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John Donovan holding aloft newspaper article published by The Guardian and The Observer under the headline: “Jewish outrage as world’s largest ship, named after SS war criminal, arrives in Europe“. A related article by John Donovan
By John Donovan
Following the decision announced on 9 February 2015 that Allseas is changing the name of The Pieter Schelte to the Pioneering Spirit, Ton Biesemaat, the Dutch investigative journalist, posted the following comment on our Shell Blog, which I assume is partly tongue in cheek:
Every seaman knows that changing a ship’s name brings bad luck. Especially if you do not purge all the references to the former name. Not even Pieter Schelte can stay on any documents. However Allseas with their admiration for the Nazi Pieter Schelte Heerema has chosen to rename their Nazi ship into Pioneering Spirit. Which is still a reference to the evil SS-man and even retains the P and S of Pieter Schelte. No sane minded seaman will take the risk to sail on this ship. Evil reigns there. Beware of the bad spirits!
By John Donovan
Associated Press has confirmed that after protests, the Allseas Dutch-Swiss maritime engineering company said Friday it will change the name of a giant ship that had been christened after a convicted Nazi.
Allseas Group said that due to the “widespread reactions” Edward Heerema has announced that the name of the vessel will be changed.
“It has never been the intention to offend anyone,” the company said in a statement.
Earlier Friday, the company said it had no plans to change the name. The new name was not immediately announced.
In the last few minutes Dutch investigative journalist Ton Biesemaat has advised me that he has heard from two sources that Allseas is dropping the Nazi name of its giant new ship, which has generated so much offence on an international basis. We await confirmation from Allseas or Shell as to whether this information is correct. 
UPDATE BY JOHN DONOVAN 6 Feb 2015
According to a Dutch magazine article published today, Shell had a long connection with Pieter Schelte Heerema, who, on May 17, 1942, was promoted by Heinrich Himmler no less, to SS- Untersturmführeris. Shell is currently scheduled to be the largest user of the Nazi named ship. Consequently, Shell has the clout to put immense pressure on Edward Heerema to change the name, under the threat of cancelling the contract. Surely Shell has contingency insurance in place to cover any losses, knowing beforehand that it was playing with fire in contracting to use a ship with such a toxic name? Astonishing similarity with the Brent Spar decommissioning affair, which turned into a PR disaster for Shell and seems destined to happen again in this foreseeable “storm of criticism” unless Shell acts decisively. Regular visitors to this website know that I have been warning Shell for ages about associating itself with this Nazi named ship. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the sleazy sinister son, Edward Heerema, is unhinged in relation to this issue. Shell should bear this obvious fact in mind. By naming his pariah ship after his father, Mr Heerema has transformed a relatively obscure Nazi into an internationally infamous Nazi and in the process, drawn a lot of unwelcome attention to himself and his tax affairs.
By John Donovan
I recently became aware of a letter (see below) which a director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre sent to Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden on 5 February 2015. The communication stemmed from my campaigning activities that ended with Allseas renaming the worlds largest ship. It had been named in honour of a Waffen SS officer, Pieter Schelte Heerema (right). I will shortly be supplying the Simon Wiesenthal Centre with a trove of evidence about Shell’s Nazi history including its close partnership in Nazi Germany with IG Farben, the chemical giant which manufactured the gas used to exterminate several million Jewish people in the Holocaust. Dutch Directors of the Royal Dutch Shell Group including Sir Henri Deterding helped finance Hitler and the Nazi Party.
“We survivors do not want our past to be our children’s future,” said Roman Kent last week.
He spoke at the site of the Auschwitz death camp, seventy years on from the liberation of those imprisoned in this hell.
Roman was one of 300 survivors, reunited to remember the 1.1 million people who perished there at the hands of the Nazis.
As they gathered, the world’s biggest crane-vessel was preparing for the UK.
The Pieter Schelte is named after a SS officer, a war criminal, a man jailed for the enslavement of 4000 men on the eastern front, a man who allegedly spoke of the Aryan supremacy and in the most abhorrent terms about the Jewish people.
“For Allseas to name its vessel after a convicted Nazi war criminal is utterly shameful…: ”To even countenance honouring a Waffen-SS officer just shows how twisted, arrogant and out-of-touch Allseas management is. The Pieter Schelte should not be permitted to operate until it changes its name.”The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) is demanding that Allseas Group SA, the owner of a ship that honours convicted Nazi war criminal Pieter Schelte, immediately change the vessel’s name.
