Shetland Bus Boats - Boats Lost

Boats Lost

M/S Vita (H95B), September 1941

Skippered by Ingvald Johannesen. Seized by Germans in Rekøy, Norway. Crew arrested.

Nordsjøen, 20 October 1941

Nordsjøen, a minelayer, skippered by Gjertsen, was sunk in heavy weather off the coast of West Norway. All the crew survived and returned to Shetland on 31 October aboard the M/K Arthur.

M/K Blia (H197S), 14 November 1941

Skippered by Ingvald Lerøy she disappeared in a storm on the way from Norway to Shetland. The crew of seven and 35 Norwegian refugees were lost. In the same storm, one man was blown overboard and lost from M/K Arthur, skippered by Leif Larsen.

Sjø, August/September 1942

Sjø, a 28-foot (8.5 m) open boat, with Per Blystad and Mindor Berge was in Norway on a reconnaissance mission. They were taken prisoners by the Germans and later shot.

M/K Arthur (M192B), October 1942

Skippered by Leif Larsen she was scuttled in the Trondheimsfjord after a failed attempt to attack the German battleship Tirpitz. Larsen and his crew escaped overland to Sweden, but a British agent following them was taken prisoner by Germans and shot.

M/K Aksel (M40G), 8 December 1942

Skippered by Bård Grotle. Sunk in the North Sea on the way back to Shetland. All six men lost their lives.

M/B Sandøy, 10 December 1942

Skippered by Harald Dyb, was attacked by German aircraft and sunk. Seven men were lost.

M/B Feiøy (H10AM), January 1943

Skippered by Ole Grotle. Disappeared on the way to Norway. Eight men were lost.

M/K Bergholm, 23 March 1943

Skippered by Leif Larsen. Was attacked by German aircraft and sunk. One man was killed in the attack. Larsen and six men, some wounded, managed to reach the coast of Norway by boat, and returned to Shetland later.

M/K Brattholm (M172HØ), 30 March 1943

Skippered by Sverre Kverhellen. Attacked by a German torpedo boat. Of the crew of eight and four agents, only one, Jan Baalsrud, survived. The rest were either killed in the attack or taken prisoner by the Germans, tortured, and shot in prison.

Those boats are the ten "Shetland Bus" boats that were lost from the base in Scalloway. For different reasons, there were some boats that started out from a base in Peterhead, and some of them were also lost.

M/B Frøya (M32G)

A rather new 70-foot (21 m) "Møre cutter" which had arrived at Shetland on 16 March 1942, with the agent Knut Årsæter and four other men from the Ålesund area. Towards the end of April, the vessel was sent out on a special mission to Troms, North Norway with a crew of seven and two agents. Off the coast of Trøndelag, the Frøya was bombed by a German aircraft, and began to sink. They had a small lifeboat, only 12-foot (4 m) long, and the skipper decided that only five men could board the boat. They made a raft of empty oil barrels for the others, and the skipper joined the men on the raft.

The five men in the lifeboat soon lost all their provisions, as they were washed out in the heavy sea, and they had to keep up a continuous bailing. They had a sail and tried to steer for Shetland. After several days, with no food and only the rainwater they could collect to drink, they sighted Muckle Flugga. Soon after they were picked up by a ship and told about the four men on the raft. Ships and planes were sent out searching.

Two of the men from the lifeboat were in a very bad condition, and were sent to hospital, while the other three were sent to the refugee camp in Lerwick. After a 24-hour sleep, these three men went out with the Olaf to help search for the raft. They were again attacked by German aircraft, and hardly made it back to Baltasound. One of the three men later died of the wounds sustained in the attack.

Everyone believed that the four men on the raft were lost, but when the war ended, it was discovered that they had all survived. After drifting for twelve days in heavy weather in the North Sea, they were spotted by a German aircraft and rescued. They said that they were ordinary Norwegian shipwrecked fishermen, and were put in a German POW camp, where they stayed until the end of the war.

M/B Streif (H261B)

The Streif was sent out on a mission to Trøndelag, with an agent and supplies. The crew were that of the Harald, which had an engine failure. They went out with no navigator, because he had fallen ill, and there was no other available. The voyage to Norway went well, but on their return, the engine stopped, and they started drifting. After some days they managed to start the engine again, but they had no idea where they were. One day they saw a British plane, and flashed a signal. The plane turned eastward, and they believed that they were west of Shetland, and steered south, as they were bound for Peterhead.

After some time, they grounded on a sandbank. They realized that they had reached the coast of Holland, and managed to get rid of their weapons and other suspicious items before the Germans arrived. They told a story about escaping from the British who wanted their vessel. The story was believed, and all were sent to an ordinary POW camp. If not, they surely would have been executed. By coincidence they met the crew from the Frøya raft in the camp, and joined them until the war ended.

The Streif stayed in The Netherlands, and the owner's son has said that long after the war, he received letters with questions about the engine.

Bodø

The fishing vessel Bodø was sent out from Peterhead to South Norway on 1 January 1943, with commandos for "Operation Carhampton". On her return, the Bodø hit a mine near the Scottish coast, and the whole crew were lost. One of her crew, Olaf Skarpenes, has his name on the monument in Scalloway.