Transport Commander, Captain Pasvolsky (1898-1980)

Updated 16 January 2023

The Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, tells us that, while Captain Pedersen sailed the ship, another Captain, in the US Army, ran life for its passengers.  He was Valentine Pasvolsky of Lakewood, New Jersey.  The Souvenir Edition has this to say about him:

Captain Valentine Pasvo1sky has been in the US Army for quite a long time and plans to remain for some time more. He has been with the USAT "General Heintzelman" since it was assigned to the DP program, prior to that he was on troop transport duty, Although a registered Civil Engineer, at the present time his job is Transport Commander, a position comparable to that of Army Post Commander, the (USAT) “General Heintzelman" his military post. A resident of Lakewood, New Jersey, he is married and has four children, two boys and two girls. The Captain is quite familiar with all the States and many foreign countries. For Australia, however, in common with passengers, he is heeded for the first time. On frequent occasions the Captain has been in close contact with Baltic people — Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, and speaks most highly of them. In speaking of the group now aboard, he is highly pleased with the co-operation shown in maintaining order, cleanliness, and everything (else) that makes for an all round pleasant trip (and) extends his best wishes to all in your new endeavours and new homes.

Valentine Pasvolsky as portrayed in the Souvenir Edition

Captain Pasvolsky was the man who supplied the headline for the West Australian newspaper's report on 29 November 1947 of the arrival of the Heintzelman. "'The Pick of the Bunch' from Europe" led the report.

Captain Pasvolsky explained that the ship had been under US Army discipline:  he was in charge of the passengers and a US Army staff of 12.  This was the fifth trip the Heintzelman with displaced persons from Europe, the other trips being to Brazil and Canada.

"These people are the pick of the bunch", Pasvolsky said. "Their conduct has been excellent, their discipline has been remarkable, their physique is good, they are clean, and generally their educational standard seems high."

Once again, it's Ancestry.com which provides much more information about Captain Pasvolsky.  Rather than detailing Ancestry's multiple sources below, I have created a Pasvolsky family tree on Ancestry.  This tree should be accessible at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/180672966/family/familyview?cfpid=362349000400, although you may need to set up a free Ancestry.com Registered Guest account to view it.

Valentine Pasvolsky on 20 November 1948,
at the wedding of his younger daughter, the first of his children to marry
Source:  Ancestry.com

Valentine Mikhailovich Pasvolsky had been born in Ukraine in 1898.  His parents had migrated with their 8 children in 1905, reaching New York the day before Valentine's seventh birthday.

His family had lived in New Jersey from at least 1917, with Valentine marrying there in 1922.  In contrast to his immigrant status, his wife was a Mayflower descendent.  She was Ellen Isabel Stoughten, known as Nellie.  Together they actually had 5 children, with one of the 3 girls dying in infancy.  Although the children were described as "two boys and two girls" in the Souvenir Edition, the oldest was already aged 24 at the time of our Heintzelman voyage, while the youngest was aged 18.  That is to say that they were of a similar age to many of the refugee passengers of whom Valentine was in charge.

Captain Valentine Pasvolsky (standing, centre) with his family,
probably at home in New Jersey, possibly taken in 1944
Source: Ancestry.com

Captain Pasvolsky's wife Nellie with their oldest child, Dick,
probably taken on the same day as the previous photo,
with Nellie perhaps in Red Cross uniform;
the background may well be their New Jersey home
Source:  Ancestry.com

Valentine did stay in the US Army for another 12 years, in fact, retiring at the age of 60 in 1959, with the rank of Major.  It was then that his second career as a collector could flourish.

He had been collecting North American Indian wumpum and medals since early in his Army life.  In the course of this, he had acquired related coins as well.  A New Jersey tercentenary exhibition in 1964 earned him first prize for his display of early American money.

He was highly regarded by fellow numismatists for his willingness to help them organise and to share information.  In 1974, Val Pasvolsky received a Numismatic Ambassador award from the American Numismatic Association. 

In 1975, the Utah Numismatic Society awarded him a plaque in recognition that his display for them marked the 50th American State in which he had exhibited.  Also in 1975, the cover of the first issue of the Garden State Numismatic Association Journal honoured him (Garden State being the nickname for New Jersey as well as the Australian state of Victoria).  Current and past officials of the American Numismatic Association attended a testimonial dinner organised in his honour that year to present him with a medal of merit.

His collecting extended to North and South American Indian art.  Val began exhibiting his collection at his home, calling it the Indian Village Museum and Trading Post of Lakewood. The Museum occupied three rooms on the ground floor.  Val enjoyed sharing his vast knowledge with his visitors. He also exhibited select items from his collection at various events, often giving presentations donned in full Indian regalia.

Inside the Indian Village Museum and Trading Post of Lakewood
Source: Heritage Auctions Website

After his death in 1980, the collection was shared between one of his sons and a daughter.  The daughter sent her share of the collection to auction in 2013.  The son's share of the collection is on sale as I write, through a Texas company called Heritage Auctions.