The Pieter Schelte is a Panamanian flag of convenience vessel, contracted by Shell to service its Brent platforms situated on the UK continental shelf. It was named in honour of the Allseas Group’s owner’s father, who was a Nazi Waffen-SS officer.
ITF president Paddy Crumlin said the vessel’s name was a disgrace and it should not be permitted to operate in UK or European waters.
By John Donovan
Scottish TV news is reporting that the UK National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and its sister unions, are outraged by the fact that Shell has awarded the Brent oilfield decommissioning contract to a ship with a Nazi name, The Pieter Schelte.
The unions intend to take coordinated action to stop the continued use of the scandalous Nazi linked name on the high seas.
Numerous articles have been published today as a result of a PR campaign by Shell in which it ironically claims to have learnt the lessons from the Brent Spar debacle. The STV story is the first to mention the Nazi name controversy.
By John Donovan
Despite my forthright comments about Edward Heerema (the owner of the multibillion dollar ship Pieter Schelte), describing him a sinister individual who engages in shady financial machinations, I have not yet received a defamation writ.
Threats yes, but no writ.
Edward Heerema is one of the squabbling sons of Pieter Schelte Heerema, the offshore pioneer and former German Waffen SS officer/war criminal.
It could be because Allseas does not have my address, in which case they only need to ask me for it.
AN OPEN LETTER TO MR EDWARD HEEREMA, FOUNDER AND SOLE OWNER OF ALLSEASDear Mr. Heerema
You are well aware of my petition trying to persuade you to change the name of your new ship, The Pieter Schelte, named after your father, an officer in the infamous German Waffen SS.
You have already paid a self-inflicted price for your good-intentioned, but wrongheaded decision and are apparently prepared to stick with the Nazi linked name in the long term.
I am referring to the collateral damage to your own reputation (for unwise decision making) and the reputation of your company, Allseas, as a result of being seen to brazenly operate a prominent ship under a Nazi linked name. That evil association will precede and follow the ship like an albatross, wherever it sails, for the rest of its days.
There is a lot of media noise about one of the world’s largest ships, which is now in its finishing building stage in the port of Rotterdam. The ship is named Pieter Schelte after his father by the owner of the Allseas company Edward Heerema. So far so good. Allseas is an international player in the offshore industry and the Pieter Schelte will be used for pipe laying on the seabed and decommisioning of obsolete oil and gas platforms in for example the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico. However Jewish organisations are angry because the ship is named after a Dutch Nazi and SS-officer who was vehemently anti-Semitic (1).
By John Donovan
The Observer newspaper, the Mail Online and the Dutch Financial Times, plus a variety of other news outlets, all published articles over the weekend covering The Pieter Schelte Nazi Ship Controversy.
SOME OF THE HEADLINES
Jewish outrage as ship named after SS war criminal arrives in Europe: The Observer/Guardian
SCREENSHOTS OF ARTICLE PUBLISHED SUNDAY 25 JAN 2015 BY THE DAILY MAIL/MAIL ONLINE
FROM AN ARTICLE BY ED VULLIAMY PUBLISHED BY THEGUARDIAN.COM AND THE OBSERVER NEWSPAPER, SUNDAY 25 JAN 2015 UNDER THE HEADLINE:Extracts
Leaders of Jewish communities and Holocaust memorial groups in Britain and the Netherlands have reacted with rage and despair at the arrival in Rotterdam of the world’s biggest ship, the Pieter Schelte, named after a Dutch officer in the Waffen-SS.
The vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush, said: “Naming such a ship after an SS officer who was convicted of war crimes is an insult to the millions who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis. We urge the ship’s owners to reconsider and rename the ship after someone more appropriate.”
NON-PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATION OF AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED BY THE DUTCH FINANCIAL TIMES UNDER THE HEADLINE: Alexander Weissink
Sunday, January 25th, 2015, 11:26
Updated: Sunday, January 25, 2015, 16:56
The Dutch owner of offshore company Allseas in Delft is increasingly criticized for the naming of its newest vessel. Edward Heerema named the largest floating crane in the world after his father Pieter Schelte who was an officer in World War II in the German Waffen SS before he made his name as an offshore pioneer.
The Guardian
The Guardian Saturday citing various Jewish organizations complained about this tribute. The vessel with a size of eight football pitches and a cost of € 2.4 billion was early this month the subject of a ceremony on its arrival in the port of Rotterdam. In the backwater of Maasvlakte Pieter Schelte is being assembled in the coming months. After that lights the vessel obsolete oil platforms in the North Sea from their pedestal and drains.
30 November 2023: Posted by John Donovan
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