Attracting passengers was different then
NO SOONER had the cruise ship Aidamar left Cape Town for Walvis Bay and Europe on Monday morning than MSC Sinfonia arrived with an almost full complement of passengers after a short blue-water voyage. While the Passenger Terminal has been quiet on some days, it has also processed hundreds of passengers during a relatively busy time.
On other occasions, two cruise ships have been in port simultaneously, one at the Terminal and the other at D Berth. The season has escaped the serious wind delays experienced three years ago, when ships were wind-bound for several days, creating a build-up of shipping and requiring tugs to keep the large, high-sided ships alongside. However, the south-easter season is not over and delays could occur in the weeks ahead. If my recollection is correct, QE2 suffered a four-day wind delay during her first visit here – in March.
I surfed the internet for details of a specific cruise ship, said to be heading this way, but perhaps betraying my dearth of IT skills and advancing years, I could not find her itinerary that included Cape Town. However, that quest reminded me of the extensive changes to the passenger shipping world.
Older Docklanders will recall days when many passenger ships were in port. Besides possibly two Union-Castle mailships, an intermediate liner might be loading for Britain. Inward from the Far East may have been a Royal Interocean vessel. Southern Cross or Northern Star on Shaw Savill’s round-the-world service may also have been in port, while Ellerman, Holland-Afrika, Lloyd Triestino and Portuguese passenger vessels were also regular callers.
Competing for passengers, shipping lines published a range of brochures, extolling the virtues of their ships, the comfort of their accommodation, the cuisine, as well as the ships’ schedules and the fares. Some companies used huge billboards alongside railway lines to attract potential passengers to the company’s service. While on a shopping trip from her village to Manchester in her youth, an elderly lady told me she had seen such a billboard with the slogan “Sail to Sunny South Africa”. Responding to the call, she and her mother booked a passage from Southampton to Cape Town in a Union-Castle mailship where she met – and later married – the ship’s third officer who rose through the ranks to become the line’s commodore in 1950.
Even buildings in small inland towns bore advertisements for ocean travel, the usual form of transport overseas at the time.
Shipping lines tended to have their own booking offices in every major city. William Anderson, the local agent for Shaw Savill, had its office in Exchange Place. In the window of that office, stood a large model of the magnificent two-funnelled liner Dominion Monarch. The model is now in the rooms of the Ship Society in Dockland.
In Strand Street stood Ellerman & Bucknall’s office which, for this shipmad kortbroek, was a must-visit place during occasional sorties to the central city. One reason to visit the company office was to scrounge postcards from the patient booking clerks; the other reason was to view the model of City of Port Elizabeth, the lead-ship of the Ellerman quartet of elegant passenger-cargoships that entered service in 1953-1954.
With containerisation, Ellerman cargo services from Europe to South Africa were absorbed into the Ellerman-Harrison Container Line that itself was taken over by P&O that then merged with Nedlloyd to form P&O Nedlloyd. The model of City of Port Elizabeth was in the foyer of the company’s Cape Town office, and after a meeting there, the amiable managing director turned to me as I left. “What should I do with this?” he asked, pointing to the model. I am a most useless beggar, and missed the opportunity to volunteer to house it at Lawhill Maritime Centre in Simon’s Town where I was working at the time. “Are you throwing it out?” I responded. “We need to get rid of it as we will be closing this office,” he said, “and we thought of giving it to the Port Elizabeth municipality.” Even then, my instilled reticence to ask for favours prevented me from asking for the model, which, I assume, went to Port Elizabeth. Hopefully, amid the robust politics in that city and in the change of the city’s name, that beautiful model is intact – and bearing what some may regard as a politically incorrect name.
I did pluck up courage to ask if the large model of the P&O’s three-funnelled liner Strathnaver in the small arcade in Simon’s Town’s mini-waterfront could be moved to Lawhill, but
ONE of the vast number of pamphlets published by Union-Castle to attract passengers, not so much to counter competition from rival lines, but with an eye on the growing threat of air travel. | it was not for moving.
Perhaps a reader knows where the huge model of Capetown Castle is? It was in the Maritime Museum at the Waterfront, but, presumably, when that place closed last year, it went into storage. Such a shame as that is a special model and hopefully, one day, it will be central to a modern, exciting Maritime Education Centre at the Waterfront.
And what IT wonders could be worked to attract today’s kortbroeke to such a centre to marvel at the vital role of shipping!