Karel R. Dahmen
his life and wartime service after arrival in England aboard the Zeemanshoop
Karel Dahmen was one of the four students at Dutch universities who deserve most of the credit for bringing the Zeemanshoop and its passengers to safety. Karel Dahmen's decision to cycle from Delft to Scheveningen after hearing the
broadcast announcement of the surrender of Netherland forces changed
the course of his life. The
Dutch called their fellow countrymen who left for England after the
surrender of Dutch forces to fight for the liberation of the
Netherlands Engelandvaarders (England Travellers). The four man student "crew" were Engelandvaarders but the majority
of the passengers on the Dutch lifeboat were
Jewish and had they not escaped on the Zeemanshoop
they would almost certainly have died in a German concentration camp.
Many of them had already had to leave their homes in Austria or Germany. Chance brought the 46 passengers and crew of the Zeemanshoop
together on the evening of Tuesday the 14 May 1940 after the surrender of the Netherlands was broadcast on Dutch radio.
After arrival at Dover aboard HMS Venomous he joined the SS Jupiter under Captain Dekker as assistant engineer before joining the Royal Netherlands Navy as an Ordinary Seaman (OD) on the HNMS Jacob van Heemskerk where he became the RDF Operator. After
officer training Sub Lt Karel Dahmen was posted to the Dutch Naval
Liason Office at the Admiralty. In the Spring of 1943 he was posted to the RNN 9th MTB Flotilla
at Dover and served as a specialist in the use of RDF in it’s
operations against German shipping in the Channel. He was then sent to
the USA
to train with the US Marines and the SeaBeas to create a Dutch Marine Brigade
to participate in the Pacific war under US command and thereby
make a meaningful contribution to the liberation of Indonesia.
Karel
Dahmen also describes his marriage and postware career as an oilfield
engineer with Stanvac Eastern in Sumatra and with the Continental Carbon Company
in the Netherland and the USA where he has lived since 1967. He
celebrated his 100th birthday on the 23 May 2019 but we continued to
communicate with each other by e-mail. My last e-mail to him on the
11th May 2021 was answered the following day by his daughter in law:
"Karel
passed away on February 16, 2021 at the age of 101. He was busy
as a bee the last day of his life and left this world sometime early in
the morning during his sleep. We are grateful his last
years of life were pleasant and productive."
All things have
an end and Karel Dahmen had a long happy life and lived a further
eighty years after leaving Scheveningen in the Dutch lifeboat and he
met Loet Velmans and the families of the passengers and crew of the Zeemanshoop at the reunion in Scheveningen on the 75th anniversary of the voyage of the Zeemanshoop.
But if you have not
already done so you should start by reading the story of the voyage of the Zeemanshoop and her rescue by HMS Venomous
*********************
Karel Dahmen was
born on the 23 May 1919 at Roermond, where the river Roer meets the
Meuse in Limburg, the
south easten province of the Netherlands near the border with Germany.
Both his parents had lived in Roermond for several generations. His
father, Georges R.W. E. Dahmen, the son and grandson of millers studied
law in Amsterdam but set up his practice in Roermond. His mother,
Theresia (Trees) A.H.M. Nicolas, was the daughter of the proprieter of
an atellier designing and making stained glass.
The family home was on the Pastoors Wal,
the medieval north wall of the town, right under the tower of the late
gothic cathedral and had an open view of the harbour and the River Roer
through a row of chestnut trees. Karel was one of four children, two
boys and two girls. He grew up
during the depressed thirties when his father, a lawyer, accepted
payment in kind from impoverished farmers and the town folk saw life
across the nearby border change when the Nazis came to power.
Karel describes his school years:
“My
school was a traditional Gymnasium where we learned Latin and Greek and
English, French and German in addition to mathematics, natural science
and social studies. I had a wonderful group of friends, boys and girls.
Roermond was a small town with only 13,000 inhabitants but there was
plenty to do, we could play tennis, go cycling together, train and row
with the rowing club where several boats would sometimes row together
to summer fairs at nearby villages. I got to know Jo Bongaerts and his
brothers and sisters. In the large house of the Bongaerts family there
was a club room with a gramophone and that’s where I learned to dance.
Jo was four years my senior. He went to study in Delft. I followed
three years later and was accepted into his close circle of
friends.”
When he was 16 Karel was one of 600 school boys whose
parents paid 25 guilders (about £10) for them to go on a week long
cruise along the coast of Norway. The MS Tarakan had been converted by
installing bunks in its holds to take pilgrims from Indonesia to
Mecca and school boys from the Netherlands to Norway. This was the
first time he had been to sea and the deep fjords and high mountains of
Norway made a deep impression on this young Dutchman.
He first went to England after
finishing high school in 1937 when he and his friend Arthur went by
ferry to Gravesend, explored London by underground and cycled through
England and Wales to the Irish Sea in pouring rain, camping and cooking
over a primus stove. He loved every day of this adventure holiday.
They both decided
to study engineering at Delft
University, Karel choose mining engineering and Jo civil engineering.
Neither knew anything about marine engineering. Karel's education was interrupted by four months military service but he
was in the third year of his course when the invasion came.
They were
in Jo's digs above a grocery store in Delft when Rotterdam was bombed
on the 14 May 1940 and saw an enormous smoke cloud over the city. At 6 pm they
heard the announcement of the surrender on the radio and decided to
cycle to Scheveningen and try and find a boat to take them to England.
