On Friday February 5th, the Norwegian embassy had a visitor as the former Irish Independent journalist John Maddock came to tell us about his unusual link to Norway. His initial reason for contacting the embassy was to translate the wording on his grandfather medal which read “for edel daad” or “for noble deed” in English.
In 1916, his grandfather was the captain of the London steamer Cluden on a voyage from New York to Hull. Captain Maddock and his crew came across the Norwegian cargo ship Lillesand that was on the verge of shipwrecking. The crewmembers of Cluden managed to save the Norwegian crew and transport them to mainland.
These events led Captain Maddocs’s crew to receive a medal for nobility based on extraordinary rescue efforts at sea. The medal has been in the family for 100 years this year and although Captain Maddock himself were too modest to speak about these events, his grandson is spending his retirement learning more about his life, his accomplishments and what happened that day one hundred years ago.