Wrecked ships, lost fortunes, broken hearts and many disappointments

Part 1 of a series about our town using extracts from ‘Looking back at Port Alfred’, compiled by the late Douglas Bailes (with permission from Pat Bailes and the Kowie Museum), transcribed by Sue Gordon. He includes previous accounts from various writers

“Legend has it that the early Portuguese mariners regularly visited the Kowie on their slave hunting expeditions. However, there is no evidence to substantiate the legend, nor that the Portuguese sailed up the river and watered their ships at a spot they named St Mary’s Cove.

The well at Mary’s Cove at the Kowie was dug by the soldiers sometime in the early 1840s. It was almost 20 feet deep and the sides were solidly built up with stone.

There are many references to this cove, and in all, it is referred to as Mary’s Cove, and the weight of the available evidence seems to indicate that it was named after one of William Cock’s daughters, Mary.

Be these traditions as they may, from the time of the arrival of the British settlers in 1820, to the abandonment of all serious work on the river in the 1880s, the story of the Kowie harbour is one of wrecked ships, lost fortunes, broken hearts and disappointments.

The two piers at the river mouth are monuments to misguided enthusiasm and a colossal waste of money.

Much later, historian Sir George Cory was to write of the river: “Whether success and prosperity in connection with that river, regardless of the untiring energy and capital which may be spent upon it, or whether it has been the misfortune of the Kowie always to have had its development undertaken by those who were incompetent for the task, it is difficult to decide.

“But certain it is, that from the time of these early efforts up to the present, the history of this river has been one of failure.”

In the formative years, there was not even certainty as to what the place should be called, so we hear of Kowie Town, Port Kowie, Port Heathcote, Richmond, Victoria and even Port-O-Grahamstown, Port Frances and finally Port Alfred.

The history of the Kowie is invariably linked with the name William Cock, but he appeared on the scene only in 1836.

The first man to investigate the potentialities of the river was Henry Nourse, a London merchant who established a branch of his business in Cape Town. He arrived in SA in 1820, but not with the settlers. In the company of Benjamin Moodie, Nourse, soon after his arrival, made an inspection of the coast from Cape Town to the Kowie.

On his arrival at the river, soundings were taken and these were satisfactory enough for Nourse to decide to establish a factory there for curing beef and pork for the Royal Navy.

He petitioned the Cape governor for a grant of land.

But others, too, had their eyes on the river. In June 1821, Kate Pigot wrote to her grandmother saying: “Mr M Bowker and Mr J Dyason and Papa agreed on the prospects of the Kowie as a harbour.”

On December 11 1820, their report, based mainly on Dyason’s findings, regarding the possibilities of the Kowie as a landing place, were sent to the acting governor, Sir Rufane Donkin.

When in 1821 the governor visited the Eastern Province and the Kowie River, he decided to give the potential harbour a fair trial and sent for the small schooner, Locust, with the object of getting her to attempt the river entrance.

St Mary’s Cove is roughly the part of the river closest to the Ferryman’s Hotel. The well can still be seen behind Ferryman’s.