This Sioux boy's beaded shirt from the Pasvolsky Collection
was sold for USD 75,000 in 2013
Source: Heritage Auctions Website

Of Val's 4 children, the eldest, Richard, became notable as a parks, environmental and recreation educator who worked in a number of the northern States of America. His brother worked in real estate and one sister worked as a nurse for much of her life.

Val's father is recorded as working as an editor, perhaps of Russian language publications.  Another son, Leo, was an economist, journalist and public servant.  As a personal assistant to the then US Secretary of State during World War II, Leo Paslovsky is credited with writing the final version of the Charter of the United Nations. 

ALL SOURCES listed on my Ancestry.com pages for members of the family.

Adomas Ivanauskas (1912-1980): The grandfather I never knew by Rasa Ščevinskienė with Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 16 January 2023 

Adomas Ivanauskas was born on 11 February 1912, in the village of Pazapsiai, in the Seiniai district in Lithuania, only a couple of kilometres from the modern border with Poland. On one official Australian form, he gives his birthplace as the city of Kovno, now known as Kaunas, but we know that he was only serving there with the Lithuanian Army, before he left for Germany. 

As he turned 18 in 1931, he would have been called up for military training during the first half of the 1930s. 

Adomas in Lithuanian military uniform, 1935

Before WWII, he was a landowner in Pazapsiai. In 1938, he married Monika. They had a son, Alvydas, in 1940. Alvydas, who is my father, still lives in Lithuania, as do I. When WWII started in Lithuania, Adomas again joined the Lithuanian Army. 

If he gave an accurate date of arrival in Germany, July 1945, on his 1957 application for Australian citizenship, then it is likely that he somehow managed to escape Lithuania after the Soviet forces re-occupied it, in October 1944. Either that, or he omitted time spent in other countries, such as Czechoslovakia, en route (NAA: MT874/1, V1956/21973). 

In Germany, he lived in Displaced Persons camps in the English zone, including the “Riga” camp in Lübeck. He was living here on 6 October 1947, when interviewed by the Australian selection team operating in the German camps and accepted for resettlement in Australia, based on his previous farming experience (NAA: A11772, 377). He left Bremerhaven for Australia with 842 other Baltic refugees on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman on 30 October 1947. 

Like the others in the group of 839 allowed to leave the Heintzelman in Fremantle, Western Australia, Adomas stayed there for four days before continuing eastwards on the HMAS Kanimbla. The group then travelled by two chartered trains to the former Bonegilla army camp. Below is the front of the card recording Adomas’ presence at the new Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre. 

Adomas Ivanauskas, Bonegilla card, NAA: A2571, 110

Despite the desperate need for people with farming experience in Australia, to grow more food for the military returning from WWII and the ‘baby boom’ which their return was creating, Adomas was sent first to a sawmill. He was sent on 20 January 1948, after 6 weeks in Bonegilla, to Rylstone, a small town in the Central Tablelands region of New South Wales. There was also a desperate need for timber to build houses for the new families.

He returned to Bonegilla on 12 April 1948 but, three days later, was sent to Iron Knob in South Australia to work with a company then known as Broken Hill Pty Ltd – but now simply BHP. Like all of the Displaced Persons, he had agreed to stay in Australia, working, for at least two years. He was assisting the mining industry, however, rather than farming.

Adomas relaxes at the barracks, Iron Knob

By March 1949, Adomas has managed to leave the outback town of Iron Knob for South Australia’s capital city, Adelaide.

An Aliens Registration Card returned to the Commonwealth of Australia when Adomas received Australian citizenship shows a first address of 56 Maple Avenue, Goodwood. Goodwood is a suburb just south of the Adelaide Central Business District (CBD). This address was notified on 17 March 1949, so after less than one year in Iron Knob (NAA: B78, 1957/IVANAUSKAS A). 

The next address, Railway Hotel, Islington, was notified on 4 October 1949. Further evidence of the move to Islington is a classified advertisement in the Adelaide Advertiser of 25 October 1949. It read, 'New Australian couple require bed-sitting room, with use of kitchen in metropolitan area. Apply A. Ivanauskas, Railway Hostel, Islington.'

Adomas' advertisement, Adelaide Advertiser, 1949

The only Islington now in Australia Post’s postcode directory is a suburb of Newcastle, New South Wales. A Wikipedia article about the South Australian Islington says that it is the site of the main workshops for the South Australian Railways. The suburb in which they are located is now Kilburn. As the Islington workshops opened in 1883, they may well have had a job to offer a ‘New Australian’ from Lithuania, with BHP experience, in 1949.

However, October 1949 also is the date Adomas gave for his move from Adelaide to Melbourne on his citizenship application form. His Aliens Registration Card gave an address with a near illegible suburb, but the most likely reading is 3 Mackenzie Street, Melbourne. This is an address almost at the northeast corner of the CBD. The date on which he advised this address was 12 November 1949.

