Shipwreck story retold
THE date is April 12 1829.
It’s four o’clock in the morning and a mighty storm tosses the 250-ton French merchant sailing ship Eole around like a cork. The 20 passengers and crew are suddenly jolted as she strikes rocks.
Eole has been driven ashore on the South African Wild Coast. Imagine it. Little or no light; precious little in the way of rescue equipment; no radio to send out a distress signal . . . the dramatic story of death, pain, survival and humanity was told in a book written in French and published in Cape Town seven months later.
It has now been translated into English and is titled Narrative of the Shipwreck of the French Vessel the Eole on the coast of Kaffraria in April 1829.
There were just eight survivors and this is their story as told to author C E Boniface, a feisty Frenchman living in Cape Town and involved in music, drama and journalism who also played a role in development of the Afrikaans language.
The book was rediscovered by Dr David Culpin of St Andrew’s University in Scotland who was doing research at the National Library in Cape Town. He edited and translated the original into English, making it a very interesting and readable story.
Wavecrest Hotel, on the Centane coast, was contacted by Culpin because it is the nearest hotel to Sandy Point, where the shipwreck occurred. The hotel, owned by businesswoman Gloria Serobe, an executive board member of Wiphold (Women’s Investment Portfolio Ltd), agreed to sponsor a plaque to mark the spot where the Eole ran aground.
The hotel also invited a number of guests, including Culpin, French Consul Antoine Michon and Methodist Church Bishop Mongameli Noqayi to the unveiling on the hotel lawn. Serobe was represented by her husband, Gaur Serobe.
Other guests included representatives of the National Library of South Africa and its publisher; the honorary French consul in East London, Alain Viaene and his wife, Debbie; and the local director of Alliance Francaise, Aline Quinard-Driessel.
The granite plaque will be erected at Sandy Point after a suitable position has been chosen. It tells a brief story of the shipwreck, that the Eole was on its way from Calcutta, via Reunion island, to Bordeaux in France, carrying a load of sugar.
Sandy Point is not a name that appears on many maps, but is also known by some as Silver Bay . . . perhaps so-called by fishermen because it is a good spot to catch silver steenbras; maybe also because silver was found there washed up from a shipwreck.
The plaque will be placed at the point, which can be seen 3.5km across the mouth of the Nxaxo River on whose western side the hotel nestles and which looks east across a beach into the rising sun.
There was no hotel, no habitation 184 years ago when the eight survivors scrambled ashore. Fortunately some of the ship’s stores were also washed up – not least a good quantity of wine, food and clothing – and the men were able to set off and find help which came in the form of a “native” kraal where suspicion and tension were broken by friendship, generosity and hospitality.
The book is a story of more than just a shipwreck and survival. It tells of the journey to Cape Town, and author Boniface’s efforts to have it published.
Chiel today is Robin Ross-Thompson;