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| The Noordam |
| Our Ship to America |
| Family on board |
| Franciszka (Francis) Kaczmarek (mother, age 33) |
| Marta (Martha) Kaczmarek (daughter, age 8) |
| Regina (Virginia) Kaczmarek (daughter, age 3) |
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Port of Departure: Rotterdam, South Holland, The Netherlands. |
| Port of Arrival: Ellis Island, New York, New York, U.S.A. |
| Date of Arrival: August 27, 1912. |
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Ship Data: Built by Harlan & Wolff Limited, Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1902. Displacement: |
| 12,531 gross tons. Length: 575 feet. Width: 62 feet. Engines: triple steam expansion, twin screw. |
| Speed: 15 knots. Passenger capacity: 2,278 (286 first class, 192 second class, 1,800 third class). |
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| Ship History: Built for the Holland-America Line, the ship was christened Noordam and, under |
| Dutch flag, placed into Rotterdam-New York service. In 1922, Swedish American Line chartered |
| it, renamed it Kungsholm, and placed it into Gothenburg-New York service. In 1924, it returned to |
| the Holland-America Line where it reverted to the Noordam and sailed under Dutch flag between |
| Rotterdam and New York. It was pulled from service in 1927 and scrapped in Holland in 1928. |
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| Family Lore: In the fall of 1982, Virginia (Kaczmarek) Plummer traveled with her nephew, Ron, |
| by automobile from Stuttgart, Germany, to Bremerhaven, on the North Sea. As they arrived at the |
| city center of Bremerhaven, Virginia suddenly shouted, "Stop the car!" Parked along the side of the |
| road, she began to reminisce. "I remember standing on this very spot in 1912," she said, "holding my |
| Mother's hand. Your Aunt Martha stood on the other side, holding the other one. We had arrived by |
| train from Warsaw and were waiting for a taxi to the harbor and our ship to America. I remember |
| staring at that red brick building across the road, but it looked different back then." Fifty yards |
| away stood the main railway station, a tall square central structure with one-story wings on either |
| side. "I don't think those wings were there when we traveled through here," she said. Sure enough, |
| the bricks in the two wings were of a different size and pattern than those in the central portion -- |
| obviously having been added sometime after 1912. Aunt Virginia continued her narrative: "I don't |
| recall much from the voyage across the Atlantic, except that all three of us slept in one large web |
| hammock, far below decks in third-class steerage; and we had to bring our own food -- enough for |
| the entire week or so we were on the open sea. At the port of New York, we transferred to a train |
| en route to Chicago where Father waited to greet us. Porters on the train sold sandwiches and fruit, |
| and Mother saw a banana for the first time in her life. On an impulse, she bought one and bit into it. |
| It tasted so bitter that she threw it away, unaware that one peeled away the skin first. exposing the |
| soft fruit inside. Later, walking the streets of Chicago, she saw a man eating a banana and realized |
| her mistake. We had little money, and it angered her to realize that she had discarded a perfectly |
| good piece of food. Soon, the banana became her favorite fruit, as she ate one almost daily for the |
| rest of her life; and, every time she peeled a banana, she lamented having once thrown one away." |
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