Later addresses were Dalgety Street, St Kilda, advised on 23 December with an illegible year, Waltham Street, Richmond (7 January 1952) and Vaucluse Street, Richmond (24 October, again with an illegible year). All addresses were in inner Melbourne. They suggest someone forced by circumstance to move from one rental property to another, but he might have been moving to improved accommodation on each occasion. He was at the Vaucluse Street, Richmond address when he applied for Australian citizenship on 29 May 1957.

Adomas and Beryl captured by a Melbourne street photographer, 17 October 1950

The Aliens Registration Card should have been recording Adonis’ employers too. For some reason, those records did not start until 17 January 1952. Then it was noted that he was working as a welder at a company in South Melbourne. Again, this is in inner Melbourne but to the west of Richmond.

The next employment remark is dated 24 October 1955. Then, Adomas was working with Renault on Burnley Street, Richmond, much closer to home. The remarks include ‘Eng’, possibly ‘Engineer’ or ‘Engineering’.

He was a welder again with the Gas and Fuel Corporation as of 29 March 1956. The address given, Flinders Street, Melbourne, was that of the head office of this Victorian State Government instrumentality.

The final occupation information before Adomas received his citizenship calls him a welder again. This time, on 14 November 1956, he was working with a company called Goodwin’s Ltd, at the Shell Refinery at Newport. Newport is on the other side of Melbourne’s CBD, with the Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers also impeding travel. There would not have been direct public transport, so Adomas undoubtedly was driving himself to work.

Perhaps on his farm in Lithuania, perhaps while exercising his survival skills in Germany and perhaps even at Iron Knob or the Islington Workshops in South Australia, Adomas had learnt welding. This is a highly skilled occupation, using gases at high temperatures. He could have gone back to farming, initially as a labourer or share farmer, but must have preferred the opportunities which welding offered.

A surviving photo shows Adomas sitting behind the wheel of a car, with Ocean Grove and 17 October 1950 written on the back. Co-incidentally, 17 October 1950 is also the date of the street photograph with Beryl, above, so the date may not refer to the day on which the photographs were taken.

From 1950 onwards, many families from Europe started to settle in Ocean Grove, a coastal town to the southwest of Melbourne. While at least 100 Km distant on the winding roads of the time, it was only 25 Km from the industrial town of Geelong. Geelong would have offered much employment and it is likely that the Ocean Grove land prices were cheap, just right for new arrivals wanting to build their own homes. Adomas must have had friends to visit in Ocean Grove.

Adomas shows off his car in Ocean Grove, Victoria, 17 October 1950

The car in which Adomas is seated looks remarkably like a 1925 Star Model F-25 Sedan, made by an American company which manufactured only between 1922 and 1928. Have a look at the restored example in the photograph below.

1925 Star Model F-25 Sedan, from Classiccarweekly.net

Later addresses for Adomas in Melbourne are Manton Street, Burnley, and Elgin Street, Hawthorn. While living in Melbourne, Adomas participated in gatherings organized by fellow Lithuanians, contributed help to compatriots and supported the construction of Lithuanian House in Melbourne. In the Lithuanian newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė, I found a number of records of money donated by Adomas Ivanauskas during 1954-1956.

Adomas and friends, date unknown, place likely to be Melbourne
judging from the VB beer bottle near the centre of the table;
Adomas is second from left, the woman on the left is likely to be Beryl

Voting is compulsory in Australia, so once Adomas acquired his Australian citizenship on 22 November 1957, he was required to be on the publicly available electoral roll. He was also required to keep the Australian Electoral Commission notified of all changes of address.

Of particular interest is the 30 November 1963 issue of the electoral roll for the Subdivision of Hawthorn, Division of Yarra, since it records Jean Ivanauskas at the same address. This suggests that Adomas was married but we don’t know when or whether they had children. Jean’s occupation was stated to be ‘process worker’, someone employed in a factory or warehouse where she carried out routine tasks, perhaps on an assembly line. Again, Adomas’ profession was welder.

Pages from 1963 electoral roll for Federal Electorate of Yarra,
Sourced from the Australian Electoral Commission via Ancestry.com.au

Despite the requirement to notify all changes of address, the image above is the only one on Ancestry.com.au in which Adomas' name has been identified.  Ancestry.com.au has made available images of Federal electoral rolls to 1980, which ought to cover Adomas' movements until his death that year (see below).

During the 1950s and 1960s, Adomas wrote to his brother Vacys, another Displaced Person who had been resettled in England. He wrote also to his wife Monica and son, Alvydas, in Lithuania until 1961. The family doesn’t know why he stopped writing. The back of a postcard sent to wife and son from Melbourne is reproduced below.

