9 years old, and I first heard this story in my history lesson it always fascinated me, and I remember crying for this brave man and the passengers on this ship that did not survive.

I found this information on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolraad_Woltemade and I hope it interests you.
Wolraad Woltemade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolraad Woltemade (c.1708 - June 1, 1773) was a South African dairy farmer, who died while rescuing sailors from the wreck of the ship De Jonge Thomas in Table Bay on 1 June 1773.1


Early life
Woltemade was born in Hesse-Schoumberg, part of present-day Germany, around 1708 He migrated to the Dutch settlement at Cape Town (Kaapstad) and worked for the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (known in English as the Dutch East India Company) as a dairyman. (Although the notion seems strange to modern minds, many of the earliest European colonies were established by commercial companies, rather than through the direct intervention of the governments of the European nations. See for example the history of the British South Africa Company).

Shipwreck
In the very early morning of 1 June, 1773 (early winter in the southern hemisphere), a sailing ship, De Jonge Thomas,2 was driven ashore in a gale on a sand bar at the mouth of the Salt River in Table Bay. Many lives were lost as the ship started to break up but a substantial number of survivors were left clinging to the hull. The stricken ship was not too far from dry land and many sailors attempted to swim ashore. Most of those who did so perished; the water was cold and the current from the nearby Salt River too great. Apart from the very strongest swimmers, those who struck for the shore were carried out to sea.

A crowd of spectators stood on the beach. Some came to watch, others to try to help and yet others were hoping to loot the cargo that was being washed ashore. A detachment of soldiers was in attendance, to keep order amongst the mass. Corporal Christian Ludwig Woltemade, the youngest son of the by now elderly Wolraad, was amongst those standing guard. As daylight came, Wolraad left his home on horseback, taking provisions to his son.

Rescue
As he reached the beach, Wolraad was filled with pity for the sailors marooned aboard the wreck. Seeing that nothing could be done by those on the beach, he mounted his horse and urged the animal into the sea. As they approached the wreck Woltemade turned the horse and called for two men to jump into the sea and grasp the horse's tail. After a moment's hesitation two men threw themselves into the water and did so, whereupon Woltemade urged the horse forward and dragged them to shore. Wolraad rode out seven times, bringing back fourteen men. By this time he and his horse were exhausted but at that moment, as they rested, the ship began to collapse. Wolraad once more urged his horse into the water but by now the desperation amongst the sailors was tremendous. Seeing this as probably their last chance to escape before the ship was destroyed, six men plunged into the sea, grabbing at the horse. Their weight was too much for the exhausted steed; all were dragged below the waves and drowned. Woltemade's body was found the next day. His horse was called "Vonk".
Of the 191 souls on board, only 53 survived and of these 14 were saved by Woltemade.

Honour
Woltemade immediately became a hero. The Dutch East India Company provided amply for his widow and children. A suburb of Cape Town is named after him. The Union of South Africa King's Medal for Bravery, instituted in 1939, bore a depiction of Woltemade's heroic act on its obverse. In 1970 the Woltemade Decoration for Bravery was instituted as the highest civilian decoration for bravery in South Africa. This was replaced in 1988 by the Woltemade Cross for Bravery. The Woltemade Cross was discontinued in 2002, as part of the move towards establishing a new South African honours system, following the advent of majority rule.

The Name
In old Dutch Wolraad means "good advice" or "well counselled". Woltemade is more problematic. It is possible to interpret it as "well made".

Notes
Most of those whose mother tongue is English will have difficulty pronouncing his name. Try VOLL (rhymes with knoll) RARD (rhymes with bard) VOLL TER MARDER).
Roughly, the young, or the younger Thomas
See also
Union of South Africa King's Medal for Bravery
External links
http://www.vocshipwrecks.nl/out_voyages8/jonge_thomas.html
References
Schirmer, P. 1980. The concise illustrated South African encyclopaedia. Central News Agency, Johannesburg, about 211pp.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolraad_Woltemade"
Categories: South African people

Bravery

It's great when people leave me comments or messages and especially questions because then I can get to blog again on this site. Lisa was asking me about the award that were received by the entertainers, I found a photo somewhere of the entertainers getting the award I will see if I can locate it.

