Ingpen’s mailship feature
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