The children were from many different countries but were taught English in the ship’s school while on the passage from Naples. Their singing was so clear that it sounded like a choir of young Australians rather than children who had been learning the language for about four weeks. On board the Skaugum were 1700 migrants who had been displaced from their countries by World War II. Included in this number were 365 children aged between five and 12.
If the migrants were expecting a much warmer climate than that of Europe, they would have been very disappointed: that Tuesday was the coldest May day in 53 years, the temperature being just 8.7C. Fog blanketed the city and Port Phillip, and the Skaugum had to rely on radar to enter port and come to its berth in Port Melbourne.
This was the maiden voyage for the Skaugum, although its construction had begun in Germany 12 years earlier. Launched early in the war for the Hamburg-Amerika Line as the Ostmark, she was not completed. She was a sister ship of the German commerce raider Kormoran, which sank the Australian light cruiser Sydney II in November 1941.
In 1949, Skaugum was described as “the best migrant ship to arrive so far” by the Melbourne Argus. Claimed as a prize of war in 1945 by the UK, the ship was bought by L M Skaugen of Oslo, Norway, and fitted as a passenger vessel. While many of the ships chartered by the International Refugee Organisation were in poor condition, the Skaugum had more day rooms, more comfortable cabins and more deck space – including two swimming pools – than any other IRO-chartered vessel. She also had kindly Norwegian officers and crew. The charter to the IRO ended in 1957 after the Skaugum had carried about 14,000 migrants from Europe to Australia.
In 1957, she was refitted as a cargo ship for her owners and operated until 1964, when she was sold to Ocean Shipping & Enterprises. After trading as a tramp cargo ship for a further six years, she was broken up in Taiwan in 1972.
