John Tormundsen/Rørvik A ship lost at sea

"Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea."- Charles Cook I remember hearing a story growing up about my 2nd great-grandfather's two brothers. It wasn't really a story but simply facts about their tragic deaths. Their deaths must have made an impact on Anders for the story to have been passed down through the generations. I was told that one of his older brothers Olav "Ole", was herding sheep in the mountains and he froze to death in 1874 at the age of 17. His other brother John was killed when when his ship went down at sea in 1915 at the age of 60. That was really all we ever knew. I had done a little research and knew that John had married Lydia Sjursdatter and they had seven children. The family lived in Bergen and John worked on a ship. The past week I started doing some more research on John with the help of a cousin in Norway. Together we found several documents that helped us piece together what happened to John. John worked on the wooden steamship, "The Nordkyn" for several years. What is interesting is that the Nordkyn was built in 1875 just across the fjord from Sunde on a small island of Stord in the town of Leivik. Leivik was known for its ship building during that time. We are not sure how long he worked on "The Nordkyn" but he was counted in the 1910 census with 17 other people working on the ship. On the 1910 census John was listed as a "Lodstmann". In English that translates to the ship's pilot. On January 17th, 1915, The Nordkyn left Bergen, Norway with a load of Herring. There were eleven men on board and one of them was Jon Tormundsen/Rørvik. On the ship's manifest John was listed as "Batsmann" and in English that would mean "Boatswain" or the senior most man on the deck. The Nordkyn was bound for Konigsberg, the capital of East Prussia.(at this time part of Germany) Due to the war, there was a shortage of food and Norwegian Herring was in high demand. Today Konigsberg is known as Kaliningrad and in the country of Russia. During World War 1, Norway was neutral with close ties to Great Britain. However, there was a strong competition between Great Britain and Germany for Norwegian fish. The Germans wanted Norwegian fish but due to the war the English were trying to stop the export of fish to its enemy. On January 23rd the ship passed by Hammershus in the Batlic Sea and after that the ship was not heard from again. In newspaper reports, a telegram was sent from Gdansk that the ships journal was found on the beach there and the last entry being January 24th. According to reports the ship probably went into a German mine field east of Christianso and the lives of all 11 on board were lost. There is no way of knowing for sure if it was a German mine that sunk the ship or the English trying to stop the shipment of Herring from reaching its destination in Prussia. My guess is the ship ran into a German mine while traveling through the Baltic Sea. Luckily, on a trip back home to Sunde in 1903, Anders was able to see his brother one last time before his last voyage during the height of the World War.