Refugees in London and students at Oriel College, Oxford
When the passengers and crew of the Zeemanshoop left HMS Venomous
at Dover they were put on a train to London and
spent their first night in a Salvation Army hostel. Freddie
Knottenbelt, the head of the Netherlands Emergency Committee took a
special interest in the student crew of the Zeemanshoop.
He was a tea broker and a long term member of the Dutch community. He
arranged for them to stay at the Hotel Norman in Carlton Drive, Putney,
a small family run hotel owned by Mrs M. Nuthall, the mother of the
tennis start Betty Nuthall. They
visited Freddie Knottenbelt at his wonderful house in Roehampton where
Karel was a welcome guest on many future occasions (see family
photograph above, taken on the 18 August 1940).
His son, Maarten Knottenbelt,
was a student at Oriel College, Oxford, and the Provost, Sir David Ross, invited the four students to
stay for ten days: "We
slept in the house of Sir David Ross but we had our meals in the Hall
with the students. The term had not ended so we had a taste of
student life in Oxford, such as sitting in on a tutoring session of
about six students with one tutor. I would have loved to study in
Oxford.
We loved to have a beer with students at the Mitre. We also attended a
debate at the 'Union' and I went punting on the Cherwell with the niece
of Sir David Ross and found it much more difficult to move the punt in
the desired direction than to steer the Zeemanshoop over the North Sea."
Karel and Jo wanted to become self supporting and
found work hoeing sugar beet on a farm in Oxfordshire: "The
farm Jo and I worked on was in the Oxfordshire village of Middleston
Stoney. We slept in the attic and had our meals with the cowherd and
his wife. On Saturday evening they took us to the pub, where we learned
to play darts." After a
couple of weeks they had saved the money for the train to London to try and
join in the war against Germany.
Assistant Engineer on SS Jupiter
Neither the Netherlands Navy, which had brought most of its ships to
England, or the army could use untrained volunteers in this phase of the war but it might be
possible to join a Dutch merchant ship. There were nine hundred Dutch
merchant ships at sea when the Netherlands surrendered and they all
headed for England. Their crews could not
return to their families and nor could they get a job ashore. The
Dutch government in exile introduced a law requiring them to remain
with their ships.
The Dutch merchant fleet had roughly 18,000 crew
members (6,000 from the colonies) and nine hundred ships and 329 ships were sunk and far more men lost than in the Dutch Navy.
The Netherlands Shipping and Trading Committee was set up in
Leadenhall Street to look after the interests of the ship owners,
repair, provision and crew the ships and charter them out to the
Ministry of War Transport. Karel and Jo went to Leadenhall Street
to try and find a
ship. Captain Coenraad Pieter Dekker of the SS Jupiter, a
1,464 grt steamer owned by KNSM, had lost his assistant engineer when the
ship was machine gunned and thought a former engineering student at
Delft University would learn quickly. He took Karel Dahmen to the Dutch
Consulate to sign on as assistant engineer, one rank down from third engineer, and bought him a uniform. Jo
signed on with another ship and they did not meet again until 1942.
The Jupiter
had a crew of
twenty seven. The ten officers were all Dutch but the seventeen crew
members included a Norwegian (his first name was Arne), an Estonian
(Kattenburg), two Belgiums, a
Yugoslavian and one man from the Gold Coast in West Africa. The
Amsterdam-Chinese cook was one of the eleven Dutch crew members. Karel
spoke better English and went ashore with
seamen visiting the doctor and assisted the captain in talks with
dockyards. He
had
a great liking for Captain Dekker, a small stooped man
of 52 from Den Helder in North Holland, who said very little and had
been the skipper when it was owned by the Middelandsche Zeevaart Cie
and called the Jonge Johanna. In those days he had often been agent as well as captain and had tramped the Mediterranean, picking up cargoes where
he could. He wore a distinctive beret and carried a briefcase when he went ashore for meetings.
Assistant Engineer Karel Dahmen, de 'Draad' (the 'wire', wireless operator) and the Leeerling (apprentice) - "a British boy"
Photographed at Middlesborough on East Coast Convoy
First Engineer, 2nd Eng. Johannes de Haas and
3rd Eng. Gerrardus van Offenbeek aboard SS Jupiter.
After a minor refit and maintenance work in the engine room the SS Jupiter
joined the east coast convoys from London to Leith at risk from attack by German
Schnell boats, fast motor torpedo boats known by the British as e-boats. A
three inch gun was fitted on the after deck and two machine guns on the
bridge at Hull but "our training ... was extremely brief". The
2nd Engineer, Johannes de Haas, was a good teacher and "the time came
that I was allowed for the first time to work
the handles of the steam valves to the main engine, while the ship was
being manoeuvred into the locks at Immingham; how proud I was!" Karel Dahmen loved the Jupiter
– and loved it all his life.
