George Dibbern
He completed his final exams in 1907 and went to sea as an apprentice aboard the Flying P line square-rigger Pamelia, to Valparaiso, Chile.
[1] He worked for a time on the Ten Tunnels Deviation (which bypassed the Great Zig Zag railway) and later as a waiter at the Hydro Majestic Hotel, in Medlow Bath in the Blue Mountains.
Since he had learned to drive, Dibbern became a chauffeur to the Maori in the area of Dannevirke until he was interned as an enemy alien on Somes Island in June 1918 .
[1] In May 1919 Dibbern was repatriated to Germany aboard the Willochra with about 900 other interned aliens, among them Captain Carl Kircheiß and Count Felix von Luckner.
They married in January 1921 and in anticipation of reparation funds for assets left behind in New Zealand, purchased a property in Stocksee, a small municipality in northern Germany.
To make a living Dibbern began to write short stories of his adventures in the Antipodes, to appear in Vossische Zeitung and other German periodicals with the help of Baron Albrecht von Fritsch.
His wife supplemented their income with artistic Scherenschnitte (scissor cuts) which were later declared degenerate art by the Nazi Party.
Inspired by Kurt von Boeckmann's book Vom Kulturreich des Meeres[4] he named the boat Te Rapunga, being Maori for “Longing” or “Dark Sun”.
Sailing the Mediterranean Dibbern connected with the likes of circumnavigator Conor O’Brien aboard Saoirse, and the Swiss couple, painter Charles Hofer and his artist and writer wife Cilette Ofaire on San Luca.
From Balboa they helmed north; too late for the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, they pressed on, arriving in San Francisco on 20 September 1932, after 101 days at sea without touching land.
Inspired by multiple chance-encounters during his cruises, Dibbern's new mission became to make Te Rapunga yacht of a friendship, a bridge of tolerance and brotherhood.
He took a new crew and headed north to the Cook Islands, Hawaii, and Canada, arriving in Victoria BC on July 1, 1937, with a flag representing his ideals as he refused to fly the obligatory German Swastika.
That December the home of his wife Elisabeth in Berlin was ransacked by the Gestapo searching for evidence of her husband's perceived anti-German sentiments.
In 1939 residency was denied Dibbern as he refused to take up arms for any country and he became widely known as a “man without a country.” With his remaining crew member from New Zealand, Eileen Morris, he sailed to San Francisco.
He was invited to the Dan Seymour radio show “We the People” in New York City where he left the manuscript of Quest with publisher W.W. Norton.
In 1940, in San Francisco, eight years before American actor and peace activist Garry Davis renounced his citizenship, Dibbern created his own passport declaring himself a “Friend of all peoples” and a "Citizen of the World.
[1]Forced to leave the United States, Dibbern sailed to Hawaii, where he met other wandering vessels such as Viator, a schooner en route from Tahiti; famous French sailor Éric de Bisschop with his catamaran Kaimiloa bound for France, the ketch Hula Gal heading for Seattle and Captain Harry Pidgeon with his Islander.
That same year Eileen left Woody Island to return to Napier, New Zealand, to provide his daughter Lani with a more stable school environment.
After all his years of sailing without mishap, again, in 1959 the Te Rapunga, dismasted and damaged in a severe hurricane, was towed into Auckland by the Japanese freighter Tokuwa Maru.
Having the Te Rapunga refit he planned to sail from Auckland back to Germany to close the circle with his wife Elisabeth and their daughters with whom he had maintained contact by correspondence for 32 years.
After the stranding of Te Rapunga in 1957, Miller sent out a broadsheet with Dibbern's story, urging readers to contribute money to help him refit the boat.
Dibbern's yacht Te Rapunga was sold to a series of owners and ultimately ended up languishing and deteriorating until, in 2017, Bruny Island Coastal Retreats and Nature Pact, in Tasmania, bought her and are having her restored by Denman Marine in time for the 2021 Australian Wooden Boat Festival.
Videos on the restoration of the Te Rapunga are posted by current owner Bruny Island Coastal Retreats and Denman Marine on YouTube and Instagram.