Here is some information that I found on http://www.geocities.com/militaf/4-mno.htm

Oceanos Sea Rescue (1991) - A successful air force and naval operation to rescue 402 passengers from the sinking cruise liner Oceanos. It yielded more decorations than any other single event in South Africa: an Honoris Crux Gold, an Honoris Crux Silver and four Honoris Cruxes to navy personnel, and 27 Air Force Crosses to helicopter aircrew. Twelve years later, the new Mendi Decoration for Bravery was awarded collectively to the rescue operation.

Order of Mendi for Bravery - Instituted in 2003 as the Mendi Decoration for Bravery, and renamed as an order in 2004. It is awarded in three classes - Gold (OMBG), Silver (OMBS), and Bronze (OMBB) - to civilians and military personnel for bravery in saving lives. I found this photo on: http://www.info.gov.za/aboutgovt/orders/recipients/recipients2003.pdf Medi decoration for bravery in Silver.

Within 25 minutes of confirming that the Oceanos, with 587 passengers and crew on board was in distress along the coast, near East London, the Officer Commanding Rescue Co-ordination Centre launched a rescue mission which has become a textbook illustration of maritime rescue professionalism, indeed a benchmark studied by many rescue centres across the world.
Helicopters were immediately dispatched from Durban, Pretoria and Cape Town, and other ships
and craft in the vicinity were summoned to provide immediate assistance to the ship.

The first SANDF personnel on the scene found it to be listing badly to the starboard side and in imminent danger of sinking. South African Navy divers set about destroying cables and other protuberances to enable the rescue helicopters to get in closer to facilitate quicker evacuation.
Complementing a rescue operation by boat, the SAAF helicopters executed a seamless operation,
with helicopter after helicopter ferrying to shore, passengers and crew hoisted up from the badly listed ship.

When 21 passengers remained unaccounted for, erroneously as it turned, Navy divers reentered
the badly listed ship which they searched from stern to stern. The last divers were finally
evacuated after they were certain that no one was left behind, merely 25 minutes before the
Oceanos sank. All 587 passengers and crew were rescued with no loss of life.

The complicated mission demonstrated outstanding inter-service co-operation and tested the flying and diving skills, airmanship, judgement, dedication, endurance and perseverance of all SADF personnel involved in the operation. Moreover, all the navy and airforce personnel involved distinguished themselves by placing themselves in imminent danger throughout the mission.

The Oceanos Rescue Mission is a remarkable feat in the annals of maritime history which received much international acclaim and praise.

THE MEDI AWARD FOR BRAVERY IN SILVER WAS AWARDED TO MEMBERS OF THE UNITS OF THE FORMER SADF INVOLVED IN THE OCEANOS RESCUE MISSION FOR ACTS OF BRAVERY AND VALOUR DISPLAYED DURING THE RESCUE MISSION TO SAVE
PASSENGERS AND CREW OF THE OCEANOS CRUISE LINER IN AUGUST 1991

Hello

I am the worst I missed our Oceanos Anniversary on the 4th of August this year. It was 17 years this year since the Oceanos sank, I always finds that the hits to this site increase come this time of the year as a lot of TV stations are showing the disaster.

Well I packed up home, moved house, unpacked, packed you know how it goes so all the scrap books are sitting at the bottom of the cupboard in the study just waiting to be opened and scanned in. But now in the new house I have not managed to connect to wireless broadband yet, so I am currently working off a glass table in the passage as this is the only place I can put the laptop that is close enough to the telephone plug to be able to work.

I will get round to it, yes I say that but in the meantime I have been offered a job and my precious angel is starting school tomorrow in 1st Grade, so heaven knows when I will eventually get round to doing all the things I need to do. I never even got round to booking myself on the Internet course, oh dear!

Thanks everyone for reading and staying interested, I will try and get working on this blog once again soon.

Exciting

Hi Everyone,

I have had some really exciting emails which unfortunately I can not disclose as yet, but some really exciting documentaries are going to be produced and more than likely at source (in South Africa), I am also going to do a Web design course and then will be creating an Oceanos website with all the information that is on this blog, this will more than likely take about a year to do, so watch this space. So lots of things happening just slowly!

