Nortraship - London - The Early Days

The Early Days

The main challenges for the new organisation were to take control of the around 1,000 vessels and to establish policies for working with Britain and the still neutral USA. There was a severe lack of qualified personnel, and those available were often vocal, determined and used to working independently. That several of the Nortraship staff had their own shipping interests to take care of further added to the problems of managing the organisation.

The top management was almost exclusively Norwegian, while the lower ranks were dependent on British and US personnel. An exception was the accounts department; a major British accounting firm staffed it. In October 1940 Nortraship had 230 employees in London; by October 1941 this was increased to 350, one-third Norwegians. At the same time Nortraship New York had over 200 personnel, more than half of them Norwegians.

There were also legal problems to be solved, most crucially, whether Nortraship could have at its disposal vessels owned by shipowners still in occupied Norway. This could be solved by the Norwegian government appointing "a curator to act on behalf of the Norwegian Owners". If this was not done, Nortraship vessels could be impounded in neutral harbours, for example in the US. After some discussion, the Norwegian government (still in Norway, now in Tromsø) declared by law on 18 May 1940 that Øivind Lorentzen was to act as curator.

The insurance problems remained to be solved, as the initial British offer was provisional. The vessels needed several categories of insurance, and they were cut off from the insurance provided by insurance companies in occupied Norway, as was the case for the main office of the classification society, the DNV (Det Norske Veritas). On 28 May 1940 Øivind Lorentzen signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the British Ministry of Shipping that solved the insurance issue for a period of three months. This MoU was to be the foundation for insurance agreements for the rest of the war. The classification problem was solved by Nortraship taking over the DNV branch offices around the world, coordinated from the DNV office in Newcastle upon Tyne.

As the fighting in France evolved disastrously, the British pushed for more tonnage, and to harmonise wages: Norwegian seamen were paid significantly more than British. For political reasons, Nortraship received preferential treatment with an agreement signed on 20 June 19403. Reducing the Norwegian seamen's wages solved the problem of unequal wages; the surplus was to be placed in a fund to be paid out after the war. (This was later to be a hotly debated issue in postwar Norway.)