Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Side 207

THE NORWEGLAN SEAMEN’S MISSION
A JUBILEE.
By Vilhelm Vilhelmsen,
Secretary General of the Norwegian Seamen’s Mission.
CHRISTIAN welfare work among seamen was first
started in England at the beginning of the i9th century.
Among the more prominent pioneers may be mentioned
Dr. Gustav Brunmark, Chaplain to the Swedish Church in Lon-
don, and the Dano-Norwegian minister in the same city, Ulrich
Christian Rossing. Both were engaged in a very important work
among seamen and prisoners of war under the Napoleonic era.
The credit, however, for having initiated more firmly organised
mission work for seamen, belongs to George Charles Smith. He
had himself tried life at sea in the mercantile marine as well
as in the navy. And it was principally due to his persevering
and warmhearted work that The Port of London Society was
founded in 1814. As the name indicates, its activities were con-
fined to London alone. The following year The Bethel Union
Society started work in other British ports. Both these societies,
which had come into existence under the auspices of the Free
Church, were later united into the wellknown organisation “The
British and Foreign Sailors’ Society.” — In 1834 a clergyman
of the Church of England took up similar work in the Bristol
harbours. This gradually developed into the other wellknown
British organisation “The Missions to Seamen”.
The work thus started in England was the signal for
similar activities in several other countries, and Scandinavian
seamen often came in contact with these foreign missions to sea-
nien. But for all that some few years passed before Norway and
the other Northern countries were drawn actively into this work.
The pioneer here was a young Norwegian clergyman, Johan
Cordt Harmens Storjohann. In the autumn of 1863 he came to
Edinburgh to study the history of the Free Church of Scotland.
He was called upon to conduct divine services for Scandinavian
seamen at Leith in the spring of 1864. This work very soon con-
vinced him that there was great need for a special Norwegian
seamen’s mission. And Rev. Storjohann was not the man who
could see such a task and give it up again. He hoped to realise
his plans in co-operation with the Norwegian Missionary Society.