Assistant Engineer, Karel Dahmen, operates the valves on the triple expansion steam engine of SS Jupiter Painting is reproduced courtesy of the artist, 96 year old Karel Dahmen
In late summer the SS Jupiter
joined a convoy which sailed around the north of Scotland and followed
a zig-zag course at 10 knots to the small port of Yarmouth at the
southern tip of
Nova Scotia where she arrived on the 13 September with a strange cargo
of pianos and cow hides. After loading
a cargo of timber Jupiter left on the 23 September for Halifax to join
homebound Convoy HX.76, a large convoy of 40 merchant ships and 11
escorts, on the 26 September 1940. "We ran into a very heavy
gale 500 miles west of Ireland,
the hydraulic line between the wheelhouse and the rudder
ruptured, the ship could no longer head into the waves and we lost
contact
with the convoy which was scattered over a wide area. It took the
escorts a full day to find the
scattered ships and reform the convoy". The British steamer SS Cornfield was sunk by U-58 but most of the crew were rescued. The Jupiter returned to London via the east coast and "the night after they unloaded their cargo of timber at the
Surrey Commercial Docks the Germans staged one of the heaviest fire
bomb raids yet and we could only watch as all the timber at the Surrey
Docks went up in flames."
The Jupiter returned to
the East Coast convoys and they spent Christmas of 1940 in Middlesbrough on the River Tees in Yorkshire. Karel was sent ashore by
the captain with the Wireless Officer and the apprentice to buy gifts for the crewon the 19 December and they had their photograph (above) taken at the Pictorial Studios on Newport Road.
The whole crew gathered in Captain Dekker's cabin on Christmas Day and
enjoyed "good Christmas cheer and, yes, also peace". Karel Dahmen left
to join "the real Navy" in February 1941 when a replacement was found.
Captain Dekker left the Jupiter to become captain of another KNSM ship, the 1,162 grtSS Merope,
and on the 27 April 1943, two weeks after British forces had landed on the invasion beaches at Algiers, the Merope
was torpedoed by U-371 while enroute from Bougie to Algiers with a
cargo of explosives and ammunition, and sank so quickly that there was
no time to
lower the boats. Most of the crew were picked up by the convoy escort,
HMS Rothesay, or SS Covenne but Captain Dekker was one of ten missing. He
was posthumously awarded the Bronze Cross with honourable mention for
his outstanding service in the days following the allied invasion of
north Africa. The Jupiter, built in Holland in 1923, survived the war and was forty years old when it was scrapped at Hong Kong in 1963.
The Royal Netherlands Navy
The Jacob van Heemskerck Note the two masts supporting the RDF antennae: the front mast for the outgoing signal and the rear pylon the returning signal Centre: Karel Dahmen on Gun Turret in 1941 before he went for officer training
On left: At
Fremantle, Western Australia, between October 1942 and December 1943
(Phographed by Saxon Fogarty, Fremantle)
Right: With the Royal Navy's Easten Fleet, date and location not known
Karel
enlisted in the Royal Netherlands Navy at its headquarters in Oxford
Street, London's busiest shopping street, the home of Selfridges and
other big department stores. C & A, the family owned owned
Dutch chain of clothing shops, made the whole of the fourth floor
of its Oxford Street store available to the Dutch Navy for use as its
HQ.
His first naval ship, the Dutch light cruiser, HNMS Jacob van Heemskerck,
was being fitted out when Germany invaded the Netherlands. A skeleton
crew managed to bring her to England where she was converted into a
specialist anti-aircraft cruiser at Southampton and commissioned by
Queen Wilhelmina on the 11 February 1941. Karel Dahmen began his
service in the Royal Netherlands Navy as an Ordinary Seaman on the Jacob van Heemskirk
in time for her "work up" with the fleet at Scapa Flow before she
joined Western Approaches Command.
Karel operated the RDF (Range and Direction Finder), an early
form
of radar for detecting
aircraft and ships using
a manually controlled rotating aerial for transmitting and a separate
antennae on a rear pylon for receiving. The time difference between
transmitting and
receiving an echo from an incoming aircraft determined its distance
(range) and
this together with the bearing (direction) of the target was
automatically forwarded to fire control. Karel poses on the front gun
turret (above centre).
At the end of February the Jacob van Heemskerck provided distant air cover for the raid by No 3 and 4 Commandos on the Lofoten Islands (Operation Claymore)
off the coast of Norway and "after the raid, we took a small group of
young Norwegians on board who had escaped during the confusion ashore".
On the 29 March the Jacob van Heemskerck escorted
a British troopship in perfect weather on a delicate and little known
mission to round up German observers and weather men on the exposed
northern coast of Iceland and take them back to Britain as prisoners of
war. Iceland wished to retain its neutrality but agreed to American
troops being based on Icelandic soil to prevent any further landings by
German observers.
For the next few months Jacob van Heemskerck
escorted outbound convoys to North America or Gibraltar and picked up
incoming convoys - without docking - and with no opportunity for the
crew to set foot on shore. Karel remembers vividly escorting the troop
carrying liner Avila Star
through the Bristol Channel on the 7 July 1941. He picked up a blip on
the screen of the RDF, switched to fire control and the officer on the
bridge directed blanket fire at the incoming target. The Avila Star
signaled its appreciation of the prompt action which saved it from
attack by air launched torpedoes, an impressive demonstration of the
value of RDF to a specialist ant-aircraft warship.