Adomas' postcard to his son and wife in Lithuania

Photos sent to Vacys refer on the back to Beryl rather than Jean. One explanation for this mystery is that the one woman in Adomas’ life had been given the names Jean Beryl, but preferred to use her middle name. Jean appears on the electoral roll because the officials compiling it were interested in her first name only.

In 2013, I learned that my grandfather had died on 19 February 1980 in Perth, Western Australia. He is buried there in the Karrakatta Cemetery. When and why he settled in Perth is unknown but Department of Immigration records indicate that he was known to its Perth office in January 1972 (NAA: MT874/1, V1956/21973).

He died in the Swanbourne Hospital, Mount Claremont, in suburban Perth. The cause of death was partial pneumonia that lasted for a week. The death certificate states that he was a widower. It therefore leads to the conclusion that his wife Jean died even earlier than Adomas. The name on his death certification had been anglicised to Adam Ivanauskas.

This was the grandfather I never knew.

REFERENCES

Classic Car Weekly (2014), ‘1925 Star Sedan’,  http://www.classiccarweekly.net/2014/08/21/1925-star-sedan/, accessed 7 January 2022.

Adelaide Advertiser (25 October 1949), ‘Classified Advertising’, p 10, obtained through the National Library of Australia's Trove service, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article36693972.

National Archives of Australia, Migrant Reception and Training Centre, Bonegilla [Victoria]: A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration [Bonegilla]; 110, Iliew, Marin to Ivankovic, Stanko.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, Central Office: A11772, Migrant Selection Documents for Displaced Persons who travelled to Australia per General Stuart Heintzelman departing Bremerhaven 30 October 1947; 377, IVANAUSKAS Adomas DOB 11 February 1912.

National Archives of Australia, Department of Immigration, Victorian Branch: MT874/1, European migrants general personal files 1956; V1956/21973, Ivanauskas, Adomas.

Wikipedia, 'Islington Railway Workshops', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islington_Railway_Workshops, accessed 12 September 2021.

USAT General Stuart Heintzelman's Master, Captain CM Pedersen (1884-1948)

Updated 16 January 2023

The man responsible for getting the Heintzelman from Bremerhaven to Fremantle was the ship's master, Captain CM Pedersen. The Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, contains both a drawing of the Captain in profile, and a profile in words.  

When I first published this blog entry on 2 October 2021, I had been unable to find any more information on Captain Pedersen.  This was despite numerous searches in what would normally be reliable sources.  The block was that I could use only his initials, not his given names.  There was more than one CM Pedersen enlisted in the US military at the same time as him.

The way through the block was provided by the West Australian of 29 November 1947, which had been kind enough to print Pedersen's first name and middle initial.  He actually was Cort M Pedersen.  The West Australian had misspelt the family name as 'Petersen', another impediment to the search.  My thanks here to Jonas Mockunas for providing the hint which got me through the block.

Let's start with the two portraits from the Souvenir Edition.

Captain CM Pedersen

Captain CM Pedersen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1884. He started to go to sea in 1901 on a Danish ship, then sailed on Norwegian, British and American sailing ships. In 1907 he started to sail on steamships from San Francisco. When the First World War began Captain Pedersen went in the US Navy active service and since the end of the war he has been sailing with the New York-Cuba mail SS Co for 22 years. Since 1941 he is attached to the US Army Transport Service. 

 

The Master says that we have enjoyed a quite pleasant trip, the weather is fine and everything is very good. It is a long passage, but he has been on much longer trips. In l904 he sailed from Hamburg to Newcastle, Australia, around the Cape of Good Hope and it took him 200 days. 

The Master is very pleased with the passengers. He has had to deal with many Baltic people before and some of his best friends are Estonians. The Master says: "Your people are very fortunate to go to Australia. I know Australians, all of them I have ever met had been very wonderful people. I can only say that you will be very happy there. 

"Thank you for all the co-operation I have got from the passengers aboard this ship."

Numerous documents on Ancestry.com, once it was told to look for Cort M Pedersen, provided his full name:  Cort Mathias Pedersen.  He was born in Copenhagen on 17 November 1884.

In the 1910 US Census, he was a 24-year-old lodger in a San Francisco household of seven others born in Denmark.  All six Danish lodgers gave their occupation as seaman.  He had arrived in the US in 1905.

He married another Dane, Inge Mortensen, in California in August 1910.  They had two sons:  Cort Edward, born in 1912 and Paul Lawrence, born in 1917.

He was in New York City, applying for a Seaman's Certificate of American Citizenship by the summer of 1919.  He had been naturalized in San Francisco on 17 June 1912 and had arrived in New York as the Master of a vessel called the Imperator.  Fortunately for us, the application includes three photos of the ship's master, two taken around the time of the application.

Two photos of Cort M Petersen from 1919, aged 34

Cort Pedersen served with the US Navy during World War I, having the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade.  He was discharged in July 1919 but is recorded in the 1920s as being in the US Merchant Marine Naval Reserve.

