Oskar Speck

Oskar Speck (4 March 1907 – 28 March 1993) was a German canoeist who kayaked from Germany to Australia. He departed from Ulm, Germany in 1932 to seek work due to being an unemployed electrical contractor in Hamburg. He initially intended to kayak to Cyprus to work in the copper mines but ended up wanting to continue the journey through Southeast Asia and the Middle East to Australia.
Speck arrived in Australia in 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War. He was accused of being a spy and was imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp. When the war ended, he was released from imprisonment and later became a successful opal merchant in Sydney.
In 1921, aged 14, Oskar Speck left school to work. During the 1920s, kayaking was becoming increasingly popular sport throughout Europe. One of the most common kayaks from the time was called a Sunnschien, which was manufactured by faltboots. They consisted of treated canvas skin that was pulled over a wooden frame.
As the great depression struck after the First World War, Speck was unable to find work in his hometown. Due to the lack of money and the rumours of miners being needed in the Cypriot mines, Speck decided to kayak there, disregarding the risks including dangerous conditions and his inability to swim.
Speck left Ulm in May 1932 by kayaking down the river of Danube until he entered Romania. He continued to follow the river until he reached the Bulgarian border and paddled out into the Aegean Sea. Speck had never kayaked out at sea, but nonetheless ended up paddling through high swell and large waves, even narrowly avoided a collision with a cargo ship.
Speck added sails to his kayak as well as splashguards to make the kayak more efficient as well as to keep the kayak from filling up. After these modifications, Speck was able to travel through the Aegean and the Mediterranean seas by going along the islands and following the coast of Turkey before reaching Cyprus.
He then travelled east to Syria to reach the Euphrates River, which he then kayaked down on through Iraq to get to the Persian Gulf. Along the Euphrates, Speck experienced a lack of food and water, intense heat as well as regularly being shot at by the locals. Further into his trip down the Euphrates River, Speck was stranded on a small island with a corpse, where he waited for a week for a storm to pass.
When he reached the Gulf, he continued to paddle down along the coast of Iran where he stayed for six months waiting for a new kayak to arrive. However, during his wait, he became ill and contracted malaria, which stayed with him throughout the rest of the voyage. Speck did not resume his voyage until September 1934, when he continued east through the Arabian Sea. After a few months, he arrived on the coast of Pakistan, where he stopped at various ports to trade stories of his voyage for food, water, and shelter. This allowed him to gain fame which further allowed him to fund the rest of his trip. Around this period, Nazi Germany had begun to develop, as a result, rumours of Speck being a German spy also began to develop. Various stories of his kayak being able to fly, and dive led to him being arrested at the next port he rested at; however, he was released two days later and resumed his trip.
As Speck reached Sri Lanka, he spent three months there to avoid the monsoon season. When the monsoon season passed and Speck was back on the water, he reached Chennai where he got a new kayak. He then continued to travel along the coast of India until he reached Kolkata in January 1936. A few months later, just off the Burmese coast, Speck happened to kayak through another monsoon. He would be driven off course, and he would spend 30–40 hours paddling to get himself back on route.
As Speck left Singapore on another new kayak, he headed to Jakarta, from which he continued to paddle east. However, he was often dehydrated, exhausted and sunburnt and unable to find a food supply. During this stage in his voyage, Speck was also stricken down with malaria again, as a result the voyage was again interrupted. During this period, locals who were initially welcoming of him, would turn hostile due to the language barrier between the German traveller and the locals. An incident occurred in Indonesia where he was beaten by 20 men leaving him semi-conscious with a punctured eardrum. Speck managed to escape by chewing through the ropes he was tied with before sailing away in his kayak. Speck's recount on this incident as documented in the Australasian Post Magazine:
Back out at sea, he was not permitted to travel a shorter route, but rather a longer via the north of New Guinea. Speck reached Port Moresby in August, before continuing down to the Saibai Island in the far north of Australia, in September 1939. The voyage took him seven years and four months.
Upon arrival, a group of locals welcomed him, but he was arrested by three police officers among the locals and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp due to his German background. The three officers welcoming and congratulating Speck as documented as in the Australasian Post Magazine:
Speck was first sent to a prisoner-of-war camp on Thursday Island for one month. He was then sent to Brisbane then to Tatura Internment camp in Victoria where he escaped the camp, but was recaptured and sent to Loveday Camp 14 in South Australia where he stayed until the end of the war.
Speck was released in January 1946 and within a week of his release he found work in an opal mine in Lightning Ridge, New South Wales. He got his citizenship and settled into postwar Australia to establish a successful opal cutting and trading business. In the 1970s, Speck built his own home Killcare Heights on the New South Wales Central Coast before retiring. His partner, Nancy Steele, would commute from Sydney to Killcare every week for 30 years to see him until she moved in with him in 1993. In the 1970s, Speck also managed to travel back to Germany, however he did not really enjoy it, so he returned back to Australia.
Speck died in 1993 aged 86 years of an undisclosed illness.
Even though Speck's adventures were reported in Europe, very few knew about his accomplishments in Australia. Shortly after his arrival in Australia, Speck planned on publishing his photographs and write about his experiences, however he did not end up doing this. Most of Speck's original photographs, letters and journals remain in the Australian National Maritime Museum, photographs of his original letters and journals as well as his original photographs are available on their website.
One of Speck's double ended paddles from his voyage was presented to Carl Toovey as a trophy for the 100 mile Cruising Canoe Club’s Nepean Marathon on the Hawkesbury River in 1952. This was the first canoeing marathon to take place in Australia. Over time, Toovey and Speck became friends and began canoeing around Pittwater and Sydney Harbour together.
Speck's opinions on his popularity as documented in the Australasian Post Magazine:
Sandy Robson is a woman from Western Australia who retraced Speck's voyage by using a sea-kayak to paddle approximately 23,000 kilometres. She started the voyage at the age of 42 and spent 5 and half years on her journey from Germany to Australia. In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2016, she claimed that she was inspired by the voyage of German Oskar Speck in the late 1930s. Unlike Speck, she did not face political issues as Australian Border Force personnel were on hand to provide customs clearance; however, she encountered crocodiles, pirates and malaria. Although Sandy Robson documented her voyage in detail on her blog ‘Sea Kayaker Sandy’, she claimed that like Speck, she also wants to write a book about her voyage. During her interview with The Australian Broadcasting Corporation she also claimed:
Oskar Speck at Find a Grave