That summer between escorting convoys the Jacob van Heemskerck was
based at Belfast and Karel took the opportunity to hire a taxi to visit
the Christie family in Coleraine. Their daughter, Nora
Christie, became the best friend of his sister "Trees" (Theresa) while
attending a boarding school in Roermond before the war. Karel went in a
hired taxi with with his friend, Bill Purich, who was born in Britain and spoke not a word of his mother tongue when
he joined the ship:
"Bill's
father was a Dutch working man who had immigrated to UK. When he joined
the Dutch Navy he couldn't speak a word of Dutch but he was a very
resourceful chap. We enlisted on the same day and came on board
the same day. He served the whole war on the Heemskerck. During the latter part of the war, the Heemskerck was based in Australia. So, like many others of the crew, he had an Australian girl friend. When the Heemskerck
came home to Amsterdam, the Personnel Dept asked Bill where he wanted
to be demobilized. So he said Australia and the Dutch Navy placed him
on one vessel and another so that he finally arrived in Australia. The
Australian government paid for him to study to become an architect and
he married his girlfriend Naomi. He become more or less the center for
all the Dutch sailors who had also made Australia their home.
Bill died two years ago from a car accident."
Karel is on the right in the
photograph - the man in the peaked cap is the taxi driver. Sub Lt Karel R. Dahmen RNNR, Dutch Naval Liaison Office, London
Karel Dahmen left for officer training at the Dutch Naval College in
Enys House near Penryn, Cornwall, in October 1941 while the Jacob van Heemskerck
was in Harland and Wolfs dockyard at Belfast for an urgent refit. Three months later, soon after
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour brought America into the war, Sub
Lt Karel Dahmen RNNR (photographed in his new officer's uniform on the right) was posted to the Dutch Naval Liaison Office at the Admiralty in London. The head of the Naval Liaison Office, Lt Cdr Alfred de Booy, was the brother of the Secretary of the
Dutch Lifeboat Association.
Cdr
Alfred de Booy, former Head of the Dutch Naval Liaison Office, on the
left with the Prime Minister of the Dutch Government, P.S. Gerbrandy
(1885-1961)
The photograph was taken in 1943 when to took command of the HNLMS Johan Maurits van Nassau which was launched as HMS Ribble but transferred to the Dutch Navy before completion Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH) Ref. 2158_012643
"The
Dutch were the exception to the general rule that the Royal Navy posted
a senior officer, a captain or commander, to the allied navy's
headquarters to keep close tabs on issues between
that Allied navy and the RN, and report back to Admiral Sir Gerald
Dickens, later Vice Admiral E.L.S. King. The
Dutch sent an officer, Lt Cdr de Booy, to the Royal Navy. This
exception was made because the Royal Netherlands Navy was much better
organized than the other Allied navies upon their evacuation from the
continent, the fact that so many Dutch personnel (especially officers)
spoke English, and due to the long-standing presence of de Booy as
naval attache in London since 1936. There may be additional reasons of
which I am not aware."
Mark Jones, e-mail on the 6 September 2011
Rear-Admiral Sir Gerald C. Dickens RN, the
former naval attache at The Hague, was the Principal Liaison Officer (PLO) at the Admiralty. Dahmen described him
as "a man who could charm anybody". He left Scheveningen on the Zeemanshoop
a few hours before Karel Dahmen and transferred at sea to a British destroyer, the V & W Class Leader, HMS Malcolm, but transferred to the V & W destroyer HMS Wessex
at Hook of Holland and landed at Dover. Click
on the link (above left) to read "Dickens and the Dutch" by Mark Jones
and find out more about Dicken's role as PLO between the Admiralty and
allied naval
forces of occupied countries.
Dickens described his escape in
his personal Diary at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military
Archives, King’s College (GB0099 KCLMA Dickens) and in "The Royal
Netherlands Navy at war and after", Naval Review 1946 34 (4), 387–99.
Karel Dahmen may not have been aware of it but it looks as if he was
selected for this post because of his connection to Capt de Booy and
Admiral Dickens via the Zeemanshoop.
The Dutch Naval Liaison Office occupied two offices, one with a fine Adam fireplace, on the
second floor of the Old Admiralty Building overlooking Whitehall and was staffed by "Captain
de Booy, Lt. Cdr. M.J. ('Thijs') Vos DSC, the leading signals
officer, Lt. Cdr. K.J.F. Krediet, a torpedo specialist, our secretary
Miss Paise, 2nd Lt Willem van Meerkerk and myself." As the junior
signals officer Karel Dahmen was often on night duty and "in the
early morning the charlady would poke her
head in the door and say 'can I do you now sir?' "
Life was lonely for a young Dutch naval officer living in "digs" on the Bayswater Road after the comradeship of living in close quarters with the crew of the Jupiter, serving as a rating on the mess deck of the Jacob van Heemskerck and
training to be an officer at Enys House in Cornwall. He met Clement Hellegers, a friend of
his father, who worked at the Dutch Government
office, and was invited to board with his family in Byfleet, Surrey,
and life became pleasanter:
"I
commuted by train to Waterloo Station and the hour and a half break for
lunch gave time for leisurely meals with friends and colleagues at the
Admiralty. I became a member
of the Junior Officers Club on Piccadilly, enjoyed the hospitality of
the Royal Automobile Club - I could have lunch at the swimming pool -
and the Royal Ocean Racing Club, and there also was a Dutch club in
Sackville Street [Neerlandia at 31 Sackville Street].