Cort was indeed 'sailing with the New York-Cuba mail SS Co' between the World Wars.  The actual name of the company employing him was the Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies Steamship Inc, known as Agwilines.  New York Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists show Cort in and out of that port with great frequency during the 1920s and 1930s.  He generally was sailing to and from Havana, but sometimes Mexican ports were visited also.  The lists have been digitised by Ancestry.com, which has identified 382 entries for Cort M Pedersen between 1920 and 1948.

The amount of public detail on Cort's life and movements available through Ancestry.com is so great that I have set up a separate family tree for him there, rather than trying to reference individual items here.  This tree is accessible at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/180127428/person/282345658226/facts, although you may need to set up a free Ancestry.com Registered Guest account to view it.

Cort Pedersen reached the national headlines in the United States in January 1935.  He was then the Chief Officer of an Agwilines cruise ship called the Mohawk, which veered suddenly across the path of a Norwegian freighter called the Talisman.  The Mohawk sank within an hour, despite the Captain's attempt to beach her at Sea Girt, New Jersey.  By then, the Captain had locked himself in his cabin to go down with his ship.  None of the officers on duty on the bridge survived:  Cort was the only officer of the watch to survive.

A board of enquiry commenced within days of the fatal incident, which had led to a loss of 45 of the 163 passengers and crew.  Cort testified that he was in the chart room writing reports when he heard warning blasts from his ship.  Returning to the bridge, he was advised by the Captain that the new automatic steering gear had failed along with the telegraph to the engine room.  The Captain wanted the ship stopped and managed to convey this to the engine room by telephone.  Meanwhile, Cort was an additional messenger to the engine room, as well as being the officer trying to organise lifeboats.

A board of enquiry concluded that the collision was due mostly to mechanical malfunction or human error on the Mohawk's part. Some suggested that the Mohawk's navigation lights also had failed before the collision.  The damage inflicted by the collision should not have been enough to sink the Mohawk, but it seemed that she had been modified to carry bulk cargoes for extra revenue during the Depression. These modifications had opened up the ship's watertight bulkheads for easier cargo handling. 

Cort was back at sea soon after this fatal drama.  Between 1930 and 1940, he was sometimes the Captain of Agwilines' voyages but often the Chief Officer.  As he advised the Heintzelman passengers' Souvenir Edition, he joined the US Army Transport service in 1941.

Passenger and crew lists for the port of New York, digitised by Ancestry.com, show Cort as the captain of USAT Thistle, a hospital ship travelling to and from Scotland.  After the War, he travelled across the Pacific for at least one voyage of the Thistle between the island of Leyte in the Philippines and Honolulu, Hawaii.  He returned to the Atlantic, captaining voyages to and from Marseilles, France, and Leghorn, Italy, but mostly to and from Bremerhaven, the starting point of the voyage of the Heintzelman to Australia.

Seven months after he started the voyage to Australia, on 31 May 1948, Cort took the Heintzelman from Bremerhaven again, but this time she and the refugees were bound for Peru and Chile.  We know this because the last page of the List or Manifest of Aliens Employed on the Vessel as Members of Crew, required under US law and surrendered in the port of New York, was stamped and signed by US consuls in both Lima and Santiago.

Our ship's master died only one year after safely delivering his charges to Australia on the Heintzelman, on 5 December 1948.  He died in the St Albans Hospital, Queens, the East Coast referral centre for respiratory disorders in the US Navy.  As the Hospital specialised in tuberculosis, this might have been the cause of his early death.  One way or another, he cannot have been a well man during his last voyages.

It is worth looking at the stories of his two sons, since the elder disappeared in dramatic fashion in 1954.  Cort Edward worked in the transport sector, like his father, but on land as a Greyhound bus driver.  He enlisted in the US Army in 1943 and, after the War, continued to serve in the National Guard.  In his youth he had been active in the Boy Scouts.  All of this meant that a sudden disappearance in the early morning of 12 November was quite out of character.

His abandoned bus was found on a South Boston, Massachusetts, street with its headlights on and Pedersen's hat, shoes, jacket and waybills scattered inside.  A canister usually above the driver's seat was on the floor also.  However, with forensic skills typical of the times, the bus was driven into the nearby Greyhound garage rather than being left as a crime scene for police investigation.

Cort Edward and his wife had three daughters, born between 1933 and 1944.  The family advises on a FindAGrave Webpage for his wife that his body was never found and his wife had to arrange for him to be declared legally dead.  

The younger son, Paul Lawrence, seems to have had a much quieter life than his father or brother.  At the time of the 1940 US Census, Paul was working as a bank clerk in New York City.  When he enlisted in the US Army in May 1942, he was recorded as having received a college education (whereas his older brother had left school after eighth grade). 

Paul was discharged from the Army in July 1946.  There is little about him on public record from then on, apart from a couple of residential locations near Los Angeles, on the other side of the country from where he grew up.  We know, however, that he died in Summerville, South Carolina, in 1996, on his 79th birthday.

