Gerrit Goedknegt was born in Vlaardingen on 17 January 1907, the son of Teunis Goedknegt and Gerritje Bal. In April 1930 he married Johanna de Prieélle, and the couple established their home at 18 Oranjestraat in Vlaardingen.
Gerrit pursued a maritime career and became a first engineer in the Dutch merchant navy, serving with the Rotterdamsche Lloyd. During the Second World War, Dutch merchant seamen were subject to a sailing obligation, which meant that Gerrit spent much of the war at sea under hazardous conditions. Among the vessels on which he served was the Hondsrug, a small cargo vessel originally built in 1937 as the Anbeja. He returned to the Netherlands on extraordinary leave in 1946.
After the war, Gerrit exchanged the merchant navy for the international dredging industry. On 22 June 1950, at the age of 43, he flew with KLM from Amsterdam to Melbourne as part of the first group of Dutch dredging workers recruited for the Australian project. The surviving KLM seating plan records “Dhr. Goedknegt” in seat B4—remembered by his family as “4B”.
His life connects several important strands of Dutch-Australian history: the contribution of Dutch merchant seamen during the Second World War, the post-war international expansion of the Dutch dredging industry, and the organised migration of skilled Dutch workers to Australia in 1950.
