The teacher of the grade one class was Miss Seldersbeek. I don’t remember getting a report card, but I moved on to the second grade. Things didn’t go so well with teacher Vellekoop, but I certainly did my best, because I went on to the third grade with Miss Olthof. She was a very strict teacher. If you didn’t use your hands, you had to fold them stiffly over your chest. In fourth grade we had the teacher Kaptein, a bachelor who later married a daughter of baker Rinze Kreger. That daughter was in my class and, by then already, the teacher definitely had a crush on her. That’s the way it goes sometimes.
Then, off to fifth grade with master Thijm. That man did not have a happy marriage, as his wife was a nervous wreck and, I believe, admitted to an asylum. Master Menage in the sixth grade never got angry. He was a good guy, but suffered from seizures. I can still see master Thijm storming past us when we told him that master Menage was at widow Schroo’s farm, which was close to the school, lying on the ground foaming at the mouth. Fortunately, he always regained consciousness rather quickly and was fine.
On November 24, 1908, [Hendrik would be 12 then] the Italian 3-masted schooner ship Fernando ran aground on the northern shore of West Terschelling. The ship was loaded with timber and had been en route from Riga to Swansea, with a crew of 14. At one am., the ship was spotted by the Brandaris coastguard. As the sea was very rough, they waited to send out the lifeboat until 5:30 in the morning. The Neptune went out with the lifeboat behind her in tow. On board were twelve men, namely Klaas Knop-skipper, H. Former, J. Brouwer, A. Starrenburg, J. Gorter, Joe Brouwer, Teunis Brouwer, C. Wiegman, S. Wiegman, G. de Beer, Steven Knop (son of the skipper) and Steven Wiegman.
At 11 am., the Neptune was seen returning with its flag at half-mast and no lifeboat in tow. Soon it was announced that the lifeboat had capsized. I was in the sixth grade at the time and at 11:30, head teacher Wichers came to tell us that the lifeboat had capsized. There were boys and girls in our class whose fathers had been on the lifeboat. That was some consternation. We all sat with tears in our eyes and when school let out, we all ran to the shore. There, near the small guard house “Het Wakende Oog” [The Watchfull Eye], they were trying to revive G. de Boer and Klaas Knop — which fortunately succeeded.
What had happened? Despite the high seas, Klaas Knop and the rowers managed to get to the ship. With great difficulty, they got five men from the ship on board. Only the captain with a sailor were still on the wreck. The lifeboat could no longer stay with the ship, and they decided to leave. Then came a tremendous ground swell, which caused the lifeboat to flip straight over. Everyone fell out. Ten men in the water, namely the five rescuers and five rowers managed to climb onto the overturned lifeboat. The others floated 15m away on their cork vests. The tide drove the lifeboat out from the surf.
On the Neptune, they had watched all this and immediately deployed the punt. Eight men lowered themselves into it, rowed to the overturned boat and took off ten men. The tug Terschelling then went into the surf and picked up five drowning men. One of them, Heer Former had already died. Klaas Knop and G. de Boer were injured and unconscious. Teunis Brouwer and Steven Knop were missing and not found. Of the two men left on the ship, the sailor with a broken leg was later rescued by the Midslander lifeboat, while the captain had probably jumped overboard in a fit of despair. As I said, there were 14 men on board. Seven had already washed overboard and drowned in the late evening of 23 November. All in all, this was a disastrous story, and I will now move on to something else.
We could play nicely on the school grounds with its sandy surface. On that sandy soil, we played ‘tripping.’ You would dig a sloping hole in the ground. A stick of about 25 centimetres would go in there and you would hit it with a longer stick. The trick was to hit the small stick in such a way that it fell far away. But you could easily miss and then you were out. Marbles was another great game, we called it ‘By Eight’. You took eight marbles in your hand, and then five had to go in the hole and three outside – or an odd number. An even number meant you lost.
One fine day, I got so mad at my sister Griet while playing this game that I took my wooden shoe in my hand to throw it at her. But the wooden shoe went the wrong way and smashed through a window of Willem Bloem’s house, who was just eating. The glass from that window ended up in his afternoon stew. Well, that was not good! I didn’t stick around but took off. Later, I must have had a spanking from my parents, but I don’t remember how this went.
Gerrit de Boer’s wife often sat out on the street with a child at her breast, nursing, when the weather was sunny. She was always much watched by us schoolchildren. She seemingly always had plenty of milk because when her other young children were around, it was often: “here, you can suck for a while too”, and then there would be two of them hanging from her breasts to the amazement of us all.
We had a school choir led by Master Redeker, who had a wooden leg. Well, what singing we had! Then, when it went very well, the master would take off his leg and conduct with it. “Langs Berg en Dal Klingt Hoorngeschal” was then one of the most beautiful songs we sang. I never got to the seventh grade because I had to help on the farm. Those were good school years in a rural environment. Something like that stays with you all your life.