His first wife had died in Queens, NY, in 1968.  We know from her military headstone that her husband had reached the rank of Lt Colonel in the US Army Reserve.  Given that Paul also was entitled to a military headstone, it is strange that there is no public record of his 1996 burial, just as his brother has no known grave.

Their father, however, has been buried with a military headstone in the Long Island National Cemetery at Farmingdale, New York.  The headstone reveals that he must have been promoted two ranks from Lieutenant (jg) to Lieutenant Commander during the course of his WWI service.  His wife was buried with him after her death 25 years later.

Cort M Pedersen's headstone

Source: FindAGrave.com

There were two other captains aboard this ship but, fortunately, they neither spoiled the cooking (the broth, you know?) nor the voyage.  They were the Transport Commander, Captain Valentine Pasvolsky, and the Transport Surgeon, Captain Wayne H. Stockdale.  Fortunately for us, Ancestry.com has more to say on them, and the fourth man profiled in the Souvenir Edition, Lithuanian-born Escort Officer, Vladas Zibas.  Their portraits follow.

Sources:

'Cort Mathias (born Kort, aka Curt) Pedersen', Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/180127428/person/282345658226/facts.

FindAGrave, 'Cort Mathias Pedersen', https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82625444/cort-mathias-pedersen, accessed 2 February 2022.

Põder, RV, E Dēlinš, and R Mazillauskas, 1947. Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, published at sea aboard the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, 26 November 1947.

Wikipedia, 'Army Transport Service', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Transport_Service, accessed 2 February 2022.

Wikipedia, 'List of ships of the United States Army', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_United_States_Army, accessed 2 February 2022.

Heintzelman's "First Sailing": The First Report

The Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, published on board the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman on 26 November 1947, contains an article headed, 'From Bremerhaven to Indian Ocean'.  Several diaries from the voyage exist still and have been translated, but the Souvenir article is the first overview of the voyage.

Even though published only two days before disembarkation in Australia, it contains no account of the stop in the port of Colombo.  It seems, then, to have been written before 18 November — or else edited for reasons of space.  It is reproduced in whole here, but with some typos and stencil blurs corrected.

'From Bremerhaven to Indian Ocean' heading, missing the initial 'F', from the copy of 'Souvenir Edition' in the Reinhold-Valter Põder collection, Estonian Archives in Australia

If the duration of a sea-voyage is two days, it can be endured; if the duration is five days, you have to accept everything as it comes. But if 28 days are to be spent on a voyage through two oceans and four seas, you simply have to become accustomed to it whether you want or not. The high seas are a world by itself and each ship — an independent state with its own laws and habits of life which frequently differ from those predominating on land.

At the beginning of the voyage one or two of the Australia-bound passengers seemed inclined to ignore this truth, but a few hours in the Bay of Biscay forcibly demonstrated how easily can be disturbed the pursuance of a habit which is, so to say, a foundation of everyday life — the appeasement of a healthy appetite. The ship, initially bearing much semblance to a floating restaurant where each guest is primarily preoccupied with good food, soon assumed the appearance of an infirmary. Suddenly, everybody seemed to have lost interest in guessing the menu for the next meal; delicacies as fried bacon, unctuous potato salad, succulent apricots and smooth icecream ceased to be the main subject of all conversation. 

Instead - moans were to be heard emanating from double-tier bunks, ash-coloured visions staggered along passage-ways, awe-inspiring medicine boxes, bottles and pills passed from hand to hand, accompanied by instructions whispered in a faint, infirm voice: swallow the tablet..., take a teaspoonful of this..., chew the lemon..., hold your breath and turn your eyes toward the ceiling, lie down and adjust your breathing to the rhythm of the waves, lie stomach downwards and try to reach the floor with the toes of your right foot...

Two seasick passengers, 2 November 1947

After this period of weakness, lasting about one and a half days, resisted by only a few super-men, the sea has received its tithe and the pride of the land-lubbers had suffered a fall. Passing the Rock of Gibraltar, our ship had on board 843 subdued, reliable subjects of Neptune, resigned to yield to any whim of the sea-god. His majesty appreciated our sufferings and conversion, graciously permitting the warm sun to play over the blue, quiet waters. Before long, the passengers of General Heintzelman witnessed a second metamorphosis — the ship was seemingly transformed into a rest home and a beach. Heavy overcoats, turned-up collars, mufflers, caps pulled down over the eyes — all disappeared, giving place to rolled up sleeves, shorts and colourful ladies‘ beach suits. 

We thrived under the caresses of the warm Mediterranean sun, the same sun that lends splendour to Nice, Monaco, San Remo, Capri, Sicily, and the fabulous coast of Africa. Consequently, among the swarms of idlers basking in the sun you could observe studious explorers equipped with opera glasses, pointing out notable places; behold the palms of Oran! the southern coast of Sardinia! the Cape of Tunis! the rocks of Pantellaria! Prompted by curiosity in such unheard and exotic names, the laymen gazed with bewildered eyes at the blue, sparkling horizon, vainly endeavouring to catch a glimpse of a shadow of these famous places.

