As Table Bay saw few ships in pre-diamond rush times, a smudge of smoke on the horizon on October 29, 1857 drew immediate attention from the lookout on Signal Hill. Indeed, steamers attracted great interest, but this vessel - Union Steamship Company’s Dane - arrived in Cape Town after a 44-day passage from Britain to introduce a new UK-South Africa mail service that would last 120 years.
A potential rival, Castle Packets Company, operated by the irrepressible Sir Donald Currie, sent its first steamer to the Cape in 1872 and, nine years later, the two companies operated the official mail service jointly.
This was a prelude to the amalgamation of Union and Castle Lines in 1900 and the formation of the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company that became a household name in South Africa.
Many remember the popular lavender-hulled mail-ships whose scarlet and black funnels were conspicuous in local
harbours.
Prior to the advent of international aviation, the ships represented a vital cog in the economy as they landed huge consignments of mail immediately on arrival in Cape Town every Thursday morning.
Business depended on the punctual arrival of the mail, and because of the punctuality of the service, shippers were keen to ensure that their cargoes were stowed in the holds of those fine ships.
From the company’s side, the named-day service attracted important cargoes for which higher freight rates could be charged.
Even ordinary folks knew that the ship may bring letters or parcels from relatives and friends abroad, and many other items were in those mailbags that filled the post office vans each Thursday morning.
Indeed, from my primary school in Pinelands, I pedalled to our Mowbray home to find that my weekly comic, Tiger, my mother’s Women’s Weekly and my brother’s Hobbies Weekly - landed from the UK that morning at F Berth - were already in our letter box!
How it happened with such alacrity in pre-computer days is beyond my understanding, but it did!
Union-Castle’s office in Adderley Street was a busy place.
Equipped only with a pen, carbon paper and telex machines, those passenger booking clerks served hundreds of people seeking passages in the mailships to Southampton and also on the popular coastal voyage to Durban, via Port Elizabeth and East London.
On their return to Cape Town, alternate ships anchored in Mossel Bay to load consignments of canned fruit and aloe products from lighters.
Besides bookings for the mailships, the clerks helped passengers wanting to travel in the company’s intermediate liners on their round-Africa schedules that included evocative east African anchorages, Suez Canal and the Mediterranean.
Apart from the queues of passengers, those patient Union-Castle folks had to deal with postcard-hunting kids like me who often came away from the office with fistfuls of those sepia post cards of the company’s ships. And the huge model of Capetown Castle in the office also drew the public’s attention.
My Raleigh bicycle took me to the harbour on many Friday afternoons to watch the mailship sail at 4pm - often despite the howling south-easter, thanks to the fine seamanship of the tugmasters and pilots.
Now that was an event not to miss!
Earlier in the day, hundreds of passengers - and their well-wishers - had boarded the ship, found their cabins, and had moved to enjoy a farewell tea in the liner’s lounge.
While they had their tea and took photographs - no selfies then - last-minute consignments of cargo were being loaded, including several cars that passengers were taking with them to travel through Britain and Europe in those days when customs red-tape was not as stifling as the current regulations.
Around three o’clock, the first bell was sounded as the ship’s tannoy system called for those not sailing the ship to go ashore and, slowly, visitors and well-wishers streamed to the gangway.
On A Berth, they set up streamers that were often broken by the crane that would move into position to lower the ship’s gangway once the pilot was aboard and the company officials, customs and immigration officials had completed their duties and had disembarked.
Because of the ship’s contracted schedule, the harbour came to a halt to ensure that the mailship sailed on time.
The tugs connected their towing lines well before sailing time, and the ship’s crew at harbour stations singled up in anticipation of the pilot’s order for the tugs to begin pulling the liner away from the berth.
Experienced tugmasters ensured that their tugs had taken up the slack before the crucial hour so that the ship could be away exactly at four.
“Both tugs, pull away!” came the pilot’s radioed order to the tugmasters whose tugs began pulling.
The Blue Peter was lowered promptly, and, with three loud blasts on her foghorn, the mailship began going astern.
Streamers tightened and broke, while tears dribbled down the cheeks of passengers and well-wishers, many of whom knew that, in those days of rampant emigration, they would probably not see their loved ones again.
Once lined up for the harbour entrance, the ship gathered speed, passed the bullnose at A Berth where each one in the gathered crowd sought out his loved one on the deck.
Again the foghorn sounded, the tugs’ high-pitched response adding to the cacophony.
The pilot tug came alongside, the pilot disembarked and, as the tug drew away from the lavender-sided liner, the ship’s master ordered “Full ahead two!” and the ship trembled as she picked up speed, passed the breakwater, and altered course.
Former passengers remember their voyages with much nostalgia.
The trip was a holiday in itself, a prelude to a rush around the sights of Europe, or to settling into a new environment with all the challenges that such a move would bring.
Even for those in cabin class, menus announced elaborate and delicious meals that were brought to the table in silver dishes and served with traditional courtesy. Beneath a warm tropical sun, passengers lazed on deck, and watched the sea; evenings brought interesting entertainment, dances, and fun at sea with new friends, some of whom became life-long partners.
Storms did not spare the mailships - Winchester Castle was battered by a true Biscay bluster that spawned enormous seas, cast the piano adrift on the dance deck, injuring several passengers.
Off the Wild Coast, Edinburgh Castle was hit by a freak wave, smashing the forward windows, flooding alleyways, and also injuring folks aboard.
And there were other grim days. Five mailships left their bones off the Cape coast - Athens was wrecked in the “great gale” of 1865, leaving her remains still visible at Mouille Point; Windsor Castle grounded on Dassen Island in 1876; Teuton foundered off Quoin Point, and the reefs at Robben Island claimed Tantallon Castle in 1900, the same year that saw Mexican sink after a collision near Dassen Island.
The advancing tsunami of air travel would scupper the idyllic days of the mailships, as did a combination of higher fuel costs and the looming spectre of containerisation.
The mailships were not built to carry containers, and two jumbo jets could convey the entire passenger complement of the later Windsor Castle to London in 11 hours, rather than 11 days.
Gradually, the mailships were withdrawn, some replaced by “cargo mailships” in the 1960s, but the inevitable demise of point-to-point ocean travel came quickly.
Although the last official mailship sailing - by the cargo mailship Southampton Castle - occurred in October 1977, SA Vaal, which with her older consort SA Oranje had been transferred to South African ownership in 1966, took the last passenger mailship sailing from Cape Town 40 years ago today.
As she passed over the horizon on course for Southampton, she symbolically carried with her warm memories of thousands who had travelled in these legendary ships, who had enjoyed the food, the fun and fanfare associated with this unparalleled service.
So much nostalgia still surrounds those unique mailships - and the dockland, strangled by security hawks, will not witness such events again.
brian@capeports.co.za
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