Ships that played a role in conveying pilgrims to Jeddah and Gulf ports
WITH Muslim readers now part of the way through the fast, I found a photograph of the Royal Interocean Line’s cargo-passenger steamer Tjibadak that could be of interest.
Close inspection of the photograph – taken in the 1950s – shows hundreds of people on the Elbow at Cape Town harbour to welcome a group of returning pilgrims, standing at the ship’s rail along the promenade deck.
The ship went down the ways on the Ijssel River in Holland in September 1928 and as the Depression years began, she sailed from Holland to enter the KPM inter-island services in the Dutch East Indies. She also traded to China and came this way as well.
For part of World War II, she was a floating logistics centre in Colombo, but went to South America where a serious machinery breakdown kept her alongside in Buenos Aires for several months.
In the post-war years, she ran between the Far East and Africa, diverting on occasions to embark pilgrims, possibly in a Red Sea port, to convey them to Cape Town. After 29 summers at sea, the old ship with her interesting “goal-post” Sampson posts and beautiful interior woodwork – commonplace in ships of that era – went to the breakers’ yard in 1959.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, other Dutch-flagged ships, the 110metre Van Riebeeck, Camphuys and the older Maetsuycker, were on a regular service between the Arabian Gulf and South Africa, carrying passengers to the Gulf during the time of pilgrimage.
Apart from 85 well-heeled folks who travelled in first-class comfort, the ships had space for more than 1000 “steerage” passengers in basic accommodation and on deck. Special galleys mass-produced Halaal food for all the passengers.
On some voyages during their round-Africa service, Union-Castle intermediate liners also carried small groups of South African pilgrims to and from Red Sea ports.
On Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linien’s pre-war Germany-South Africa service from 1936, the fine passenger steamer Pretoria was used as an accommodation ship for the German navy during the war.
At the end of hostilities, she became a war prize and, after a considerable refit, operated as the British troopship Empire Orwell under the management of Orient Line.
Presumably so British military officers and their families could travel in comfort, refitting teams made little change to her first-class cabins and to her two very fancy first class public rooms that, in the vessel’s short heyday period, had often resounded with oompah-music, interspersed with martial renderings of songs of the Fatherland.
Even a large, Nazi-era wood-inlaid map of Africa on the smoking room bulkhead was kept intact, despite it showing Hitler’s “world domination” ambitions. Perhaps the British wanted a permanent reminder of what they and others had thwarted during the 1939-1945 conflagration.
Other accommodation was converted to spartan messdecks for troops with three-tiered fold-down bunks, while the troops’ dining saloon had rows of tables and fixed seats.
As Empire Orwell, she came to Cape Town during the Suez Canal closure of 1956-57, her troops spilling out into the city while she bunkered, took fresh water and restocked with a large order of victuals to feed all those troops.
Shortly thereafter, Blue Funnel Line bought her and converted her to a pilgrim ship for service between Indonesia and the Red Sea. Her interior that had been refitted extensively for her role as a troopship was modified again for the pilgrim service that saw her capacity soar to more than 2 000 passengers, many of whom were carried in austere accommodation.
Like other pilgrim ships, the former German liner was scrapped in Taiwan in 1987 after a 51-year career.
Few pilgrims arrive in Saudi Arabia by sea now. Aircraft have swept aside the role of dozens of former pilgrim ships that once carried the faithful to Jeddah or to the Gulf ports, and modern airports at Jeddah and Medina have dedicated terminals to facilitate the movement of pilgrims.
Another interesting aspect of shipping has disappeared for ever.
On Sunday, I will be chatting about Shipwrecks and Salvage at Mossop Hall Methodist Church, Roseberry Road, Mowbray, at 4pm for 4.30pm. Entrance is free.
brian@capeports.co.za