The rocks of Pantellaria (Source: CulturalHeritagOnline)

Our further course continued under the sign of the sun, blue waves and radiant weather, the passengers impatiently counting the miles remaining to be covered to reach Port Said. Egypt...: pyramids, sphinxes, Tutankhamuns, palms, camels, bedouins, tuaregs... Flowing robes and burnouses on the torrid desert sands, fascinating Scheherazades in cool, shady oases greet passing ships piloted by swarthy captains...Much of this unfortunately escaped our sight, the ship anchoring late in the evening in the harbour of cholera-infested Port Said.

Having risen early the next morning, the most zealous students of ancient and modern Egyptian civilisation returned below deck disheartened and quietly started rummaging in their suitcases for discarded pullovers and mufflers: a strong, numbing east wind was blowing across the Canal. The ship glided smoothly along the narrow Canal, the banks of which were adorned by trees resembling malformed seaside pines growing in greyish, powder-like sand. Now and then a recent model Ford or Chrysler would hurtle along the dusty highway running parallel to the canal, or a cyclist would be seen struggling against a strong head-wind. Egypt...but no sign of pyramids or palms. Disappointed, the pessimistically inclined among us returned to their rooms.

The more patient spectators, however, were soon rewarded by sights falling just short of expectations, but inspiring us with a feeling, that we had surely seen enough of this land to justify beginning future narratives with: "When I was in Egypt..."

A traders' boat has been hauled onto the deck, somewhere along the Suez Canal. The only woman in the photo is Galina Vasins (later Karciauskas). Can you identify any of the men?

And now we are once more on the wide stretches of a blue sea. The days pass, one very much like any other, sunny and bright. Mealtimes with their inevitable queues, clatter of metal plates, and thronging in the mess hall, have become milestones in the course of each day. English lessons, choir rehearsals, basking in the sun and the mild wind fill the other parts of the day and in the evening we suddenly realise that one more day has passed. Even if sometimes time seems to stand still, we can always be assured that each day our reliable engines are bringing us 4OO miles nearer to our destination, where a new life and new responsibilities await us. 

Passing the time on deck, from the Aleksas Sliuzas collection

We shall arrive there refreshed, tanned, and imbued with renewed self-reliance in our strength, impaired by the years of despair and misery in Germany. We should like to take advantage of this opportunity to express our feeling of indebtedness to "General Stuart Heintzelman" for its paramount part in our new adventure.

This essay was signed off simply, -d-.  Knowing his later career as founder of the Latvian-Australian newspaper, Austrālijas Latvietis, and book author, the co-editor of the Souvenir, Emils Delins, is the most likely suspect.

Sources:

'CulturalHeritageOnline: Island of Pantelleria', https://www.culturalheritageonline.com/location-2949_Isola-di-Pantelleria.php, accessed 2 October 2021.

Põder, RV, E Dēlinš, and R Mazillauskas, 1947. Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, published at sea aboard the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, 26 November 1947.

General Stuart Heintzelman: The Ship

The Heintzelman was one of 30 C4–S–A1 vessels, troop transports built to the same plan between 1942 and 1945. These ships are known also as the General GO Squier class, after the first of them to be launched.

Heintzelman at anchor, possibly in 1945 (US Navy photo from navsource.org)

The C4–S–A1 design was created for the American-Hawaiian Lines in 1941, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II, but taken over by the United States Maritime Commission in late 1941, initially for cargo ships. All were powered by a single-screw steam turbine delivering 9,900 shaft horsepower, so capable of 17 knots. After an agreement between the US Army and Navy in March 1943 that they become Army troop transports crewed by Navy personnel, all were named after American Generals.

The final ship, the Heintzelman, was launched on 21 April 1945, acquired by the US Navy on 12 September 1945 and departed San Pedro, California, on her first voyage on 9 October 1945. She was built at the Kaiser company’s Yard 3 in Richmond, California. On 12 June 1946, the Heintzelman was transferred to US Army and fitted out to carry 3,142 troops. She was commissioned as the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman on 20 August 1946.

The C4–S–A1 ships could be crewed by 256 men. They were 159 m long by 22 m wide, with a draft of 8 m and a cruise radius of 12,000 miles (19,300 Km).

By mid-1947, there was less military demand for them, so 10 were placed at the disposal of the International Refugee Organisation (IRO). This organisation had been tasked with moving millions of displaced persons from Europe, especially West Germany, at the end of the War. They included refugees from the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States and the Communist takeover of other Eastern European governments, known as the Soviet satellite states.

