Page 23 - Willem Barentsz

1974, it set sail for the first time with a fleet of eighteen fishing vessels for the first fishing season in
the Bering Sea, which ended in October. In the following year, the ship was further modified with
freezer installations and a second fishmeal machine. On May 5, 1976, it departed Busan for its
second fishing season in the Bering Sea, now with a fleet of thirty fishing vessels. As a result of
declining fishing quotas for the Bering Sea, the ship remained decommissioned in the following years
and was only occasionally used off the South Korean coast.

In 1978 the ship was renamed Gae Cheog No I (officially: Gae Cheog Ho No I, pioneer ship), shortened
to Gae Cheog in 1980. It was not until January 1981 that it left Busan for the Bering Sea again for the
third fishing season, which now lasted until November. This was repeated in the following years. In
1983, however, the ship was laid up again. In 1986 the ship was renamed Ocean Pioneer and used
again in the Bering Sea. In 1996 the ship was renamed Gae Cheog.

In 2001, the ship was sold to a scrapyard in Xinhui (Guangdong province, China). On June 1, 2001, it
arrived in Xinhui. Then it was demolished.

UNQUOTE

I have another book about the first voyage of the Willem Barendsz I, written by the doctor on board,
Dr. A. Melchior. This is an indictment of whaling and the conditions under which work had to be
done. It was a hard and dirty business. The first line from the shanty song "Rolling down to old Maui"
also applied to "modern" whaling: “It’s a rough tough life, full of toil and strife we whalemen
undergo”.

Willem Barentsz or Barents or Barendsz, was a Dutch explorer who wanted to sail the northeast
passage through the Arctic. This failed and they were forced to spend the winter on Nova Zembla.
See Wikipedia for a detailed explanation.

Lourens Visser