I will also eventually in about a month or 2 be able to unpack all my boxes with my scrap book stuff from the Oceanos and then post it all up.

A message that made me so thrilled.

I received another message in my Guest Book, here is the message:

Name: Nicholas
Date: 03-Jun-2008

Message
I am 10 years old and we learnt about the Oceanos in school to day. I came home to look it up on the internet and found your site. Thank you for all the useful information! I really learnt a lot.

I was thrilled because Nicholas who is only 10 was not even born at the time of the Oceanos, and equally as thrilled that they are learning about it in school. I guess I will be a part of history after all.

David Van der Sandt

What a nice surprise it was to have another welcome message in my guest book, this time it was from one of the Medics who helped with the rescue operation, here is the message:

Name: David van der Sandt
Date: 31-May-2008

Message:

What a pleasant surprise to come across such a comprehensive history of the sinking of the Oceanos. I was one of the SANDF medics that flew up from Port Elizabeth to assist. I still a life jacket that my medical team signed. Please forward me an e mail address so i can send you some pic's

Regards
Dave

So I got in touch with Dave and he sent me the picture below, he said he will send me another one soon. (David) I have two pics, the first one is from a news paper in PE at the time. It is me on the right the doctor on the left and one of my medics in the middle. The guy wrapped in the blanket is the casino manager or someone that worked in the casino that was fished out of the water. What i remember about this guy is that he was very worried about us taking his jacket off. After we took it off we could not understand why it was so heavy, then we discovered his pockets were full of R 50 notes. The second one i will forward later it was published in a book called 'Choppers' a history of helicopter operations in SA. It has a whole chapter on the Oceanos rescue. I will scan it and forward to you once i am home in about a week's time

Panic???

The video on "youtube" about the sinking of the Oceanos, has the narrator saying that "passengers aboard the cruise ship Oceanos begin to panic when the ship starts sinking". I just wanted to say that I don't remember anyone panicking, as far as I and most of the people I have spoken to, only remember everyone being very calm and orderly and in some instances too calm.

The Reason behind this blog ...

Hi Everyone,

I haven't done a post here for ages and was just thinking the other day that had it not been for Derek and his website http://www.allatsea.co.za/oceanosmainpage.htm I would never have created this blog. Derek has the most interesting website and although his main interest are ships he has so much about South Africa. I also need to say a really big thank you to him as he has a link from his web site to my blog page and I am sure I receive quite a few hits because of this.

I hope that anyone who creates another web page about the Oceanos based on what I have done, will also put a link to my blog.

I know I have been really bad posting stuff but hopefully I will find time soon to do this, but in the meantime remember that this is the original "Oceanos Sinking" web blog, we were first and we shall remain first!

Thank you to everyone who has made contributions to my blog, I am very grateful, long live the Oceanos blog.

INFORMATION PLEASE

If you know of any passengers who were on the Oceanos the day she sank, please email me with names, if you have already emailed me but noticed that I have not made changes to the blog then please email me again.

Thank You

Rose

The Oceanos Brochure

I had forgotten I had the Oceanos Brochure amongst my scrap book, I emailed this off to the Japanese TV Company in August last year and totally forgot to put them up on my blog, this is cover of the brochure, I will try and keep the page numbers in order.

Oceanos Deck Plans

Brochure - Cruise Dates & Prices

The Cruise we were on falls under July in the Brochure, it was two cruises however instead of stopping in Port Elizabeth, the itinerary was changed to stop in East London, the reason for this was that all the passengers on board would spend 1 night at the Holiday Inn in East London and 1 night at the Fish River sun, this was because the ship had be rented out for a wedding.

All the passengers would get back on the ship on the 3rd of August along with additional passengers who were joining the cruise in East London, and it would sail over night to Durban where most passengers would disembark, from there the ship would have sailed to Madagascar and Mauritius leaving Durban on the 4th of August, which as we all know was not to be.

Excellent Video about the Sinking & Rescue

http://www.glumbert.com/media/cruise - This video is excellent!

A Captains Tale

I am not sure if I put this on the blog before but it provides very amusing reading!

http://www.iht.com/articles/1991/08/08/ship.php