The Bertha in full sail. Postcard by Hood, Sydney.
The German sailor, the tailor’s daughter and the tragic White Wife of Otterswick
MAYBE young German sailor Adolf Nordman dreamed of being more than friends with Nellie Shephard, the tailor's pretty young daughter whom he met in the port of Newcastle, NSW, in 1909. His postcards, written in the years before the outbreak of World War I, hint that way. If so, his hopes were unrequited. Nellie became the wife of an Australian artillery officer who fought against Adolf's countrymen in the war, and Adolf's lovely ship, the Bertha, met a terrible end in the Shetland Islands in 1924, where her figurehead now stands on the shore, looking out to sea, and where the local islanders call her the Wooden Wife,…
