THE TRAMP STEAMER

The intriguing story of Kristian Johannsen has remained hidden in the mists of time. His was a life that spanned three continents during some of the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century. As a child of the working class, Kristian who was born in a neighbourhood that housed the labour that kept the burgeoning industries of Aalborg (Denmark) supplied with cheap labour. He became embroiled in the turmoil of labour unrest after the First World War. He soon began to dabble in the bitter clashes between the emerging communists and the entrenched capitalists of the day. Never one to shy away from a brawl, the young fellow didn’t flinch from pelting with any available solid object, the factory managers and “scabs” during industrial disputes. He was fortunate to escape arrest despite inflicting on the police and inept riot squads, a few hefty blows with clubs and planks taken to the picket lines for just that purpose. Denmark after the First World War was a fractious state with a meddling arch-conservative  on the throne, Christian X, who involved himself in the affairs of government – overstepping the bounds of constitutional monarchy.

Industrial unrest was fueled by the instability that the First World War precipitated. Denmark had been fiercely neutral during the War, but hedged its bets, trading with both sides despite not taking sides politically or sending troops to get involved in the fighting. A major development that was set to change the political dynamics in Europe for the greater part of the twentieth century was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Almost from the start Lenin’s communists began to foment class conflict all over Europe. Engagement in a Civil War in Russia between 1918 and 1921 did not deter the Bolsheviks from stoking the fires of industrial unrest wherever the opportunity presented itself. The disparities between the classes, management and workers and the swelling ranks of unemployed labourers proved to be fertile ground for unleashing this class struggle in Denmark. Kristian, 24 years old in 1920, required little persuasion to join the Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (DKP) that year. Soon afterwards he joined the ranks of the unemployed – a marked man in Danish factories as he was deemed to be a dangerous communist agitator that the management felt they could do without.

With little prospect of employment in Denmark and running out of funds, Kristian booked his passage in third class on one of the mail ships destined for Cape Town. The only reason he embarked as a third class passenger was because there was no fourth class. The journey lasted about three weeks in those days and there were no luxuries for third class passengers who shared cabins and were unlikely to have access to a porthole. Rough seas and sea sickness were constant companions on this unpleasant trip. It was with some relief that he disembarked in Cape Town – a  penniless Dane hoping to make his way to Johannesburg to try his luck at gaining employment in the industries or mines of the Witwatersrand. Mercifully for him, he was fluent in English, so a language barrier would be no impediment for him.

Kristian was well able to take care of himself. A sharp mind and boundless energy, combined with determination to use to his advantage the relative anonymity he had in a new country, Kristian figured out that he should leverage  political contacts to overcome the fact that he was out of pocket. Had there been a Communist Party at that stage in South Africa he would have knocked on those doors. However, that party was only established in 1921, so in 1920 he had to make use of tenuous links afforded by the recent establishment of the Comintern (1919) in the quest for World Communism. There were fledgling groups in the major cities which were working towards the goal of establishing just such a party in South Africa and he managed to make contact with a few young activists in Cape Town as a starting point.

As fate would have it, Kristian was introduced to a nineteen year old young lady who had been flirting with communism, and was pointed out as someone who might be able to use her connections in the upstart trade union movement to help him on his way. By happenstance she had useful contacts on the Witwatersrand that could possibly leverage influence to land him a job. The young lady was Adelaide Rudman and took Kristian to her home on the fringe of District Six where she lived with her parents and siblings. Her parents ran a small tailor shop and were well connected in the community of largely working class folk who were eking out a living and whose common experience of poverty made them sympathetic to anyone who purportedly stood up for the interests of the poor. 

Adelaide was a delightfully cheerful young girl whose energy was boundless. She fluttered by and elicited more than just a passing glance from Kristian. He took delight in watching her bouncing frame as she moved around, the delicate fabric of her summer dresses swirling enticingly. When she stopped to chat to friends and visitors, her face lit up with a smile that was engaging. Kristian could not conceal his interest in this fine looking maiden whose slightly sallow, unblemished skin was almost translucent in its appearance. He was enamoured of this breath of fresh air who was so unlike the women of his homeland at that time. The struggles of working people seemed at that time to weigh heavily on all who had not the means to lift themselves out of the industrial drudgery that was engulfing post-war Europe. The short while that he was accommodated at the home of the Rudmans was long enough for him to pursue this gorgeous lass that was both beautiful and intellectually bright – a match for his own intellect. It did no harm that her parents had taken a liking to him and didn’t intervene to stop their trip to the registry office for a marriage licence. It was not uncommon at that time for young ladies to marry when they were not yet out of their late teens.

Early in 1921 the couple embarked on a train journey to the city of Johannesburg which was home to South Africa’s gold mining industry, but also a host of other burgeoning industries. Around these industries were secondary businesses catering to the needs of the growing urban population. Adelaide’s know-how and Kristian’s ability to pick up skills and identify a gap in the market that beckoned this small-time entrepreneurial pair, found them gravitating to an area known as Fietas. Fietas was not too far from the Johannesburg Central Business District and consisted of the Pageview and Vrededorp residential areas. The name “Fietas” was probably derived from the multitude of “outfitters” (tailors, dressmakers and producers of affordable garments) that dotted the area. It was both multiracial and cosmopolitan in nature. The new arrivals fitted in splendidly – a working class background, certainly on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, but with a handy array of connections in the rowdy, rabble rousing community of left-wing agitators. When the South African Communist Party was established, both of them joined and became involved in the machinations of the stirrers of the trade union movement. If there was trouble on the streets or challenges to the power of the Randlords and proprietors of Big Business interests, they showed up. In the early twenties the working class of Johannesburg, both black and white, were restive.

