Captain Sven Olander, Personal Recollections

As told by Bengt ”Ben” Olander

A Favorite Uncle


My name is Bengt ”Ben” Olander. Sven David Olander, the captain of M/S Stureholm, was my uncle... my father’s brother. Sven decided to refuse his orders to escape from the convoy, and instead rescue the survivors of the Jervis Bay.

I met Sven several times during my younger years (I was born in 1950) and he was my favorite uncle. He always cared about us kids and during family meetings while the other adults sat and drank whiskey and chatted, Uncle Sven hung around us kids and played games (he had a favorite ”quiz tombola” that amused us very much).

Sven often took his family with him out to sea, of course not in times of war. Here is my cousin (Sven’s daughter) Elsi having a good time with her father – or maybe even my cousin Lena.

When I was a young boy, as soon as my family gathered, they started to talk about Jervis Bay and of Sven’s deed. I heard the story a hundred times as a kid and it got more and more outrageous every time it was told. In 1998, when I was 48 years old, I decided to find out for myself what the story was all about. So I started to read articles and books - interview my cousins (Sven’s kids) and others. I even managed to interview the last living member of Sven’s crew, Hilding Tiderman who personally picked up many of the 68 men from the Jervis Bay.

Eventually I gathered all the information and wrote a novel about Jervis Bay, Fogarty Fegan, Stureholm and my uncle - in Swedish though. During those years I plowed the hit charts with ballads and I wrote a song called ”The Convoy” where I described the battle from Sven’s point of view. Since then I have held lectures about the Jervis Bay and Stureholm several times. Now I try to extend the work into a book where the message will be that we must not forget the men who gave their lives to keep Britain and Sweden (in this case) supplied and ”rolling" during these hard years.

You can find my musical tribute to Sven on Spotify: “I konvoj” by Ben Olander. When I wrote the music I let myself be inspired by Evert Taube who Sven (and our whole family) hold highly.



Back from the dead


My father, born 1908 and a young boy during WWI, said that the strongest memory he had of his childhood was when his brother Sven was declared missing – and later dead – after his ship was attacked by Germans. In those days he was not a captain but in training as a young man in his early 20's. My grandparents were heart broken and spent all of their free time at the kitchen table crying. Sven was the jolliest and maybe the most beloved of their 12 children.

Dad told me that after some time he had a hard time being at home because his parents were so upset, so he spent most of his time running around with friends on the streets. One day dad was having dinner with my grandparents and the doorbell rang. My grandfather asked my grandmother to open the door and soon dad and my grandfather heard a primal scream. Sven had just arrived, not knowing he was declared missing and dead. He told me that the only things Sven had in his hands were one bottle of fine Cognac and a bag of oranges (which was very exclusive in Sweden at the time). My father told me that this night was the one and only time he saw my grandparents drunk.



Aboard Stureholm


Sven loved to sing, and Hilding Tiderman (the last living sailor of Stureholm who I managed to interview just a few days before he died 92 years of age) told me that he found it a great joy to stand on the bridge with my uncle and hear him sing songs of the famous Swedish composer Evert Taube. When they left Halifax in the good weather, Sven sang the song “Havsörnsvals” (Sea Eagle Walz) in a grand way. You can find the song on Spotify performed by Evert Taubes’ son, Sven-Bertil Taube.

Hilding Tiderman also told me that when the deceased sailors of the Jervis Bay were buried at sea Sven sang the protestant hymn “Vår Gud är oss en väldig borg” (“Reformation” by Mendelson) and the seamen were covered by a Swedish flag as there was no Union Jack or Irish flag on board Stureholm. At sea there are, as we know, no boundaries between religion, cultures and countries.

Hilding Tiderman also told me that my uncle was a good cook. He raised chickens in the pilot wings (and the pilots were said to hate that)! When Stureholm left Gothenburg in the winter of 1940 they only reached a few nautical miles out of the city when the ship was stuck in ice. Sven was told that they could sail out in about two or three days, so he told most of the crew to walk back home until called back.

Hilding (the youngest hand on the ship), was “jungman” and from Stockholm, 300 miles from Gothenburg, too far to return. So he spent an enjoyable time with the captain for a few days and they bonded. They spent most of their time walking out on the ice to pick up eiders that had frozen to death, which Sven later cooked to the most delicious meals for Hilding and himself – and the crew when they returned.



Return to Sweden


When Sven came back to Sweden he was brought to court marshal for ”taking stands for the allied” - which a Swedish, neutral captain should not do at the time. He was barely freed. In 1952 the Queen of England awarded him a medal for bravery - and a short time after, the Swedish government did the same thing (some 12 years after the battle - 7 years after the war ended). This is a picture of Sven after the war. Unfortunately I don’t know who the man to the left is. As you can see, buttons are missing (or unbuttoned) on Sven’s uniform. He was a very informal man. Hilding Tiderman told me that 1 hour after he left harbor his uniform came off. One hour prior to entering a harbor, it went back on.



Sven standing in front of the guest house at his summer home. This is where my family slept the weekend prior to his death. Sven was very proud because he built that guest house himself … from a bus!



Death


One day in the late summer of 1957, my parents took my brother and me to visit Sven and his wife Alice. As always, Sven choose to spend his time with us kids while Alice and my parents cooked and did the “grown ups talk”. We spent the most wonderful weekend together (playing quiz tombola and more). With light hearts and a lot of cheer we returned home on Sunday night. Sven was a very sincere person - with a lot of wit.

Here is Sven only four days before he passed away. He stands in front of my father’s 1950 Mercedes 170 S (the car was 7 years old at the time). It was built from the same stamping casts as the prewar cars in Germany, and looking back it is quite scary for me every time I saw German war era cars that looked like that. On the other hand, the post-war Mercedes were probably part of the Marshall plan.

The following Wednesday the sad news arrived that Sven had told his wife that he would take his little open boat out to go fishing on the bay outside where they lived in the archipelago north of Gothenburg. Alice looked out the window of the house and saw Sven in his boat about a hundred yards out. He turned off his engine, fell backwards and disappeared. Some men brought the boat to the shore and Sven was dead from a massive heart attack. From what we understand, he felt it coming and wanted to die on water.

The last picture taken of Sven, just a few days before his death. The boat is his fishing boot that he died in. As you can see, until the end he was a very jolly, social and positive man.

This picture I find lovely: He stands in a “Bohus-snipa” … a straight descendent of the Viking ships. In front of him is probably the classic Volvo Penta M2D engine covered.