The History of Andalucia - Captain Günter Neubert
Andalucia is full of surprises. In Torreguadiaro one day I met an elderly gentleman and spent some time over a coffee listening to the extraordinary story of how he went to both poles. His name is Captain Günter Neubert, and this is his story.
Günter left school in Hamburg-Blankenese and joined the four masted, square rigged training ship ‘Padua’ as a cadet. There were no engines or machinery on board and he sailed on her for almost two years. After the last war many of Germany’s ships were delivered to England, the Soviet Union and America and Germany ceased to be a sea trading nation.
The ‘Padua’ went to Russia in 1946 and was renamed ‘Kruzenshtern’. Günter succeeded in travelling to Sweden and sailed under the blue and yellow Swedish flags for six years, first in a training ship to South America and then steam and motor ships to many European ports. He spent a further two years at navigation school and was posted to modern, fast, Swedish merchant vessels that sailed to every continent. Finally he passed his Deep Sea Masters Licence and sailed on super tankers, cruise ships and at last as Master, on passenger ferries between Scandinavian countries.
He happily married Ingrid in 1956 and took a pilot’s job in the Suez Canal. Later he went as pilot to the Kiel Canal and it was there that his son was born. The young family went to Australia, living for two years on Brampton Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Günter worked with speedboats and small cruisers, diving on the outer reef. In the evenings Ingrid and he would entertain up to eighty guests with photographic slide shows of the many interesting parts of the world he had visited. Their tropical paradise had no television and the electricity generators stopped at midnight.
Both Ingrid’s and Günter’s parents were still alive when he was given the opportunity to take a ‘big job’ offered by the German Government, supervising ships safety world wide. That gave him wings and he flew to shipyards in Scandinavia, Poland, Japan, Korea and China taking various products on technical sea trials.
Then the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart asked Günter to go along on the newly developed Arctic and Antarctic research and supply ship, ‘Icebird’. She took him from Tasmania to Casey in Australian Antarctic Territory. He learned many new skills; ships behaviour in different pack ice conditions, how to approach icebergs, getting people and cargo ashore without the benefit of jetties, katabatic winds, whiteout orientation in heavy snowfalls, coping with the phenomena of 24 hours of daylight, difficult telephonic communications, and how to run field expeditions on a tractor train as well as learning about all the animals that inhabit the Antarctic. He returned home to ‘old Australia’ with a whole wealth of new ice experiences gained only a few hundred kilometres from the South Pole.
Shortly after that Günter retired. Meanwhile Mikel Gorbachev introduced ‘glasnost’ and it became easier for western scientists and tourists to enter Siberian arctic waters. As the Soviet Unon needed western money, they prepared the 75,000 h.p. nuclear icebreaker ‘Rossia’, commanded by Captain Antolij Lamikhof to carry 40 tourists from Murmansk to the geographic North Pole. Günter was asked to help organise the refurbishment of the accommodation and assisted in obtaining suitable provisions from Germany and to do that went to what had been the secret military and naval shipyard at Murmansk.
The voyage to the pole started on the 30th July 1990. The route took them through the Barents Sea past Nova Zemlya, through the Cara Sea to Cape Cheluskin, the most northerly point of Asia, and then north along the Serverna Semlia Islands. One of his roles was to act as liaison between the ship and its helicopters, flying over the ice to spot the best route for the following ‘Rossia’.
The ice was up to 5 metres thick and breaking through it caused the ship to shake and shudder and make an incredible noise. Sometimes they met an area of 15 metre thick ice barrier. That is where the frozen snow lies on top of the ice. To break through these the ship had to stop and repeatedly ram the ice. It was like being in a 4 wheel drive car with no tyres on bare rock.
Eventually all the passengers were invited to the bridge as they approached the geographic North Pole. At 1.10pm Moscow time on the 8th August 1990 the GPS indicated 900 North.
With horn blaring and fire crackers popping the gangway was lowered and everybody went onto the ice. Nine holes were drilled for the national flags of each nation represented on the voyage. They were hoisted to the tune of each national anthem. Then the crew prepared a barbeque with champagne and vodka. After 12 hours the ship reversed into open water. As the icebreaker left the pole a steel cylinder containing a crew and passenger list together with a rubber stamp especially made to frank letters ‘posted’ at the pole was thrown overboard where it now rests beneath 5 metres of ice and 4,000 metres of ocean. A fitting end to the voyage that proved the highlight of Captain Günter’s career.