ly

On September 19, 1948, the Ly, a two-masted motorized sailing ship, left Sweden for South Africa with 12 people on board. It would take the boat nine months to reach its destination.

Bernhard Veskimeister, a 1940 graduate of Tallinn Maritime School, was hired as captain. In 1945, he had joined Captain Kõu Valter’s yacht Estonia as far as England. The Estonia was the first refugee Viking boat to sail from Sweden to America.

Formerly known as Willem or Viljam, the Ly weighed 100 tons and was 59 feet long (18 meters) and 20 feet wide (6 meters). After leaving Sweden, the ship docked in Kristiansand, Norway, and at the English ports of Yarmouth, Dover, Plymouth, and Fowey. The Ly’s hull was repaired in Fowey because it had started to leak badly.

While crossing the Bay of Biscay in late November 1948, the Ly sailed into a violent storm that lasted two weeks. Veskimeister kept a travelogue of the journey, describing how the storm affected his passengers:

“On top of all the accidents, the mood of most people was well below zero. There were rumors here and there that we were not going to get out of here in one piece. Adding to the pessimism was the sight of a humped lifeboat that we drifted past. Whose it was, and how it had ended up in the middle of Biscay, was impossible to ascertain because of the rough seas.

Each time, while listening to the weather reports, people waited outside the door. They wanted to know if the storm was going to calm down and when we would be able to go further. But the weather station kept blaring storm warnings. On top of that, it announced that there hadn’t been a storm of this severity and duration in the North Atlantic and Biscay for 20 years. The storm was also a major disruption to the major naval maneuvers of the British Home Fleet.”

After the storm subsided, the Ly limped into Santander on the northern coast of Spain. The crew learned it would take at least two months to cast a new cylinder head for the engine, so they spent the winter there. “Since we have no representative, we have to do things ourselves and play diplomat everywhere,” Veskimeister wrote. He also noted that “our dear countrymen who were here previously were not the best at representing Estonia, so such things will have to be smoothed over for a bit.”

In February 1949, the Ly sailed to Las Palmas. During the month-long stay there, one of the mechanics had his appendix removed and Veskimeister’s wife, who had a visa for South Africa, decided to leave the boat and join a cruise ship sailing there.

Veskimeister wrote in his log that the Ly reached Freetown, Sierra Leone, on March 28, 1949. During the week the boat spent in port to buy fresh water, oil, and diesel fuel, he wrote that the passengers were allowed to walk around town and some ended up losing their watches and wallets.

On April 2, the boat hoisted anchor and set a course for Lobito, Portuguese Angola, 2,400 miles (3,900 kilometers) away. It took a month of sailing against the wind and currents in the Gulf of Guinea before the boat entered port on May 2. The boat’s engine had struggled in the heat, using 300 liters of expensive freshwater daily, but replacing it with saltwater threatened to stall the engine, and it had to be scrubbed clean. According to Veskimeister’s log, Lobito port charged 30 times more than other ports, and the group was happy to leave May 13 and head south down the west African coast. By then, Veskimeister and a passenger had contracted malaria, and the boat was forced to pull into the port of Moçâmedes, where the passengers stayed for a week so the captain and passenger could recover.

Before the Ly’s departure, a delegation led by the local customs chief arrived and came on board bearing gifts. The day before, the town had celebrated the centenary of the arrival of the first Portuguese settlers. Since the refugees had also arrived on a small boat, the townspeople decided to honor them as brave sailors.

The Ly left Moçâmedes on May 24 and reached Walvis Bay, Namibia, in June 1949. Shortly afterward, the six men, five women, and a dog (that had joined the group in Santander) docked in Lüderitz. Apart from the captain, the names of the passengers are unknown, but they included two mechanics, a fisherman, a builder, and a painter. The Ly was sold for 2,500 South African pounds.

Known crew:

Captain Bernhard Veskimeister