Even steam ships could deliver mail quicker than modern-day Post Office
RECIPIENTS of prizes and bursaries at Simon’s Town School’s Lawhill Maritime Centre duly wrote their thank-you letters to their very generous British benefactor, then seriously ill.
The letters went into a large envelope and, pressed for time at the end of last year, I posted it on December 28, across the counter at George post office, en route to a few days’ relaxation in Knysna. A sticker and large lettering indicated that the envelope should be sent airmail, for which I paid a fortune.
A polite e-mail from the ailing benefactor in February enquired whether the youngsters had written their letters, which he enjoyed reading each year and showing to friends. I responded that I had posted the envelope in George.
The envelope disappeared into the huge hole that is the South African post office, until an e-mail from the widow of the now-deceased benefactor informed me that the envelope had arrived at her home on April 26, four months after its posting in George!
I e-mailed the Post Office complaints division, pointing out my sadness that the benefactor has passed away from his illness before the envelope arrived.
Now, three weeks after dispatching that e-mail, I still have had no receipt for the complaint, let alone an explanation of how an airmail item took four months to travel from George to Britain!
What, you ask, has this to do with shipping news? Apart from teaching the next generation of shipping folk and ships’ officers to convey their appreciation to benefactors, the story caused me to yearn for those never-to-return, yet remarkable days of the Union-Castle mail ships whose punctual schedule and efficient post office officials ensured that the mail arrived on time.
Regular readers will know something of my pedigree, including I lived in Mowbray and attended Pinelands Primary School, known as the Blue School as the boys wore blue shirts and the girls blue dresses.
The influence of the mail ships was evident even in my homely primary school. Probably exhausted from having me in her class, my wonderfully patient Sub A (Grade 1) teacher, Miss Stark, travelled to Britain the following year on a Commonwealth teacher exchange programme, and the dear lady sent me a post card of Cape Town Castle, which I still have in my collection.
The 1950s were the height of the immigration boom whereby the South African government wanted to swell the numbers of qualified people in the country – and to increase the size of the country’s pale brigade. Thus virtually each week, the school welcomed new pupils from Britain or Holland. The school expanded, with large classes, until the pressure was relieved with an extension to the building and the arrival of additional teachers.
Union-Castle had built Bloemfontein Castle to augment the number of berths available for immigrants, some of whom travelled to their new home in the mail ships or the intermediate liners. To reduce the pressure on land, the Dutch government had a trio of converted Victory ships – Groote Beer, Waterman and Zuiderkruis – that brought umpteen Dutch immigrants to start a new life in the sun. After their calls here, the vessels continued to Australia where many other immigrants disembarked to add to that country’s pool of skilled workers.
At our little school, we were fascinated by the array of accents among the newcomers – from the Welsh hills, Yorkshire dales and the industrial British Midlands. When the new Presbyterian parson and his family of four children arrived at the school, their Scottish accents drew us to ask them questions simply to hear their Lothian lilt.
Of course, the main role of the ships was to move the mail between Britain and South Africa on a contractual basis that specified rigid times of arrival and departure. Indeed, a late arrival made newspaper headlines.
The mail-carrying role of these magnificent and popular ships affected the lives of thousands of people at both ends of the route.
My mother’s Aunty Ida of Kidderminster in Worcestershire wrote regularly to tell us of her life in the carpet-making town, and a relative wrote from Bristol several times a year. Christmas cards from the UK were also brought by those ships which, in turn, carried our cards to British relatives and friends.
To me, the most remarkable impact of the mail ships on my kortbroek years revolved around a boys’ comic called Tiger that celebrated the antics of comic-strip heroes. There were Roy of the Rovers whose agile exploits would have placed him in the ranks of modern-day Beckhams, Olac the Gladiator, two divers whose names I forget, a schoolboy scallywag Dodger Kane, whose mission in life was to avoid his namesake being applied to his rear-end by tough schoolmasters. Also in the comic was a remarkably intelligent police dog called Kim whose adventures considerably reduced the British crime rate. We could do with a few Kims on our streets.
Pedalling up the hill to Mowbray from my Pinelands school each Thursday afternoon, I was spurred on by the thought that, by the time I got home, Tiger would have been delivered – with my mother’s Women’s Weekly and my brother’s Hobbies Weekly, all landed that morning from the mail ship. Each month, the Meccano Magazine would also be in the post box.
How those post office folks moved all that mail to the main post office in town, had it sorted, and delivered to the CNA in such a short time without computers – perhaps because there were no computers – remains a mystery. CNA in Mowbray had a lad ready to cycle all over the suburb to deliver the publications, and I suspect that other branches of the news agency had similar delivery systems.
Other mail would be brought the following day by a friendly postman wearing a white pith helmet, a neat tunic and with two large leather bags of mail strapped to his bicycle’s handlebars.
Now that respected gentleman’s arrival was keenly anticipated, especially if he carried with him several fat envelopes, sent by foreign shipping firms and packed with postcards of their vessels in answer to my request, written about five weeks earlier in schoolboy scrawl, for those sought-after postcards.
New Zealand Shipping Company, Shell Tankers, British India Line and Royal Rotterdam Lloyd were most generous in their responses.
Now to the point of this article. In the mail ships, mail took 14 days from Southampton to Cape Town and after the accelerated service was introduced, the time was cut to 11 days. Not bad for some dated steamships without a computer in sight.
A modern containership, carrying the mail in containers, will make the trip in 13 days. Add even four days at each end, and you have three weeks between posting and delivery.
So, in this computer-driven age, why did my envelope take four months to reach Britain – by aircraft, nogal? It’s deplorable service for which there is no excuse.
And the post office still has my money for an airmail service that it did not deliver.