Sometimes there was a lunch time
concert at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square where an
egg-sandwich cost a shilling. The egg was, of course, powdered egg. The
ration for fresh eggs was one per week which prompted George Formby to
write his song: 'Oh little hen, When, When, When will you lay me
an egg for my tea?' I remember one concert that moved me very
much. It was the piano concerto of Schumann played by Myra Hess. She was
not 'Dame Myra Hess' then.
Every fourth night I was on duty at
the Admiralty. I also went on dates. I would meet a girl friend after
office hours under the clock on Piccadilly Circus underground station
and after a meal go dancing at one of several small clubs. There was a
lot of dancing during World War II, on both sides of the ocean! You
would have a hundred couples on the dance floor, with big bands, in
Hammersmith Palace. We also went to West End theatres. All those great
actors! I remember John Gielgud as King Lear; I saw Laurence Olivier
with Vivian Leigh in Doctor's Dilemma before she became famous as Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. I went to that movie with Jane McPherson, General Eisenhower's driver.
On Thursday evenings almost everybody I knew listened to ITMA,
the radio show of Tommy Handley, and got to know the familiar
characters like the Italian Mister 'So-So'. I remember him as the
Italian Architect: 'I'm an
Artichoke, I build villains - semi detached villains with french
widows'. When there was an air raid, we usually stayed where we were.
Going home on the Underground you saw hundreds of people who spent the
nights on the platforms in bunk beds. Many did not even have a house
anymore. Often they were singing together, songs like: 'Bless 'm all,
the long and the short and the tall. There is no promotion this side of
the ocean, so cheer up my lads bless 'm all'. Air raids might be
far away, London is so large, but sometimes I was in the middle of one,
a terrible sight.
On Sundays we often went walking in Surrey. I remember lovely walks on
the Downs and near Dorking and Haslemere, which made one forget all
about the war for a couple of hours. I sometimes got Red Cross letters
from my family. They were of course limited to strictly family news. I
had perhaps slightly more Dutch friends than British friends. In a war,
people move around quite a lot. So my circle of friends often changed."
Despite the insight it gave him
into the Battle of the Atlantic Karel was not happy to be desk-bound coding and decoding naval signals. He
was on duty on the night of the 27 February 1942 when a
hastily-organized multinational naval force formed to defend the East
Indies against the Japanese fleet was destroyed
during the Battle of the Java Seas and the Dutch commander of the
squadron, Admiral
Karel Doorman, was killed when his flagship sunk. Karel decoded the
signal reporting the disaster and gave it to the
Dutch Prime
Minister, Pieter Sjoerd Gerbrandy, while he was having his breakfast at
the Dover Hotel and "that good man" was deeply moved.
A few months later Admiral Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich,
the Commander-in-Chief of Dutch naval forces in the Netherlands East
Indies, came to London and a lunch time meeting of The Anchorites was
held in his honour. The Anchorites were an association of senior
officers in the Royal Navy and other prominent figures in the world of
shipping including the heads of major merchant shipping companies.
Captain de Booy as doyen of the allied naval attaches was of course
involved:
"He
liked to take a junior officer with him because he thought that was
good for their education. The tables were arranged in "T" form, the
highest ranked people were sitting at the top of the T. The
Captain had forgotten to mention my rank. He had just listed the
members of the Dutch Navy: Admiral Helfrich, Admiral Furstner, himself
and me. So the people who arranged the seating thought that I also was
of high rank - and there I was, with one stripe sitting at the
table of honour, looking down on the lower ranks such as rear admirals
and the like. Admiral Helfrich began his speech by admitting to 'not
knowing the meaning of anchorite and on looking it up in a dictionary
and finding that anchorites lived in the desert and ate grasshoppers he was
pleasantly surprised to be standing here drinking such good sherry'.
After the lunch - I think it was someplace on Piccadilly - Cpt de Booy
and I walked back to the Admiralty. I was intrigued that all kind of
officers saluting us were looking towards me rather than the Captain.
When we arrived at our office and hung our caps on the cap hooks,
I noticed that the captain had my cap and I his cap with the gold
louvres. And all that for my education!"
Karel Dahmen, e-mail on 26 August 2011.
Cpt de Booy let him off the leash occasionally. He spent short periods
on a minesweeper and on a British MGB. Karel recalled a small but significant
incident while on the MGB. A Dutch merchant ship with German guards on board,
part of a convoy heading south from Sweden to the Netherlands, feigned engine trouble to
fall behind the convoy and its German escorts. The MGB sneaked up on
the merchant ship to shepherd it to safety and they were surprised to
find the Germans lining the rail with their arms raised and big grins
on their faces. Even as early as 1942 the war had turned against
Germany and the guards were glad of an opportunity to sit it out in the
safety of a British prisoner of war camp.
Before he was allowed to join HNMS Isaac Sweers
after its refit at Southampton in September he had to give his word of
honour to return to his desk job at the Admiralty. The CO of the Isaac Sweers
pressed him to stay but he kept his word and made the long tedious
journey south from Scapa Flow by ferry and train. Six weeks later the Issac Sweers
was torpedoed while escorting troop ships to the landings at Algiers
and there were only 86 survivors out of the crew of 194. On the 7 November
1942, the evening before the landings in North Africa, Karel was
walking up the narrow winding staircase in the Admiralty when he smelled
cigar smoke and suddenly found himself face to face with Churchill coming down from the Signals Room.
Winston recognised his uniform and said, “Good evening Dutch” and Karel
replied, “Good evening, Sir”.
