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More on Cape Town’s Waterfront

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CONTINUING our tour of Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, this week we start at the Old Port Captain’s Office.

CONTINUING our tour of Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, this week we start at the Old Port Captain’s Office.

Travel with Dusty Miller

With the rapid growth of Cape Town harbour, the Port Captain’s house in the Clock Tower (see last week’s edition) moved across “the cut” into a beautiful gabled building which was erected in 1904. The new location gave him the space to carry out his demanding duties.

So important was his job that the first phone line in The Cape (1904) ran between his office and the main post office in Darling Street.

The Time Ball Tower on top of Portswood Ridge was invented by Captain Robert Wauchope and built in 1894 to relay accurate time to ships in port. This was done by simply dropping the ball along the shaft at a given time indicated by the Cape Royal Observatory so ships’ masters could set accurate time for effective navigation.

It was used for 40 years until new technology overtook it; then lay idle for 63 years before being restored and officially re-commissioned in 1997.

The Dock House was the home and offices of the Harbour Master when the port consisted of only the Alfred Basin. A white double-storey building was put up in 1870 on Portswood Ridge with a commanding view of the harbour. The historic Dock House is now the Dock House Boutique Hotel and Spa.

Rocket lifesaving equipment: During the Victorian age an ingenious sea-rescue device was housed in a narrow building next to Mitchell’s Brewery, consisting of a harpoon rocket that would shoot a trailing rope over a stricken ship.

After the rope was secured a bosun’s chair ran along the rope, thus ferrying passengers and crew to safety. Part of the system comprised a plank with instructions to be read by the stricken ship’s crew. A life-saving plank can still be seen at the counter of the NSRI (National Sea Rescue Institute) Building which has an Information Centre.

Breakwater Prison and Treadmill: the engine that drove the construction of the V&A Harbour was thousands of convicts who were imprisoned over a period of 10 years in these three prisons.

Take a short walk up Portswood Road, where you’ll find an entrance in a very high wall.

As you enter you will spot the dreaded treadmill. This sadistic device was a punishment for laziness and insubordination. One or more prisoners would stand on the steps and the brake released, causing the steps to rotate at a pace set by the prison guard.

If the convict did not step fast enough he would have his shins smashed by the spinning steps above. These punishment sessions could last the whole day. Next to the treadmill are isolation cells for repeat escapees and other hard cases.

Behind the cells, facing the sea is a long high slate wall. Examine it closely and you’ll find hundreds of old drawings etched into the slate. Look for the cartoon of President Kruger, among 150-year-old graffiti.

Behind this wall is the first Breakwater Prison, dating back to 1860, that housed both black and white prisoners; authorities believed a mixed prison would halt dissent because of different backgrounds and languages. A prisoners’ strike in 1885 disproved that theory. It was blamed on the mixing of prisoners!

So the Industrial Breakwater Prison was built (now the Graduate School of Business.) From 1911 to 1926 it was used to house juvenile delinquents and from 1926 until 1989 black dockworkers lodged there. Nearby is Union Castle House, headquarters of the Union Castle Mail Steamship Company which, in 1857, secured the contract to carry mail between Cape Town and London.

In 1872 the RMS Windsor Castle made the trip in a record-breaking 23 days. By the mid-1960s passengers and mail by sea were declining in the face of opposition from airlines.

The last mail ship sailed from A berth in August 1977 and this travel writer was aboard!

Having taken early embarkation at Durban we sailed coastwise spending a day apiece at Port Elizabeth and East London (Elvis Presley died when we were at sea) before two nights, three days at the Cape and then sailing (in my case) to the Spanish Canary Islands.

The ship — another RMS Windsor Castle — went on to Southampton in the UK. Close to the Canaries we passed the SA Vaal passenger ship cruising south to Cape Town on her last voyage.

I still think it ludicrous that the two (almost) sister ships didn’t tie up alongside each other at Las Palmas for at least a few hours. I for one would have left the north bound ship and joined the southern cruise! Iziko, the South African national museum service, runs the SA Maritime Centre at the V&A: filled with model ships and history of South Africa’s maritime history.

Main display is about the ill-fated Mendi which sank in the English Channel in 1917 taking 607 troops to a watery grave.

Nobel Square is between the Pump House and the Victoria and Alfred Hotel and has four larger than life statues (sculptured by Claudette Schreuders) of RSA’s four Nobel Peace laureates: Chief Albert Luthuli, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.

Personally, I though the statues about as dull and lifeless as the North Korean horrors at Harare’s Heroes Acre and those in Gaborone, Botswana. If my sub-editor chooses to use a picture of the statues, see what you think.

More on the Western Cape next Saturday. [email protected]