Ports on Congo River and Cape Town have long historical shipping links
FIRST published as a book in 1902, Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness that reflected some autobiographical information, immortalised the Congo River whose fresh waters – stretching over 30 nautical miles from its mouth into the sea – attracted attention recently as a possible source of relief for Cape Town’s water crisis.
Enthusiasm to bring Congolese fresh water to Cape Town has diminished following good rain and snowfalls in the catchment area of the dams, while attention has shifted to the notion of Antarctic icebergs being towed to the Cape by a large, specially-fitted tanker or bulker. Yet, over a century after Conrad’s thought-provoking novel was published, the Congo River still captures the imagination.
Its forests yield masses of hardwood and beautifully-grained timber, one of the exports of the Congo Basin, while a range of imports arrive at the river’s modest ports whence they are transported by rail or truck.
At the mouth of the river lies Banana, a port that at one time had a 75m-long wharf and a permissible 5m draught for vessels coming alongside. An oil terminal about two nautical miles upstream received petrol and diesel from tankers anchored in the river.
Banana serves as the pilot station for vessels proceeding upstream to the main port, Matadi, about 90 nautical miles from the river’s mouth, but the approach to Banana is tricky as the depth of water changes in places.
In July 1987, Captain Mike Robinson brought the 127m Unicorn freighter Tugela (2) alongside at Banana, the largest ship to have berthed at the wharf at that time.
The volatile political situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo does not augur well for necessary improvements to facilities at the country’s three ports.
Earlier this year, however, Dubai Ports announced that it had been granted a concession to develop a deep-water port at Banana. The project will involve the construction of a 600m quay with a capacity to handle 350 000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent unit) and 1.5 million tons of general cargo.
Such a container capacity has the potential to boost the country’s trade and to expand the role of Banana to become a trans-shipment port, although shoreside operations and transport networks will need to be beefed up considerably if it is to compete internationally.
The Cape has had historical shipping links with the Congo River. Acquired by Thesens in 1938, the coaster Griqua was placed on a service to Matadi. There she usually loaded timber, while in her deep tanks she took on palm oil. She also carried 10 passengers, often merchants or missionaries who had made the trip from Belgium to Cape Town aboard a faster liner and boarded Griqua for the trip to Matadi. Some passengers, bound ultimately for Europe, would also be aboard for the return voyage to Cape Town.
I understand that, to maintain a good head of steam for her fairly old engine during the upstream passage to Matadi, the tough Norwegian master, Captain Ole Olsen, provided wet and dry refreshments for the stokers who had to cope with tropical heat and humidity – besides the normal high temperatures in Griqua’s stokehold.
After all, with a river current flowing against her at 10 knots or more, she would have to make 12 knots to make headway and to maintain steerage way through the Devil’s Cauldron, a narrow part of the river between Boma and Matadi where its speed of flow increases markedly. In the rainy season over the African savanna, much water flows westward into the Congo River, whose flow is boosted and the Devil’s Cauldron becomes particularly dangerous as floodwaters churn their way through the narrows.
In the early 1950s, Thesens operated the motorship Cape Coast to Congo River ports where she caught fire and, although declared a total loss, an Irish shipowner bought and repaired the vessel, after which she traded for another decade until foundering with all hands in a typhoon in the South China Sea.
Around that time, another South African ship traded to those Congo ports. The freighter Natal Coast had been completed at the Dublin Dockyard Company in 1920 for Irish owners, but was sold almost immediately to an Australian outfit for whom she operated for 31 years. Durban-based Neptune Shipping Company, one of many short-lived South African shipping ventures that were formed just after World War II, added her to its fleet of several other extremely old and rather decrepit freighters.
Off she went on several voyages carrying a range of cargo to the Congo River, but in April 1955, while returning from Matadi to Cape Town with a cargo of timber and palm oil, the vessel ran aground in thick fog 23 nautical miles north of Walvis Bay. In later years, some Unicorn vessels also ventured up the mighty Congo. As his ship had been unable to refuel in Luanda or even load a cargo of coffee, cocoa beans and timber because of disarray and military activities in the Angolan port, the master of Horizon (2) sought bunkers in Banana en route to Matadi.
A very concerned chief engineer kept a constant watch on his diminishing bunker stocks throughout the voyage to Banana, where the ship had to anchor since Matadi was badly congested. While the ship was at anchor, the chief engineer’s wife became ill and an Italian doctor flew to the ship in a helicopter from the Cabinda oil refinery.
On advice from the doctor that the woman needed urgent hospitalisation, Horizon’s master set course for Pointe Noire in the Congo Republic where she was hospitalised and her husband left the ship temporaril to support her.
As only diesel oil was available in Pointe Noire, the master decided to head back to Banana and anchor there until a berth was available at Matadi. Further delays at Banana and Boma did not help the bunker situation on board, and as the ship was berthing at Matadi, the generators failed as the fuel had reached critical levels. However, when bunkers were finally taken, the chief engineer, who had rejoined his ship, began to relax – at least his ship would not run out of fuel.
For the log trade to West Africa, a war-built heavy-lift vessel, John Lyras, came on charter to Unicorn, who in 1970 bought her and renamed her Boundary (3). With a rather aged Doxford engine, she was a very functional vessel that had 120-ton derricks to lift the large logs imported by South African plywood merchants. In the squared-off holds – designed in 1942 to carry wartime equipment, including tanks and railway rolling stock – sawn timber could be stowed, while she often carried timber or logs on deck.
In other ways, Boundary was not ideal for the trade and was slow and heavy on fuel, particularly when battling against the Congo River to Matadi during the flood season. She went to Taiwanese scrapyards after only two years’ service. From 1963 until capsizing and sinking while under tow in May 1978, the 620-deadweight refrigerated coaster Zeehaan also went up the Congo River several times to discharge frozen meat and fish. In 2008, I went aboard the small project cargo ship Agnes Scan in Cape Town loading excavators and other machinery for discharge in Boma.
Many other ships have come this way, bound for the mighty Congo River with general cargo, or have called southbound from those river ports with timber, cocoa and coffee.
I wonder, though, whether the advent of a modern port at Banana will kill Matadi as a port. Others wonder whether political conditions in the DRC will allow growth and improvement of that country’s infrastructure.
Time will tell.