After barely a week I signed on another trainingship, the
"Danmark", on the 5th of September 1957 also at the Danish Royal Navy Yard "Holmen". But this was for the real work, a long voyage across the North Atlantic Ocean.
From Copenhagen we sailed to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the U.K., before we sailed through the English Channel heading for Funchal on the island of
Madeira (Portugal). That was almost intoxicating, beeing in the sub-tropics where we for the first time saw Palmtrees and strange looking birds and where the people spoke a language we didn't understood. But naturally after a few days we were used to that also.
From Madeira we sailed on to Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the Island of
Tenerife (Spain). After a week or more we set sail for the big crossing of the Atlantic Ocean to the Chesapeake Bay, where we visited
Baltimore in Maryland, and later on we went up the Potomac River to
Washington D.C. where we had a real V.I.P. treatment, visiting the Congress, the Lincoln Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and last but not least, the George Washington Monument (the Obelisk) .
At that time I saw the U.S.A. as "Gods own Country", a view that since then has been "slightly" changed, but then again I was only 16.
When the time was up in the "States" we continued our journey to the port of
Charlotte Amalie on the former Danish island of
St. Thomas, now part of the American Virgin Islands (never saw one). Thence the voyage took us to Kingston on
Jamaica and from there, through the
Bermuda-Triangle to
Hamilton on the Bermudas.
From Hamilton we set sails for the last leg of our long voyage, direction east-north-east to Schotland, through the
Pentland Firth, across the North Sea and on to Copenhagen where we signed off the 12th of March 1958.
