In the 1970’s, Amsterdam was beginning to achieve a certain notoriety as the city of free-thinking, free-love, sex, drugs and prostitution although for centuries it had always been a city where people were free to pursue their own interests – as long as they didn’t bother anyone else. The Wallen – commonly known as the Red-light District was a warren of bars, clubs, sex-shops and theatres that were run by louche, mafia-like figures with names like Frits van de Wereld and Zwarte Jopie. It was by-and-large a self-regulating world and the police seldom ventured into it. If someone pulled a knife in a bar-fight his fingers would be broken – a kind of gentleman’s agreement that stopped things getting out of hand. However, the advent of cheap jet travel in the 1970s meant that tourist traffic was increasing. The fleshpots and coffee-shops selling not coffee, but hash, were popping up all over the place and becoming more and more of a tourist attraction.

Smuggling in some of the small fishing ports along the north Dutch coast was nothing unusual, mostly cigarettes and alcohol and the likes, and a pretty penny could be made. Frits van de Wereld decided to finance a hash-run to bring home some supplies for his various establishments in the Wallen. He, and a few other scurrilous ‘investors’ stumped up the cash to finance a large-scale hash deal with a secret supplier in the Lebanon and set up a deal with the owner of the HD 160 to sail all the way there and bring back the illegal cargo.

Unbeknownst to Frits and his partners, the authorities had been keeping an eye on the Lammie as it had been spotted by Interpol in the latter half of 1973 near the coast in the Lebanon. This earlier hash-run was a disaster. The Lammie was discovered sailing without lights just off the coast and boarded by Israeli Special Forces who thought it was an espionage vessel trying to sabotage nearby peace-talks. The Lammie sped back to the Netherlands with an empty hold. The police in the Netherlands had just started using phone-taps – a new high-tech weapon in their fight against crime. They soon got wind of the new hash-transport deal going down and decided to make an example of the Lammie and to show the criminals, who was the boss. The authorities hatched a master plan to monitor and track the boat all the way to the Lebanon and back and to pounce at the moment when the illicit cargo was handed over. An elaborate scheme was set up between the Maritime Police, Customs and Excise and the Navy and a plan of action was drawn up, covering every detail and eventuality that might occur.

As the Lammie sailed out of Den Helder in February on the long trip to the Mediterranean, customs officer Arie Dekker, watching the boat depart, thought to himself that it would be more honest to arrest the unassuming crew and say: “We know everything lads – the game’s up.” In the small fishing communities of Volendam and Den Helder everybody tended to know everybody else – the good, the bad and the ugly.

After an eventful voyage in which the Lammie picked up it’s cargo of around 4,000 kilos of hash in the Lebanon and shortly thereafter almost sank after getting caught up in a hurricane off the coast of Cyprus, the ship finally entered the English Channel on 24th April. Every lighthouse and harbour, large and small, along the Belgian and Dutch coasts was manned with Customs officials, as the authorities had no definite idea where the drugs would be landed. The Dutch Navy corvette H.M. de Wolf picked the Lammie up on her radar and began shadowing her from a discrete distance of around 10km. The English Channel has some of the busiest sea-lanes in the world and sure enough, in the darkness of the night, the contact was lost. The air onboard the bridge of the Wolf was blue with swearing, however, the little boat was picked up again and the shadowing continued. The net began to close around the Lammie. She passed the coast of Zeeland and cruised slowly along the coast and passed Ijmuiden eventually slowing by Calantsoog and came to a stop directly in-line with an onshore radar-post. A rubber motorboat was lowered into the water and the first part of the illegal cargo was brought ashore. The authorities, whom had virtually sealed of the entire North-Holland, had already spotted a couple of Volkswagen vans and a couple of cars waiting near the beach path. They let the shore-based accomplices load up the vehicles with 2000 kilos of hash and depart, whilst the rubber boat made it’s way back to the Lammie. The main target was not the drugs themselves, or the middlemen from Volendam, but the ‘masterminds’ – financiers Frits van de Wereld and Mooie Willem. Most of the accomplices were arrested on the beach. The vans were followed and took their loot to a warehouse in the small fishing village of Volendam where, after a shoot-out the ‘logistics’ bosses were arrested. One of the cars was followed all the way to the province of Brabant in the south of Holland. The car was a cream Mercedes containing Frits and his partner Blond Greetje who was making a personal delivery to an accomplice. Frits was dropped off at a curve in the road and Blond Greetje drove to a barn, which was to be used as a secret stash. At 08.30, the Police pounced and found 51 kilos of hash in the boot of the Mercedes. Frits was later arrested at the house of the accomplice as they sat drinking coffee.