At the helm in South Africa was General Smuts who had little time for communists. He also had no truck with the working classes. His support base was to be found amongst the wealthy Randlords, mine owners and leaders of industry. In the 1921 general election he squeaked home with the help of the Unionist Party that drew support from the same base and were fiercely imperialist in outlook. The white working class threw in their lot with the Labour Party and Nationalists. The masses of black working class were simply ignored, as they were not afforded the right to vote in the recently established Union of South Africa. Black miners who went out on strike felt the blunt end of state power and were essentially forced back to work with few (or no) concessions. 

In 1922 the white working class came out on strike and the Smuts government, having prevailed with the use of military force against striking black workers on the Witwatersrand had no qualms about declaring martial law. The General Strike on the Rand was put down with brute force. The involvement of Communists in the rebellion and strike was demonstrated by the raising of the Red Flag over Johannesburg’s central business area – the first time a communist symbol was brazenly displayed in South Africa. Smuts and his acolytes did little to conceal their indignation, even deploying the Air Force to quell the disturbances. The strikers were sent back to work without any concessions and ringleaders were rounded up and some deported (extra-judicially and approved retrospectively by parliament).

The heavy handed punishment meted out to some of Kristian and Adelaide’s associates and the diminishing prospects of the far left wing in South Africa at that time, convinced them to maintain a low profile and emigrate as soon as possible to a part of the world they deemed more amenable to their radical views. They kept out of trouble for the next seven years and embarked on a passage to Canada just before the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929 that ushered in the Great Depression and an abundance of misery for both the poor and the middle classes the world over.

Whereas communism had little prospect of gaining traction in South Africa for at least another eighty years, the pair found fertile ground in Canada. The early days of the Great Depression visited misfortune on scores of Canadians and civil unrest blighted big cities like Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. The low profile they had maintained in Johannesburg faded and they became involved in activism, agitation and the fomenting of revolution. Prime Minister R B Bennet like many other Canadian politicians would have none of it. It irked Bennett that Mayor Bill Knight of Blairmore, Alberta, had the temerity to declare his town “communist”. A full quarter of the Canadian workforce had lost their jobs during the early stages of the Great Depression – fertile soil indeed for civil disturbances egged on by communists. By 1932 the pair had attracted sufficient attention to themselves that the wrath of the state came down on them. The fact that they were not Canadians by birth and were viewed as abusers of Canadian hospitality, they were bundled on a tramp steamer and dispatched to Denmark.

The trip on the Tramp Steamer was anything but a vacation. These vessels plied their trade as opportunistic cargo ships ready to turn a buck wherever and whenever a promising port beckoned. Loaded with cargo, there was little room aboard for anyone but the crew. The pair of extra mouths to feed and the nuisance of having these itinerant political agitators to deal with, the crew made their lives a misery. Passage was not free, either. Both were put to work on the least glamorous jobs on an old steam ship. It was with great relief that the two were unceremoniously ejected from the vessel at the first port of call back in Denmark.

Kristian knew his way around the Danish cities and they were able to earn an Óra here and a Krone there to proceed with their peripatetic lifestyle and make their way to Aalborg, where, with a bit of good fortune, they might finally be able to settle. Life was not easy in Europe either, though, especially a few years later when the Nazis started their wild rampage through the continent. Jackboots showed up everywhere by the 1940s and neutral Denmark was no exception. 

Meanwhile, the pair began to shift their political persuasion away from Trotskyite ideologies as they began to witness distressing impressions of communism in practice. When Joseph Stalin took the helm in the Soviet Union he visited a reign of terror on the Soviet people – liquidating whole classes of people (such as small time farmers, or Kulaks), starving Ukrainians by the millions in orchestrated famines and reigniting pogroms against the Jews. He wiped the Red Army’s officer corps from the face of the earth, bar a few. Political rivals were made to disappear – either to the gulag or the grave, and Trotsky himself fled into exile in Mexico. Stalin would pursue rivals to the ends of the earth and Leon Trotsky wound up dead with an Ice Axe inserted into his cranium by an NKVD operative (Soviet Spy Agency that later mutated into the KGB). Russia had also not covered itself in glory by precipitating Hitler’s invasion of Poland by signing a Non-aggression Pact with the German dictator. Kristian and Adelaide became thoroughly disillusioned with communism and veered to saner political philosophies. 

During the war and the German occupation of Denmark, Kristian joined the Partisans and played his part in inflicting a fair degree of damage on the Nazi invaders. Adelaide worked as a shopkeeper in the city of Aalborg. However, by the end of the great conflagration in Europe in 1945, Kristian was dead at the hands of the Nazis and Adelaide was left with the baby that she had given birth to shortly before the outbreak of the War. Kristian’s disappearance in the fog of war towards the middle of 1943 as a result of his Partisan activities, left her “holding the baby” (by then a toddler). The youngster never really knew his father, as he had been too young to forge any lasting memory.

Adelaide made a few trips back to South Africa after the War, 1961 being the last. By that time (she was already 60) most of her relatives were deceased, including the siblings. She determined that the last days of her life would be spent in Denmark where a generous welfare system would take care of her health-care needs, pension and social support. On neither of the other continents where she had spent time could a welfare state be relied on. Although by this time fiercely anti-communist and no longer viewed as a menace, she settled in a small apartment in Aalborg rather than South Africa which she and Kristian had fled, and Canada from which they had been bundled out.

The lives they led were intriguing and quite colourful – red flags and all.

©Paul M Haupt

References for those parts which are clearly not fictitious (e.g. references to governments and political organisations)

https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP13CH3PA3LE.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramp_trade

H.C. Amstrong (1937) Grey Steel: J.C. Smuts, A Study in Arrogance, Arthur Barker

Barbara Roberts: WHENCE THEY CAME Deportation from Canada 1900 – 1935 Libre accès | Open access