Service with the 9th MTB Flotilla of the Dutch Navy
In the Spring of 1943, Karel
Dahmen was given a chance to play a more active part in the war. He was
posted to the 9th MTB Flotilla of the Dutch Navy at Dover: six 75 ft
plywood MTB each armed with two torpedoes plus Oerlikons and powered by
1,000 lbs thrust aero engines with silent low power petrol engines
for stealth. The 9th Flotilla was commanded by Lt Cdr Hans Larive,
a
Colditz escapee, and reported to Admiral Sir Percy Noble at Dover
Castle. Larive is on the left in the photograph with 2nd Lt Harry
Jorissen, CO of MTB 204, on the right. When not on night missions Karel stayed at the shore base, HMS Wasp,
the former Lord Warden Hotel, and was woken up in the morning by one of
the wrens with a cup of tea, "7 o'clock, sir, and raining like hell". The
success of RAF raids on rail transport between occupied France and
Germany had forced a switch from rail to sending convoys of merchant
ships through the Straits of Dover. The Dutch MTBs penetrated
their escort screens to torpedo the merchant ships. Karel was
responsible for the small RDF units used on night actions, training the
operators and working on tactics. He "went out on every mission,
usually on the boat from which Hans Larive commanded the operation. I
sat next to the RDF operator and communicated with the bridge". They
also used a technology from
World War 1, underwater hydrophones, which could distinguish between
the high speed engines of the escorts and the merchant ships.
The
success of the MTBs effectively sealed the Straits of Dover bringing to
a halt enemy convoys. They laid mines off the enemy coast and their
quiet petrol driven IC engines which "when set at idling made so little
noise that you could not hear them outside the engine room" enabled
them to sneak into the harbour at Dunkirk and the lower reaches of the
Western Scheldt on the coast of Holland to release a newly developed
and highly secret mine and escape unobserved.
Back to the Netherlands
The Dutch government in exile was planning to work with
the Americans to create a "Reinforced Regiment of Marines" comprising
three battalions of infantry plus artillery, amphibious landing craft
and engineering battalions and one tank company to fight the Japanese
and reconquer the Indies for the Netherlands. All of this was
dependent on recruiting 6,000 volunteers from the Netherlands as
it was liberated from German occupation. Karel was one of the Dutch
naval officers posted to the USA to work with the Marines in creating
this force. He spent the rest of 1943 and most of 1944 training at Camp
Lejune, North Carolina, and with the Construction Battalions of the
USN, the SeaBees, on Rhode Island, before returning on the Queen Mary
to recruit and train the volunteers in the liberated southern provinces of
the Netherlands.
He saw his parents for the first time since he left for England on the Zeemanshoop
in May 1940. His mother was visiting her daughter in the southern coal
mining areas of South Limburg during the allied invasion and was
separated from her husband who had remained behind in Roermond. Karel's
sister 'Trees' (Theresa) had married Charles M.H.J. Bongaerts (1909-44), the
elder brother of his friend Jo. In the months before the invasion,
Charles was a reserve officer in the Dutch army and during the five day
war he fought on the so called “Grebbe Berg Line”, that the Dutch army
held to the very end, repulsing heavy assaults from the German forces.
Charles Bongaerts was the head of the fire service in the coal mining
area and this gave him access to vehicles which enabled him to play a
prominent part in the underground resistance. They put up airmen in
their home and transported them south on the long journey to England
via Belgium, France and Spain. On
one occasion Charles Bongaerts stopped a German convoy and, claiming to
be on urgent business, got a mechanic to repair his vehicle while three
American airmen were in the back. His group was infiltrated in 1944,
Charles was betrayed and died in a German concentration camp on the 23 November 1944.
Karel's uncle, Charles Nicolas, had a
prominent position in the State Coal Mines and used all kinds of tricks
to make sure the mines produced as little coal as possible for the
Germans. In late 1944 when the US army was halted at the border of
South Limburg, the coal mining area, he sneaked through the lines and
told the US army commanders that the Germans had only a small force
available to oppose the US army and persuaded them to occupy South
Limburg before the Germans could destroy the mines. When a provisional
military government was established in the liberated parts of the
Netherlands he was made Head of the Military Authority in South Limburg.
While
recruiting for the Marine Brigade in South Limburg, Karel briefly
visited his home town, Roermond, a few days after its liberation on the
1 March. During the siege by the British, the Germans had forcibly
evacuated almost all the inhabitants. Only a few hundred had been left
behind. He recognized some of them "at the place, surrounded by
destroyed houses, where they came with pots to get hot soup and some
dry food. They looked so worn, so weak, so frail. No joy was in their
faces. It was as if they still could not grasp that their ordeal had
ended." When his parents returned to Roermond they found the family home on the Pastoors Wal was too badly damaged to be repaired and they had to find a new home in the south of the town. Service in Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies
The recruiting teams completed their work shortly after Germany was defeated in May and
most of the recruits were sent to the USA for training. Karel remained
behind to train 750 mechanics and drivers for the transport battalion
of the Marine Brigade. It was during this time that he met Hermine Everard, a law student at Leiden University, and they married in March 1946. In the meantime Japan
had surrendered and the Americans had no further use for the
Dutch Marine Brigade which was transported with their equipment from the USA to the East Indies on
Dutch ships to
pacify and regain control of the
former colony. Ltz 11 Karel Dahmen (the equivalent of a Captain in the
Marines) and the 750 men of the transport battalion embarked on the MS Tabinta, a sister ship of the Tarakan on which he made his first sea voyage when only 16, and joined them at Surabaya in
eastern Java in May where he was given command of the engineering company.
