Interview with Captain Udo Domke – Seen it all on the high seas

Udo Domke was actually supposed to take over his mother’s pharmacy. But things turned out differently after he moved to a location in Hamburg near the port. A conversation about 42 years of seafaring through all kinds of weather, exciting research trips and how he escaped the 2011 Tokyo earthquake.

“Studying pharmacology and making pills at some point – that just didn’t interest me at all!” says Captain Udo Domke during a walk through the CMR empty container depot in the Wilhelmsburg quarter of Hamburg. He still remembers well his childhood in the central-northern German town of Helmstedt and his mother’s pharmacy, where he played as a small boy in the back room. His parents had wanted their oldest son to take over the pharmacy. But then the family moved to Hamburg after his father got a new job there. “And when I met a chief mate here by chance when I was 17 years old, I thought to myself: ‘A job that offers a lot of diversity and doesn’t force you to sit at a desk all day – that could be the one for me.’”

After his boarding school years in Bad Sachsa and Plön, during which he already gained some “initial experience in big-family matters”, the high school graduate applied to Hapag-Lloyd and trained to become a nautical officer. And his first encounter with severe weather came in 1979 on board the “MS Friesenstein”. “We were hit by the remnants of Hurricane Floyd at 3 o’clock in the morning on the Atlantic. The cargo ship’s 80-tonne Stülcken heavy lift derrick had broken loose, and we tried from all sides to throw lines over the hook to retrieve it.” In a storm and swell, Domke continues, a hook like that jumps around like a bull gone wild. “If it had really swung the wrong way at full force, it would have destroyed the entire bridge.” By coordinating their efforts, the crew finally managed to “tame the bull”. “Everyone pitched in no matter their rank – or we wouldn’t have pulled it off,” he adds.

At sea on everything that floats

When the 29-year-old finished his studies to become an industrial engineer for maritime transport, Hapag-Lloyd didn’t have a suitable open position for him. “But I was able to get my start at the shipping company F. Laeisz, whose founder, Ferdinand Laeisz, had in any case also been one of the co-founders of HAPAG in 1847,” Domke recounts. “Fruit shipping, bulk shipping, container shipping – I then sailed everything that floats,” he says cheerfully. Even today, he can give expert lectures on the ripening process and transport of bananas, kiwis and the like, and knows about the proper refrigeration degrees and storage methods. “You can ruin an entire shipment of bananas with a single apple,” he adds.

Rough seas off the Dominican Republic and an exciting foray into polar research

After earning his master’s certificate in 1995, Domke was quickly able to demonstrate the skills he had acquired over time. His refrigerated ship was in Manzanillo Bay, on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic near the Dajabón River , when a cold front moved in. “We had moored at the banana pier, and and the ship's seven-metre loading depth meant the growers could really pile in a lot of fruit. The forecast had predicted winds of 25 knots, but then the front came right at us at 55 knots. All the mooring lines snapped, and I had to be careful not to collide with the navy ship right in front of us. The storm pushed our stern away from the pier. I tried to get the bow off the pier by heaving the anchor, but the ship turned perpendicular and ran aground on the rugged volcanic coast. Then the chief engineer just said “Go!” and I gave the ship power. We steered the vessels by a hair’s breadth past the finger pier and out into the bay while dragging our anchor the entire time. Then we weathered the storm there until it was all over.”

In November 2001, Domke set out for new horizons and was assigned to work on the “Polarstern”, a government-owned research icebreaker operated by the Bremerhaven-based Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). “To navigate an icebreaker with four engines and 20,000 hp and to be out at sea with countless scientists – that was really something special,” the captain says with enthusiasm. “At the time, the AWI’s directorate invited me for a very in-depth interview.”

Despite his years of experience, the new position was practically like starting from zero. “Icebreakers and ice behave in a completely different way than cargo ships and the open sea: The kinetic energy of the icebreaker propels it onto the floe. T hen the ship’s own weight causes the ice to break at the thinnest point, and that’s where you keep sailing forward. There isn’t any training for that; you can only learn it on board.”

Since then, Domke has had a keen interest in issues related to environmental protection and climate change. “Off the coast of Ireland, our researchers once filmed what is left of the seabed after big trawlers sail over it with their dragnets: absolutely nothing!” Domke is glad that exactly this area off the western coast of Ireland, on the Porcupine Bank, has been placed under protection. “Now it’s just line-and-hook fishing there,” he notes.

Back to his roots – and what Udo Domke appreciates about Hapag-Lloyd

Almost 30 years after his training and with a lot of expertise under his belt, the then-50-year-old captain returned to his former instructor. “It was like a homecoming!” he says. He then lists the enthusiasm of every single employee, the people and the working atmosphere, adding that: “You simply get the feeling that genuine seafarers are at work there, including at the management level.”

He then spent five years on the “Frankfurt Express”, on which he repeatedly sailed on his favourite route across the Pacific. “You sometimes have about 10 days at sea on this route without any ports, but instead with all the shades of the sea. That still impresses me, as you realise just how insignificant individual humans are in the face of overpowering nature.”

When asked what he especially appreciates about Hapag-Lloyd, he says it is the way it treats its employees. He will never forget how Richard von Berlepsch, the head of Fleet Management, took care of him and the “Dresden Express” when the Tōhoku earthquake struck Japan in 2011. “We were just entering the port of Tokyo with the pilot when it started,” he recounts. There wasn’t any alarm, nothing, just a strange vibration in the ship. The pilot on board made a phone call, and only one word came out of his mouth: ‘Earthquake.’ The container gantry cranes in front of us on the pier started to vibrate so much that a sudden collapse was imminent.” The captain and crew sailed away from land as fast as they could and anchored far off Tokyo.

“By then, we had also learned that Fukushima had been impacted,” he continues. The radioactive cloud initially drifted out to sea in a north-easterly direction before moving towards us on 14 March. We had a radiation measuring device on board, and the readings were still harmless. But would things stay that way, too? Since the earthquake happened, Richard von Berlepsch had been in constant contact with Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection. The call came in right on 14 March: ‘Put out to sea and don’t go to the pier!” There were constantly more aftershocks after the main quake, so if the ship were to moor at the pier, a falling crane could immobilise the ship beneath it.” That was typical Hapag-Lloyd, he says, noting that: “The safety of the people on board has always been the top priority.’ The captain then brought both the crew and ship back to Hamburg safely.

Domke’s long career also ended in Hamburg after 42 years. “That’s also a good thing at 63, as I’ve already seen it all,” he concludes. Now he looks forward to playing golf, which his start with his wife last year; to his garden, which could use a bit of love; and to the occasional sailing trip with friends and former colleagues. “And who knows? Maybe we’ll fly to the Azores again once the pandemic has subsided. Mass tourism hasn’t reached it yet, and the nature is simply stunning!”

When asked if he ever feels any ambitions to rejoin Hapag-Lloyd, the freshly minted pensioner shakes his head and says: “I can let go easily. But if anyone wants to hear a bit more about my experiences, please feel free to contact me! I still do get the itch sometimes!”

Reading tip: Things went much worse for the seafarers in the Fergus Fleming book “Barrow’s Boys: The Original Extreme Adventures”, which Captain Domke read on his final voyage. The book is about the perilous journeys to uncharted areas that British naval officers and their crews made in the 19th century. “All of their expeditions were failures and pretty much the exact opposite of what the British Crown claimed while celebrating itself as a nation of explorers,” Domke says. “And it’s all true and absolutely thrillingly recounted!”