Andy Pitt

ERIK THE DANE

I never met Erik Oldenborge but within a few weeks of starting my new project I felt I was getting to know him. Early on it was clear there was something curious, even rather special about him. His name was mumbled, whispered and revered by the Bengali carpenters and staff. Clearly this was not the average Danish boat builder that I had known and worked with so often during my twelve years in Denmark.

I arrived at Chittagong during January of 1983 to take up a new project building a series of 45 foot wooden stern trawlers for the Bangladesh Ministry of Fisheries. The boats were to operate in the Bay of Bengal. The Danish Government, through its aid organization DANIDA, had set up a boatyard and fishing harbour seven years previously to try and replace the fishing boats lost during the bloody civil war when it was then East Pakistan. It was an ambitious scheme and quite successful. By the time I arrived the original project was more or less completed and the planned five hundred and fifty thirty eight foot fishing boats had been built. The project also combined a fishing harbour, repair workshops, net section for training local fishermen and an ice plant. The project operated several large trawlers in the Bay of Bengal at the time. Jointly crewed by Danish and Bengali crews they were gifts from the Danish and British Governments. After a while it became clear the smaller trawlers were much more economically viable. The two hundred ton steel trawlers from Esbjerg, though technologically advanced, simple had too high running costs and used too much diesel fuel getting to and from the fishing grounds. The smaller, twenty ton boats proved to be both efficient and profitable. It was therefore decided to build a series of smaller, 45 feet trawlers, using a more weatherly Danish design compared to the local fishing boats but use local materials and labour for the main hull and deck construction.

The boatyard was large and well organised considering the location. The boats were built in sections and bolted together in building bays holding twenty or more boats at a time. Frames were steamed and laminated in one workshop, keels cut and prepared in another. Every part was then treated in a pressure cylinder with an anti rot chemical. There was even a well documented "Parts List". Henry Ford would have been proud. The method is unusual for wooden boat building particularly in developing countries but it certainly worked well. The timber used for the complete construction was called 'Gargon' a local hardwood, dark red in colour with characteristics similar to European Oak. The timber was purchased in log from at the local market or far up country in the Chittagong Hill tracts where it was sorted and then floated down the Karnaphuli River supported by bamboo rafts. The logs were stored, some a meter and a half in diameter, submerged in a large man made lake to keep them wet and soft as it was impossible to cut them dry. If a log came up and was cut too dry the big block saw blade would glow red and be ruined. When required for some structural item the log was selected and a group of workers would swim down into the muddy water and pass a steel cable around it, if all went well it was hauled up the slipway to the sawmill. I greatly admired the Bengali's skill and daring for this was hazardous work. The logs were heavy and slippery and often fell off each other a man could easily be trapped or crushed underwater. An additional hazard which always shocked us was the amount of snakes swimming in the water when we started to disturb the logs though the Bengali workers seemed to think little of it.

DANIDA staff are selected, hired and trained through the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Advisers operated with a two year contract, this might be renewed if the circumstances required it. There was a strict rule that no adviser stayed in the same location for more than five years. Its there fore interesting to note that Eric had been in Chittagong for seven years. The yard was situated away from the town down stream on the opposite side of the Karnaphuli River. The project owned and operated its own ferry boats which ran a regular service but the twenty minute trip was never boring. The river was always alive with stuff from Joseph Conrad and it was not unusual to see ten or fifteen big Dhows of a hundred tons or more tacking down river heavily loaded with salt, rice, or bricks

The yard was large and well organised but during the first week I had trouble finding the hand tools. I searched and questioned everybody but no one seemed to know where they were. After a few days I found them clearly hidden in and old disused building. There were drills, planners, saws and a host of other bits and pieces. When I confronted my workers why they had been put there no one seemed to want to speak up but eventually some one said quietly “Eric used these"

The population of Chittagong at the time was in excess of three million. There were about fifty Europeans including families working there so it was quite rare to see another European if out of the project area or the residential area where we all lived. Danes, British, Icelanders, Australians and Russians, all lived at 'Khulshi Heights' a residential area on high flood free ground on the outskirts of the main city. Large well appointed houses owned by rich Bengali's were hired to us and a sort of pseudo colonial atmosphere was imposed on us whether we liked it or not. Even so Bangladesh was not the easiest place to live at the time so it’s perhaps even more remarkable that Erik did not remain long in sanctity of Khulshi but moved out to a local house. He found a small hut on the banks of the river just north of the town and lived there with few material luxuries but a bold and ambitious plan. It was here that Erik designed and built his boat a fifty foot Colin Archer style yacht using 'Jarul' another local hardwood. It was a mammoth project, for apart from timber there were no yacht building materials or equipment available in Bangladesh. At the time there were some fairly good carpenters who knew their trade but everything else had to be hand carried or imported. Anyone travelling to Europe or a country where some equipment was available, brought back something for Erik, a compass or a winch a rigging screw or two.

The Bengali workers at the yard loved Erik. He spoke Bengali and often made food for them all at the yard in a huge iron pot. He was regularly invited to join parties and visit villages for the Bangladeshi people are very hospitable. Mean while work continued on his yacht up river. The hull and decks were caulked with the best caulking cotton from Denmark and when the painting completed the boat launched and moved down stream where he lived on board while completing the interior. Sea trials where carried out near Chittagong and there was the occasional trip to Cox's Bazaar, a small fishing town further sought near the Bangladesh Burma boarder. As so often happened though he was eventually told by the local authorities he had to sail the boat out of Bangladesh as tax would be due after five years. Despite the location there was no shortage of volunteers to crew the boat to Sri Lanka Erik's intended port but as time went by one by one they fell away and with time against him Eric decided to sail single handed across the Bay of Bengal to Sri Lanka.

Apart from a few DANIDA staff and a handful of Danes few people really knew Erik, certainly no boating magazine in Denmark had heard of him. None the less his achievements of living and working in Bangladesh his genuine caring for the Bengali workers, of designing and building a large wooden yacht part time, under difficult conditions is quite amazing. Heavy physical work is difficult and strenuous in tropical areas like Bangladesh particularly in the rainy season when it can rain for ten days without a break and humidity well over ninety percent. The mosquitoes are merciless and the food difficult to buy and keep clean. Most of us were sick with fever and diarrhoea at least once a month. What Erik started at the boat yard we tried to continue, it's regret I never met him.

Erik Oldenborge was killed, believed by pirates in the Bay of Bengal, a day after sailing from Chittagong port in November 1982. His boat was towed into Calcutta a few months later; it had been used for smuggling.

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