Captain Richard Teng served as a kaugsõidukapten on the S.S. Torni which was owned by Tallinna Laevaühisus. He was Torni’s Master from 1935 to Dec. 1939 (as well as being a certified radiotelegraph operator). His elder brother, kaugsõidukapten Captain Johannes Teng was Torni's previous Master 1932-1935.
During the summer months the ship would sail up to Archangel in the White Sea for wood cargo that it transported to the U.K.; in winter, it would take salt down to the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Dakar or Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa. For a 10,000 ton cargo of peanuts, the ship travelled up the crocodile infested Saloum River to the jungle surrounds of Kaolack, Gambia. African men carried 100 lb sacks of peanuts on their shoulders, the occasional strong man carried 2 sacks, each man was paid per sack once it had been carried up the long wooden gangplank and sent down the hatch into the ship’s cargo hold.
The ship needed fresh water, but since a cubic metre of water weighs approx. 1 ton, they needed to consider the river’s depth, and the ship’s 11 ½ foot draft so the vessel didn’t get stuck. There was a desalination unit on the Torni, but it consumed 1 ton of coal to produce 4 tons of freshwater. On the return trip they often topped up their cargo load at Dakar, Senegal’s deep harbour with freshwater and more peanuts, the latter to be unloaded in Marseilles, Copenhagen and other European ports to make peanut oil.
Captain Johannes Teng during WWII, on June 17, 1941, was Master of the British motor merchant vessel Cathrine (ex Eesti Peeter) straggling at the tail end of a convoy and carrying 3,700 tons of manganese ore in the Atlantic. A wolf-pack of 5 U-boats had spotted her. Cathrine was about 600 miles southwest of Ireland sailing to Barrow, England from Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa when she was struck by two torpedoes from U-43. She broke in two and sank in 2 minutes. Fourteen men had managed to jump off the ship and cling to an overturned lifeboat, four lost their grip and drowned the same day. The remaining survivors were able to right the lifeboat and bail out water using a sea anchor a.k.a. a parachute anchor. Adrift at sea, exposed to the elements with no food or water, 7 more men died. The others, incredibly weak, survived on a little rain water. Thirty-three days later, a British trawler found them and they were admitted to a hospital in Ireland. Capt. Johannes Teng, age 47, 21 crewmen and two gunners lost their lives.
Wolfgang Lüth was the U-43 Commander responsible for the sinking of ‘Cathrine', he was a Baltic German born in Riga and had studied law for 3 semesters before he joined the German Reichsmarine. During his career he had sunk 43 ships and was ranked 2nd overall as the most successful U-boat Commander of WWII – (Otto Kretschmer was 3rd). In 1945 Lüth was Head of the Mürwik Naval Academy in Flensburg, Germany. Hitler had personally decorated him with the highest of awards in October 1943. But the führerhad committed suicide on April 30th, and the war in Europe ended May 8, 1945.
On the night of May 14th Lüth came home so drunk on a dark and rainy evening that when the sentry, who couldn't see him in the darkness, asked him three times for his password, Lüth didn’t respond, consequently the 18 year old German guard placed the rifle on his shoulder and killed him with a shot to the head. Ironically, Capt. Lüth himself had established the order that sentries were to shoot if the password wasn’t answered. The investigation into the death found the guard Not Guilty of any wrongdoing. The allies gave permission for Captain Lüth to be given a state funeral, it was the last Nazi state funeral. Lüth died at age 31.
Capt. Richard Teng (1906-1990) with his wife and children immigrated to Canada in April 1949, he died in Mississauga, Ontario at age 82. After Teng left for Canada, Capt. Joosep Part, my husband’s uncle, took over as Master of the Torni.