Taking command of the Engineering Company of the Marine Brigade in Surabaya, Java (left) and building bridges (right) Courtesy of Karel Dahmen Building a jetty for the corvettes of the Dutch Navy at Gili Manuk, the easten point of Bali (left)
Landing the Marine Brigade on the beach of Pasir Putih, East Java in 1947 (right)
In both cases the floating pontoons of the USN SeaBees was used Courtesy of Karel Dahmen
The next few months were demanding. The Dutch Marine Brigade gained
control of most of eastern Java and he was then immediately sent to an
island off the coast of Papua New Guinea to arrange the shipment of
construction equipment by LST to Java. His wife completed her law
degree and flew out to join him and they set up home in Surabaya where
their daughter, Carole Anne, was born in April 1947: "Everything
imported was rationed, including nappies. Her ration was ONE nappy. The
housekeeper of one of the 'sugar barons' came to our aid with twelve
worn damask napkins." The Dutch government's failure to ratify the
Lingadjati Agreement to establish an independent but decentralised
Indonesia prolonged the fighting for another three years but Karel
Dahmen would not be involved for much longer. In November 1947 "after
having served with the Dutch Navy for almost seven years we were
repatriated to Holland and three months later I became a civilian."
Karel Dahmen describes his life after the war
"At the age of 29 and having a family I felt I could not afford to go
back to college for a degree. I applied for a job with the Dutch
affiliate of Stanvac Eastern and was sent to one of its oil fields in
Sumatra to work with the General Engineering Department. My work was
that of an oilfield engineer and I took a correspondence course to
improve my skills as a civil engineer. I worked for this company for
eleven years. I occasionally met with my old friend Jo Bongaerts who
had a similar position with Shell. My responsibilities were growing and
so was our family. Every three years we had a glorious vacation in
Holland lasting about four months. By 1959 I had become Chief General
Engineer for the oilfields in south and central Sumatra but by
then Carole Anne had four brothers and finished elementary school and
would have to continue her education in Holland.
Top left: "On holiday in Europe we climbed the Kitzstein Horn in Austria, 1952" Top right: "Our family in Pendopo, South Sumatra, 1954" Bottom: Bratan Lake, Bali, "where the gods dwell" Courtesy of Karel Dahmen
Rather than split the family I resigned and back in Holland joined the
Continental Carbon Company which was building a plant in Rotterdam to
make carbon black, a vital component in the manufacture of car tyres
and many other rubber based products. We bought a house in the lovely
dune area south of the waterway across from the Hook of Holland. I was
sent to the States to learn the process at one of their plants and on
my return I learned that I was going to be the plant manager. I hired
and trained the workers, startup was in May and we were soon producing
and shipping at full capacity. In 1963 we expanded the plant to double
capacity and I became Director of the Dutch company.
By then Jo Bongaerts had been transferred by Shell to the Netherlands and appointed General Manager of the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (Netherlands Oil Company) which was developing the huge natural gas field at Groningen and marketing the gas through the 'Nederlandse Gas Unie’. The
Dutch government was part owner of Gas Unie with Shell and Esso and
insisted on limiting supply of the cheaper Groningen gas for use as a
raw material for manufacturing and not for use as a fuel. This
presented Karel Dahmen, the Manager of the Continental Carbon Company's
plant in Rotterdam, with a problem. Karel's company had a long term
contract to use surplus hydrogen from the neighbouring Esso refinery as
the fuel for their reactors producing carbon black but Esso wanted them
to switch to buying natural gas from the Gas Union. They would become
its first industrial customer but would be using gas as a fuel and not
as a raw material for manufacture. Karel Dahmen was careful to have no
contact with Jo Bongaerts during the torturous and fraught negotiations
which followed to allow them to use the gas as a fuel until "Gas Unie
finally gave in and we lived happily ever after" (Karel Dahmen).
Left: "In 1967 our family arrived in Houston, Texas." Right: "At the Carbon Black plant in Japan with my good friend Yukio Ogata, 1975" Courtesy of Karel Dahmen
Our parent company was expanding overseas with plants in France,
Scotland, Italy, Spain, Japan, Korea and Australia. All of these paid
royalties to the parent company but their process technology had to be
constantly upgraded to keep abreast of new developments and I was asked
to move to the US and start a Process Technology Department. This
caused us to move with some regrets to Houston, Texas. I could now
devote most of my time to technical improvements and problem solving
for the five plants in the US and the overseas plants. I co-operated
with Professor Nick Syred, a specialist in the combustion technology at
the University of Sheffield University
(and later at Wales) who became a good friend while jointly developing
combustors which burned the waste gases reducing pollution and
producing electricity. In 1980 I became Director of Research and
Development. This role gave me more opportunity to put into practice
my ideas and the contact with the research staff at our
customers, the tyre manufacturers, gave me much pleasure.
