Lawhill – A fine quartering wind

One of the best-remembered ships of the Erikson Fleet, the 4-masted barque Lawhill moves before a steady fair wind, on her last voyage from Europe in 1940; the Finnish flags painted on her sides hopefully indicating her neutrality to marauding U-Boats.

Lawhill acquired her sobriquet ‘Lucky Lawhill’ for several reasons – she traded through two world wars unscathed, returned her purchase price to her owner, Gustaf Erikson, after her third voyage and is recorded as never having killed a man although I was told by Bill Demerall, a seaman in her crew, that a seaman, returning on board in Cape Town, fell into the harbour and drowned. Built in Dundee in 1892 for the jute trade, she had a near sister, Juteopolis.

This last outward voyage took her to the Seychelles to load guano for Auckland, thence to Port Victoria to load grain for South Africa. She arrived at East London in July 1941. By this time the non-aggression treaty signed between Germany and Finland had made her, in the eyes of the allies, an enemy vessel. She was seized as a war prize and thereafter traded between South Africa and Australia.

Most of her Finnish crew remained with her, including  her master, Captain Artur Soderlund. He had taken his wife, Elize and daughter Doris on the 1940 voyage to escape the Winter War with Russia and they remained on board  for the next seven years.

Lawhill was not returned to Finland after the war and continued trading until 1948. Plans to convert her into a training ship did not eventuate and she was towed up the Tembe River in Mozambique, where she was pillaged by local inhabitants. She was finally broken up in 1956.