The IRO passenger configuration required the women to be separated from the men. This meant that no more than 1,000 passengers were supposed to be carried on each trip to Australia and, for that matter, the United States, Canada and some South American countries. On the Heintzelman, the women were ushered into cabins designed for Army officers, four to a cabin. The men occupied the open quarters below deck which had been fitted out for the US Army’s enlisted men.

The Heintzelman made four trips altogether to carry refugees from Europe to Australia. The first, berthing in Fremantle on 28 November 1947, is the one on which this blog concentrates. She brought 822 refugees to Melbourne on 20 April 1948, 1,301 to Sydney on 24 November 1949 and 1,302 to Melbourne on 3 March 1950.

After that voyage, the IRO returned the Heintzelman to the US Navy. Crewed by civilians, she now was known as the USNS General Stuart Heintzelman or T–AP–159. She operated out of San Francisco carrying troops to the Korean Peninsula for another war there. Then she travelled via the Panama Canal to New York for transport duty in the Atlantic and Caribbean. She carried passengers to Bremerhaven, where she had berthed in 1947, to La Pallice in France, to Southampton, England, to Newfoundland in Canada, to Iceland and Puerto Rico.

In 1954, she was laid up, which is to say, she was kept ready to be reactivated quickly in an emergency. Fourteen years later, she was converted to a container ship, the Mobile, deepened nearly one metre, by the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company for the shipping company, Sea-Land Services. Sad to say, on 15 June 15 1984 she was sold to the Han Sung Salvage Co. to be scrapped, after 39 years of great service, at Incheon, Republic of Korea. 

Sources:

Cooke, Anthony, 1992. Emigrant Ships: The vessels which carried migrants across the world, 1946-1972. Carmania Press, London, p 91.

Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, ‘General Stuart Heintzelman’, http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/auxil/ap159.htm, accessed 6 May 2000. 

Charles, Roland W, 1947. Troopships of World War II, Army Transportation Association, Washington, DC, p 115. 

Naval Cover Museum, ‘General Stuart Heintzelman AP 159’, https://www.navalcovermuseum.org/wiki/GENERAL_STUART_HEINTZELMAN_AP_159, accessed 29 September 2021. 

Plowman, Peter, Emigrant Ships to Luxury Liners, NSW Press, Sydney, 1992, pp 36-37. 

Priolo, Gary P, 'USNS General Stuart Heintzelman (T–AP–159) ex USAT General Stuart Heintzelman (1946-1950), USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP–159) (1945-1946)', http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/22/22159.htm, accessed 29 September 2021. 

Sawyer, LA and WH Mitchell, 1981. From America to United States, Part 2. World Ship Society, Kendal, England, 1981, p 72. ‘United States Maritime Commission C4 Type Ships’, http://www.usmm.org/c4ships.html, accessed 31 July 1999. 

Videoinside.org, ‘USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP–159)’, http://videoinside.org/show/USS_General_Stuart_Heintzelman_(AP-159), accessed 14 September 2008. 

Wikipedia, ‘USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP-159)’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_General_Stuart_Heintzelman_(AP-159), accessed 29 September 2021.

USAT General Stuart Heintzelman: The Route to Australia

As the Heintzelman neared the Australian coast, a Souvenir Edition of the 1st Sailing to Australia was published on board.  It appeared on 26 November, edited by a team of Reinhold Valter Põder (Estonian), Emils Dēlinš (Latvian) and Romuldas Mazillauskas (Lithuanian).  They must have had typists and artists among the passengers to help them.  

They had the use of the ships roneoing equipment and supplies.  A roneod newsletter was issued for each day of the voyage, but only a few individual copies survive.  Clearly, those who ran the ship had learned already what was necessary to keep their previous US Army passengers occupied and entertained.  Below is the front cover of the Souvenir Edition.

For those of you not old enough to remember, roneoing involved typing or drawing first on a stencil with a wax-coated surface.  The typing was not clear unless the typeface had been cleaned first.  It was hard for the artist to see if their artwork was creating clean lines.  No wonder photocopying took over from roneo stencils in the 1970s!

Fortunately for our interpretation of some places on the map above, there is a list of dates and places elsewhere in the Souvenir Edition.  It advises that:

The Colombo stop was needed to allow the ship to refuel while taking on fresh water and provisions.  It also provided the passengers a few hours ashore in an exotic location.

The 11 pm crossing of the Equator explains why there are no photos in albums of the usual visit of King Neptune and associated rituals.

The Souvenir Edition contains summaries in English of the histories of the three Baltic States, which a foreword confirms are for the benefit of the Heintzelman's crew.  There's other information of continuing interest to descendants of the passengers on this 'First Sailing', such as lists of the senior crew and profiles of their leaders.  An anonymous contributor has written an essay about shipboard life.  These will be added to this blog.

My copy of the Souvenir Edition comes from the archive of its Estonian editor, Reinhold Valter Põder.  This is held by the Estonian Archives in Australia and I thank the Archives for granting access.