Reunion At Whangarei After Nine Years

Northern Advocate, 30 November 1948, Page 5

Reunion At Whangarei After Nine Years

TO be met by his mother on the wharf at Port Whangarei this morning after a separation of nine years was the pleasant experience of the only New Zealander in the crew of the Goldfinder, which arrived in Whangarei this morning with the first direct shipment of North African phosphate to be landed in Whangarei.

He is Wallace Yeoman, the son of Mrs J. Yeoman, of lierne Bay, Auckland.

Mr Yeoman left New Zealand in the Merchant Navy in the first week of the war and has been at sea ever since with the exception of a period of 18 months spent in a prison camp. He was a member of the crew of a Yugoslav ship in Dakar when the Vichy French declared for Hitler and he was taken prisoner. The bombardment of the French Fleet took place while he was at Dakar.

Following this attack the prisoners were taken 600 miles inland to a town in French Senegal, where they stayed for 18 months.

During this time he was ill in hospital and could not send letters to his family. For nearly two years nothing was known of his whereabouts, and his mother did not even know he was alive.

EXCHANGED Finally the French exchanged the seamen for French civilians held by the British, and Mr Yeoman was taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and returned to the Merchant Navy. As no British ships were awaiting crews when he returned to England Mr Yeoman signed on a Greek ship under English articles, and made several voyages in the Atlantic service between England and America ancj Canada' TO THE BOATS On one of these voyages his ship cut the stern of a Russian ship and sank within three days of the Newfoundland coast. The crew took to the boats and landed safely. Mr Yeoman went back to the merchant service and continued to make voyages across the Atlantic until the cessation ol hostilities. When the Goldfinder was signing on a crew to come to New Zealand he took the opportunity of getting home to see his mother. Other incidents such as being bombed in docks were dismissed, because “that sort of thins has happened to every seaman on the ship."