PASTRY CHEF ON NEWHAVEN-DIEPPE FERRIES
Ho Chi Minh reminisced that in 1913 he worked as a pastry cook on the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry.
An unlikely pastry chef from the French colony of Vietnam (or French Indo-China) on an early form
of gap year, Nguyen That Thanh would become a politician and revolutionary named Ho Chi Minh,
and father of modern Vietnam. He formed the French Commnist Party in Paris in 1920 and studied
in Moscow . The country’s first president from 1945, following its independence from France at the
end of World War II, until his death in 1969. The city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in
1976 following reunification of North and South.
His father was a school teacher and Imperial magistrate who was dismissed from his job for being
critical of the French. His son took a job on a French steamship in 1911 called the Admirale de
Latouche-Tréville on which he travelled widely. He later reminisced that in 1913 he’d worked as a
pastry cook on the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry. 100 years on, in 2013, a memorial was unveiled near
the RNLI Lifeboat Station at West Quay, Newhaven. It was gifted by the Vietnamese embassy in
London to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Ho’s time in ferry kitchens.
