Cattle, Coasters and Catastrophes
THE stench from the cattle-carrier, Al Kuwait, that called in Cape Town last week left with the ship, but a ban on shipments of live animals should be implemented. Certainly, no live animals should be exported en masse by sea from South Africa. Suggestions that Al Kuwait would load a large consignment of sheep in East London proved inaccurate as she bypassed the Buffalo River port.
Al Kuwait is heading for Umm Qasr in Iraq and, by the time the wretched survivors of the trip reach their destination, they would have been aboard the ship for nearly a month. That the crew did not hose down the livestock decks before reaching Cape Town is inexplicable.
All the material going overboard during that cleansing process would have been organic and, spread over several nautical miles of the ship’s course, would have posed no environmental challenges.
Hopefully, the treatment of the animals in Iraq will be humane, although some incidents in the past do not augur well for all of them.
My reference last week to Captain George Taylor, the coaster Induna and her animal-carrying capacity prior to her time on the South African coastal trade elicited a most interesting response from that cheerful, seasoned salt, Captain Bill Shewell. For years, he was the face of the maritime side of the Waterfront, contributing greatly to its amazing success.
Having served aboard Shell tankers for much of his seagoing career, Bill joined Durban-based Smith’s Coasters as second mate to gain experience in dry cargo operations. He was appointed to Induna whose main cargo from Durban to Cape Town was bagged sugar, as well as small consignments of drummed oil products, paper and detergents, returning with liquor, canned fruit, fish products and textiles.
On Bill’s first trip as second mate, the mate had stowed drums of oil in the after-hold’s tweendeck, below which was bagged sugar for Cape Town.
The inevitable happened! An oil drum leaked, but fortunately, the oil did not reach the sugar, although when the master, Captain Taylor, saw the mess, he fired the mate, promoting Bill to mate.
Bill recalls that, wearing a thick polar-neck jersey, George Taylor, with years in command of the coasters and whom Bill described as a fine gentleman, would stand on the bridge-wing for hours, watching the coastline off the Wild Coast. “You beat the effect of the south-westerly-flowing current, Bill,” he explained, “by coming as close
as possible to the coast, but carefully watching the white of the breaking surf.” Taylor reckoned that his eyes and watching the breaking surf were safer than the radar!
“We usually take her out a mile for a while,” he would say as the coaster approached Scottburgh on the northbound passage, “but, to get into port earlier this time, we will take her inside Aliwal Shoal,” referring to the reef about three nautical miles offshore and that shoals at low tide.
Named after the three-masted barque, Aliwal, that hit the reef in 1849 but that made port, Aliwal Shoal has seen several near-misses and three major disasters. Bound from Sunderland to Durban in May 1884 and laden with steel for railway and bridge construction projects, the steamer, Nebo, hit Aliwal Shoal and sank.
The 23-knot Aimee Lykes, the first of Lykes Brothers’ new, fast freighters on the US Gulf-South Africa service, had the ignominy of grounding at full speed on Aliwal Shoal on her maiden voyage in October 1963. As the US ship passed his own vessel at speed, the officer on watch aboard the Dutch passenger-freighter, Straat Banka, witnessed Aimee Lykes’s misfortune. “She hit the reef,” he told me years ago, “lifted and stopped!”
In a remarkable salvage operation, two Durban harbour tugs refloated her and repairwork was done in Durban’s drydock. Apparently, that was the largest repair project by local marine engineers, using hundreds of tons of South African steel to replace distorted frames and keel plating seriously damaged by the force of her grounding. After she returned to service, her steam turbines proved problematic – apparently a result of alignment problems caused when she hit the shoal at speed.
Carrying molasses from Mauritius to New Orleans, the Norwegian tanker, Produce, sank after striking Aliwal Shoal in August 1974. Local ski-boats rescued some of her crew while others were picked up by Safmarine’s magnificent freighter SA Oranjeland that put into East London specially to land the rescued men.
On leaving East London, SA Oranjeland suffered machinery failure, and drifted ashore at the rocky northern end of Orient Beach.
As her compartments soon flooded, she was declared a loss.Like Captain Shewell, many enjoyed their time aboard those coasters that, because of the nature of the vessels’ operation and frequent port calls, provided significant experience in navigation, cargowork and ship handling for deck officers.
For engineering officers, the constant operation of machinery, winches and other equipment tested their ingenuity and engineering skills to keep the ageing plant operating.
Can a coastal service be viable now, I wonder, if reserved for South African-flagged ships?