Pacific Yachting, July 1999

GEORGE DIBBERN: SAILOR-PHILOSOPHER
by Erika Grundmann

They hove to in the early morning mist. After 31 days en route from Honolulu, a clean-up was in order, clean-up of boat and crew. Te Rapunga had once again made landfall; this time it was Victoria. Canada at last! Skipper George Dibbern, along with Roy Murdock and Eileen Morris, had started out on this adventure from Auckland, New Zealand, almost two years earlier.

The brass polished and the crew, like the deck, scrubbed, the 32 foot ketch sailed (no motor for this lot!) confidently into Victoria Harbour. Puzzled by the fact that no harbour boat came to meet them, they circled then tied up at Enterprise Wharf, only to learn that they would have to return to William Head for pratique. It was July 1, 1937.

By late afternoon, with proper clearance, Te Rapunga lay silent alongside Enterprise Wharf. Her crew had been whisked off to the hospitality of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, among whose members was John Denny (featured in Pacific Yachting, November, 1998). It wasn't long before Dibbern was recognized as a sailor philosopher and was invited to give talks to the RVYC, the Gyro Club and the Women's Canadian Club. Both Victoria newspapers of the day covered the arrival of the plucky double-ender as well as Dibbern's speaking engagements, but neither mentioned the Te Rapunga's unusual flag which had had to be explained to the officials at William Head and to the immigration officer.

Born in Kiel in 1889, George Dibbern ventured to sea in 1907, sailed on square-riggers to the nitrate ports of Chile, and jumped ship in Sydney in 1909. He spent the next eight years tramping and working at odd jobs in Australia, then New Zealand where he was interned from 1918-19 and subsequently deported back to Germany. He followed the normal path of marriage and children, but it didn't take him long to realize that his outlook on life, shaped by his experiences, was far from the norm. He had outgrown Germany. Frustrated by failed business ventures, unemployment and debt, refusing to buy into the politics of that turbulent period in Germany, he decided to seek a better future for his family in New Zealand. Financially strapped as he was, his only hope was Te Rapunga. With a few changes in crew and a few detours along the way he arrived in New Zealand, almost four years later, in March 1934.

The voyage was for Dibbern a voyage of self-examination, self-recrimination (at leaving his family behind) and self-discovery. He had begun to have misgivings by the time he arrived at his destination and sought out his Maori friends. Conditions had changed and the vision he'd started out with was now clouded. His wife and children had made a life for themselves; they were not prepared to give up what little they had for the nothing that Dibbern could promise. At the opposite side of the globe, broke, unable to return to the constraints of Germany, Dibbern had to find a new purpose in life.

His ruminations while at the tiller in the quiet of starlit nights had led him to a way of freedom rather than security, love rather than force, the brotherhood of all people rather than the division of nationhood. The sea opened one's eyes. He would, in his small way, with his small boat, give others the opportunity of a sailing experience; he would be a bridge of friendship between people. With this aim George Dibbern had brought together his crew from New Zealand, had sailed from Auckland, to Rarotonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Hawaii and now Canada.

While in Hawaii Dibbern had been forced into a decision. By law he could no longer fly the flag of the Germany of his birth. He felt, however, that the obligatory swastika did not represent what he stood for. The concept that had been in his thoughts materialized when a friend who understood, presented him with the flag she had sewn to his design a white background, with a red St. George's Cross cutting through a dark blue circle, and in the upper left hand corner a blue star representing the fundamental and equal rights of people to evolve, each according to his or her individuality; the brotherhood of all people; the presence of God within all people. This new flag, the expression of Dibbern's philosophy, was flown for the first time at Te Rapunga's arrival in Victoria.

After a couple of weeks in the city of gardens, the urge to continue to Vancouver took hold. Roy Murdock had relatives there, waiting for his visit. Te Rapunga being the vessel of friendship that Dibbern had made her into, very casually took on four new-found friends as passengers. Three days later the crowded boat arrived in Vancouver, met by reporters and an accommodating harbour-master who ought to have fined the skipper for entering Burrard Inlet without a motor. Instead, he granted a permit for a year's cruising in British Columbian waters. And cruise they did!

That summer and fall, till dirty weather set in, Te Rapunga explored the Gulf Islands. True to Dibbern's vision, always, new friends visited or joined the boat as job constraints allowed. Among them were Daphne, Jo, the two Dorothy's, Noel, Maynard and Frances. Kay Day, Mavis Wilcox, William Nicholson, Margaret Willis ... and Gladys Nightingale. Gladys (who became known as Sharie of the legendary coastal couple, Allen and Sharie Farrell) worked in the same office as Roy's cousin, Muriel Murdock, and had followed the progress of Te Rapunga from New Zealand to Vancouver. She had been intrigued and after her first visit was hooked.