Karel Dahmen with his wife in Nicaragua, 1995 (left), and Colorado, 2003 (right)
Courtesy of Karel Dahmen
Karel Dahmen at Santa Barbara, California, March 2011 Exile, a recent painting by Karel Dahmen
Courtesy of Karel Dahmen
I retired in 1982, we built a summer house in Buena Vista, Colorado,
and a year later moved our household from Houston to Austin. We became
active in the "Beyond War" movement during the Cold War years - that
took a lot of time and energy - also became involved in study travel to
countries in Central America and with projects of development
assistance. These projects kept us busy during the nineties. But we
also had a lot of fun visiting in Europe and our house in the mountains
where in the summer we have lots of guests. I am also a painter of
water colours. Then Hermine's health failed and in September 2005 her
wonderful life ended."
Karel Dahmen sculling on the lake at Austin, Texas
This photograph was taken on the 7 January 2012
Karel lives in the States but retains his Dutch nationality and says he always will
This photograph was taken with neighbours of his son Maarten in Alkmaar during the World Cup in June 2014
They call him 'Opa' (grandfather) and when the weather is nice like to bring out chairs and a table and something to drink
A portrait of Karel Dahmen in 2013 by Gertrudis Dapper The portrait on the wall behind is also of Karel, aged 16, painted by his uncle, Joep Nicolas, in 1935 Courtesy of Karel Dahmen
Looking back Karel reflected that his impulsive decision to leave for England on the Zeemanshoop gave him the confidence to make similar far reaching life changing decisions in his subsequent life.
Karel e-mailed me on the 31 October 2017 from his house in Austin, Texas:
"After
a rather serious illness I am back in my house. I was in our Colorado
house and in Taos, New Mexico, during August. I also visited Edith
Velmans and telephone her. But I don’t travel across the Atlantic
anymore. I still paint, one of them is in an exhibition
right now. I will send you a copy by separate mail (on right). Since
the beginning of this year I have given up driving a car. I go to
concerts, chamber music and symphonies. Austin is quite a music town.
Two of my sons and their families live in, and near Austin. And
there are many friends. Such is the life of a 98 year old. The last of
the Zeemanshoop voyagers. With my warm greetings, Karel"
"This account of Karel Dahmen's life
is based on an interview recorded on
DVD at The National
Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas in April 2011, his own
six page account of his life plus several lengthy telephone calls
and e-mails. I would also like to thank Mark Jones for explaining the
manner in which the Dutch Naval Liaison Office at the Admiralty
differed from the way in which the Royal Navy liaised with other allied
navies." Bill Forster
Read about the lives of the other three student crew members of the Zeemanshoop Karel Dahmen's close friend, Jo Bongaerts, the medical student Lou Meijers and the "Captain", Harry Hack
Karel Dahmen was one of the four students at Dutch universities who deserve most of the credit for bringing the Zeemanshoop and its passengers to safety. Karel Dahmen's decision to cycle from Delft to Scheveningen after hearing the
broadcast announcement of the surrender of Netherland forces changed
the course of his life. The
Dutch called their fellow countrymen who left for England after the
surrender of Dutch forces to fight for the liberation of the
Netherlands Engelandvaarders (England Travellers). The four man student "crew" were Engelandvaarders but the majority
of the passengers on the Dutch lifeboat were
Jewish and had they not escaped on the Zeemanshoop
they would almost certainly have died in a German concentration camp.
Many of them had already had to leave their homes in Austria or Germany. Chance brought the 46 passengers and crew of the Zeemanshoop
together on the evening of Tuesday the 14 May 1940 after the surrender of the Netherlands was broadcast on Dutch radio. 
Neither the Netherlands Navy, which had brought most of its ships to
England, or the army could use untrained volunteers in this phase of the war but it might be
possible to join a Dutch merchant ship. There were nine hundred Dutch
merchant ships at sea when the Netherlands surrendered and they all
headed for England. Their crews could not
return to their families and nor could they get a job ashore. The
Dutch government in exile introduced a law requiring them to remain
with their ships.
The Dutch merchant fleet had roughly 18,000 crew
members (6,000 from the colonies) and nine hundred ships and 329 ships were sunk and far more men lost than in the Dutch Navy. 
On the 29 March the Jacob van Heemskerck escorted
a British troopship in perfect weather on a delicate and little known
mission to round up German observers and weather men on the exposed
northern coast of Iceland and take them back to Britain as prisoners of
war. Iceland wished to retain its neutrality but agreed to American
troops being based on Icelandic soil to prevent any further landings by
German observers. 
In the Spring of 1943, Karel
Dahmen was given a chance to play a more active part in the war. He was
posted to the 9th MTB Flotilla of the Dutch Navy at Dover: six 75 ft
plywood MTB each armed with two torpedoes plus Oerlikons and powered by
1,000 lbs thrust aero engines with silent low power petrol engines
for stealth. The 9th Flotilla was commanded by Lt Cdr Hans Larive,
a
Colditz escapee, and reported to Admiral Sir Percy Noble at Dover
Castle. Larive is on the left in the photograph with 2nd Lt Harry
Jorissen, CO of MTB 204, on the right. When not on night missions Karel stayed at the shore base, HMS Wasp,
the former Lord Warden Hotel, and was woken up in the morning by one of
the wrens with a cup of tea, "7 o'clock, sir, and raining like hell".
Looking back Karel reflected that his impulsive decision to leave for England on the Zeemanshoop gave him the confidence to make similar far reaching life changing decisions in his subsequent life. 