After 1864, when Denmark lost the Second Schleswig War to Germany, Skaerbaek parish and many other parishes were now part of Germany and under Prussian administration. This was, of course, not an easy situation for the Danish people in the area and some 200,000 Danes found themselves living under German rule, governed by pro-German policies and compulsory enlisting in the German military. As a result, a large number of people emigrated to far away destinations such as America and Australia. It is estimated that 250,000 people emigrated out of Schleswig-Holstein between 1830 and 1930.

Why did Henry Hansen leave Denmark?

The family story is, that Henry changed his name and he and his brother, Peder emigrated to Australia by being smuggled out of Denmark in the 1870's. This is very believable as hundreds of young Danish men now living under German rule, fled from German military services by emigrating to the USA, Australia and other places. Other people from Melby also emigrated. A family that lived close-by to Henry, the Lund family with blacksmith Carsten Nielsen Lund who had 10 children, of which 6 immigrated to California.

According to Henry's Naturalization Certificate he arrived in Australia on the ship Queen of the Seas, which landed in Sydney in 1867. After an extensive search it was found that there was a ship called Queen of the Sea and she was a barque built in Scotland in 1866 and wrecked in 1877 off the coast of Tasmania. (See newspaper report) This could have been the same ship Henry sailed on when he came to Australia in 1867 and was described as a smart barque of 322 tons, and owned by Mr H.B. Evans and Captain H. Robinson her commander. She was wrecked while on voyage from Hobart, Tasmania to Adelaide SA with a cargo of timber.

A barque is a vessel with at least three masts, all of them fully square rigged except for the sternmost one, which is fore-and-aft rigged. The wooden three-masted barque was the most common type of deep-water cargo-carrier in the middle of the 19th century and barques were the workhorse of the golden age of sail as they nearly matched the speeds of full rigged ships but could operate with much smaller crews.

Henry's ship was a three masted, wooden barque built by Duncan Wright & Son of Kincardine in Scotland. There does not appear to be a picture or engraving of this ship but the SV Inverdruie built by Wright in 1867 while larger in tonnage would have been very similar to Queen of the Sea.