In the fall of 1937, Roy Murdock left the crew and settled in Victoria, later to become associate editor of The Daily Colonist. That his love of sailing was cemented through his Te Rapunga experience is evident in the preface to her log, as cited in his obituary (The Daily Colonist, Feb 21, 1961): My main ambition had always been to sail small boats, not in the shelter of bays and harbors, but across oceans and through foreign waters ... The obituary continues: It took him a long time, but he realized this dream. And from the August day in 1935 that the little 32-foot Te Rapunga which can be roughly translated from the Polynesian as longing or searching sailed from New Zealand, he knew his greatest pleasure, his greatest satisfaction on the sea.

Although George Dibbern was a skipper with vision and an enchanting speaker, he wanted to write a book to share the excitement and the powerful influence of the sea with those who weren't able to sail with him. He found, however, that he could not express himself on paper in a language not his mother tongue. He tried dictating to Gladys, who had become a part of the boat, and found that worked. He decided it would be better to moor Te Rapunga at Enterprise Wharf in Victoria for the winter, in Eileen's care. He himself returned to Vancouver where he rented a room with a view across the harbour to Hollyburn Mountain and where he could spend more time with Gladys! Mornings he gave talks at schools and clubs to earn a little much needed cash, afternoons he made notes, and following supper with Gladys, he dictated. Occasionally they went out dancing. So passed the fall, punctuated by a surprise visit from Eileen and Jack Shark, (the adventurer they had first met in Tahiti and who ultimately settled in Courtenay) and periodic trips to Victoria.

By spring the first draft of what would be Quest was completed. Her permit extended, Te Rapunga, with only a little humiliation, was towed back to Vancouver in anticipation of another season of cruising. Eileen set to editing the manuscript; Gladys retyped. They formed a happy, loving threesome. The book finished, Te Rapunga was once again free to sail: Pender Harbour, Half Moon Bay, Blind Bay and any other little bay that suited their fancy. As they explored, a common image took shape: they would buy some land; build a truly Canadian log house and some cabins for friends to visit for as long as they wished; provide hot baths for sailors laundry facilities too; garden and fish; sail to Vancouver to give talks for what little money they would require... or San Francisco... or even Hawaii...

A two hundred acre property at Galley Bay in seductive Desolation Sound, available for $528.00 in back taxes, became the object of their dreams. They pooled their limited resources and purchased the land. Inspired and buoyed by the plan, they cruised from summer into fall... till, once again in Vancouver, the realization hit that George and Eileen's visitor permits were soon to expire and would not be renewed. The only recourse was to apply for landed immigrant status. Given the times (early 1939), George's German birth, his refusal to take up arms for Canada (in defence of any country for that matter), the concern that he was planning to start some sort of cult or commune in Galley Bay, along with the fact that he and Eileen were living in the same restricted quarters unmarried, their application and subsequent appeal were not successful.

In the cold rain of a late February afternoon in 1939, Te Rapunga dragged herself from the embrace of Immigration Wharf. A few days of farewell in Victoria, and on to Port Angeles where the man without a country flying what was lightly referred to as a pirates' flag was welcome... for a while... The United States allowed Te Rapunga and her crew, George Dibbern and Eileen Morris, to stay till June 1940. During that time, Dibbern's German passport expired and he created a new one displaying his flag and declaring himself outside of nationality, a citizen of the world, a friend of all peoples.

After seventy-two days of sailing and drifting beyond the US limits of Hawaii, while Eileen sat on deck with a typewriter perched on her knees fine-tuning Quest, the adventuresome idealists headed back to New Zealand. Their survival of a hurricane en route is described in a letter that Eileen wrote to friends in Canada. (A copy of that account is taped to the edition of Quest, donated by Tom Denny to the Maritime Museum of BC in Victoria). Shortly after their arrival in Eileen's hometown of Napier on January 24, 1941, Dibbern was again interned the New Zealand authorities refused to recognize the declaration of his flag and passport.

Quest was published by W.W. Norton, N.Y. in March of 1941. Dibbern was released from internment in October 1945. He and Eileen resumed sailing in the goal of providing a bridge of friendship. George won a lottery in 1950 and bought an island in Tasmania where he was joined for a time by Eileen and their daughter. The Galley Bay property was sold in the sad acknowledgement of a dream beyond realization. In 1954 Dibbern caused a stir by his participation in the Trans Tasman Race how shameless with an all female crew! He made news again in 1957 when Te Rapunga was driven ashore in a storm near Greymouth, New Zealand and yet again in 1959 when, battered by a hurricane, she was towed into Auckland.

On June 11, 1962, George Dibbern died of a heart attack in Auckland. He was making preparations to complete the circle; by returning to Germany to visit his family whom he had not seen, but with whom he had remained in contact, since his departure in 1930. To the end he remained true to his principles, never took out citizenship in any country thereby forfeiting old age security income and continued to proudly fly the flag and carry the passport that expressed his philosophy.

Erika Grundmann ©1999